February 13, 2026

Mizna at AWP 2026

The 2026 AWP Conference & Bookfair takes place March 4–7, 2026 in Baltimore, Maryland. Join Mizna for a long weekend of SWANA lit! At this year’s conference, Mizna will present an AWP Featured Event with Huda Fakhreddine, Mona Kareem, and Yahya Ashour, an AWP offsite event, and a panel. Learn more about how to attend the AWP 2026 here.

Mizna Booth

Writers for Sudan: A Mizna AWP Offsite Event

Featured Event: Translating Gaza, Problematizing Translation: On Urgency, Critique & Publishing

Mizna AWP Panel: HUNA—Writing Resistance in the Now

SWANA Panels

SWANA Caucus

Find Mizna at Booth #967

Writers for Sudan: A Mizna AWP Offsite Event

As the devastating genocide in Sudan approaches a three-year mark, Mizna presents a Baltimore reading and fundraiser. This evening benefits Sunduq al-Sudan and features Suad Abdel aziz of Decolonize Sudan as well as readings from Sara Elkamel, Ruba Elmelik, Umniya Najaer, Ladan Osman, and Mohammed Zenia. This is a free, public event held on the eve of the 2026 AWP conference.

Join us on Wednesday, March 4, 2026, at 6pm (Doors 5:30pm) at Red Emma’s, 3128 Greenmount Ave, Baltimore, MD 21218.

TICKETS + MORE INFO

Featured Event: March 7, 2026 at 10:35am
Translating Gaza, Problematizing Translation: On Urgency, Critique & Publishing

Three percent of US books are translations, amplifying the powers and pitfalls of the discipline. The fraction of Arabic to English work, especially in light of Gazan genocide, holds clear urgency and impact despite risks of fetishism, voyeurism, and complacency—endemic to this literary field and ripe for critique, if not paralysis. Here, the theory and praxis of translating within empire are discussed through two contrasting, complementary publications by their editors.

This event will be live streamed and include live captioning.

Location: Ballroom II, Baltimore Convention Center, Level 400

Mizna AWP Panel

Thursday, March 5, 2026 10:35am
Mizna Presents: HUNA—Writing Resistance in the Now

To write resistively from the US is to reckon with many colonial presents: how imperialism abroad is connected to domestic oppression, how resisting fascism requires both urgency and slow thinking. As SWANA writers, how might disrupting normative Western expectations around craft and form, in turn, confront imperialism’s un/conscious? We explore how literature can invite interrogation of one’s positionality and confront present horrors, guiding us to a collective future beyond imperial domination.

Speaker(s): George Abraham, Sarah Aziza, Jameelah Lang, Abdelrahman ElGendy

Location: Room 318-319, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

SWANA Panels at AWP 2026

Thursday, March 5, 2026 12:10pm
Building the House: The Importance of a Community for Muslim Writers

House of Amal is in its sixth year of community programming, teaching, mentorship, and publishing. Amid an uptick in global Islamophobia, it is vital to create spaces centered on both craft and community for aspiring Muslim writers who require a unique kind of mentorship. Bridging the overlap between the spiritual, literary, and artistic identities, House of Amal will share the lessons learned while crafting and recrafting our twelve-month Writing Residency curriculum and membership programming.

Speaker(s): Sara Bawany, Amal Kassir, Salma Mohammad, Safiya Khan

Location: Room 328, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Thursday, March 5, 2026 1:45pm
Writers of Bilad Al-Sham: A Reading for Palestine & Syria

Writing has remained an essential practice for Levantine peoples, even during times of war. Spoken word poets from Syria and Palestine will perform powerful political poems inspired by their personal and familial experiences with loss through war, genocide, and settler colonialism. They discuss the intersection of their Muslim and Levant identities and the impact of the diaspora on their poetry, and further, how this influences their teaching of both craft and writing identity at House of Amal.

Speaker(s): Sara Bawany,  Amal Kassir, Salma Mohammad

Location: Room 301, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Friday, March 6, 2026 10:35am
Toward a Liberatory Literature: Palestinian Writers in Conversation, Sponsored by Kundiman

The struggle for liberation in Palestine and the genocide in Gaza have galvanized the world and reignited long-standing conversations around the global struggle for liberation. Join Kundiman for this special reading and conversation featuring Palestinian writers Sarah Aziza and Fargo Nissim Tbakhi. This panel will discuss the role of writers in displaced diaspora communities, how literature can disrupt narratives of empire and colonialism, and the histories of cross-community solidarities.

This event will be live streamed and include live captioning.

Speaker(s): Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, Sarah Aziza

Location: Ballroom I, Level 400, Baltimore Convention Center

Friday, March 6, 2026 1:45pm
Home, Belonging & Agency in Diasporic Fiction

Migration and social upheavals complicate what are already differential perceptions and experiences of home and belonging. This session will feature five writers who will read from their debut fiction. Set in diverse locales from Asia to Africa, Middle East, and North America, their global, diasporic storytelling about identity, including ethnicity, gender, race, and sexuality, showcases their characters’ agency in navigating home/lands and their relationship to un/belonging

Speaker(s): Serkan Görkemli,  Elysha Chang,  Nawaaz Ahmed,  Roohi Choudhry, Cleyvis Natera

Location: Room 326, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Friday, March 6, 2026 3:20pm
Strange Estrangement: SWANA Writers on Family, Home & Belonging

This panel of SWANA writers explores family estrangement: from going “no contact” with relatives to forced separation from ancestral homelands. As US discourse normalizes cutting ties, we examine how war, occupation, and colonialism uniquely impact our region. Spanning Palestine, the Persian Gulf, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, panelists ground their personal stories in broader cultural and political contexts to illuminate the complex forces of colonialism and empire driving familial rupture.

Speaker(s): Leila Nadir, Noam Keim, B. Al-Ism, Sarah Aziza, Hayan Charara

Location: Room 329, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Saturday, March 7, 2026 9:00am
One Hundred Faces of the Beloved: Form & Features of the Ghazal

Agha Shahid Ali likens the ghazal to a necklace strung with “Ravishing DisUnities,” of which each stone is an autonomous couplet that shines in “vivid isolation.” This panel explores the distinct features of the ghazal: the rhyme-refrain scheme, poet’s signature, independent couplets, and playful yet profound “ghazal spirit,” while tracking the evolution of the form from ancient to contemporary. It also pays a tribute, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, to Shahid, who brought the ghazal to the US.

Speaker(s): Samyak Shertok, Eman Hassan, Jacqueline Osherow, Raena Shirali

Location: Room 318-19, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center

Saturday, March 7, 2025, at 12pm
SWANA Writers Caucus

This will be a town hall–style meeting, creating a much-needed space for SWANA writers to build and connect within AWP. We invite established and emerging writers, editors, students, scholars, and organizers, and aim for the caucus to facilitate networking and exchange on literary endeavors, craft, publishing, poetics, and praxis. Our caucus seeks to empower and center the voices of underrepresented Americans with roots in SWANA cultures and communities.

Speaker(s): Pinar Banu Yasar,  Aliah Lavonne Tigh, Sophia Babai,  Tariq Luthun, Rabha Ashry

Location: Room 307, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center