RAWIfest 2023

The Radius of Arab American Writers and Mizna are excited to host Mizna+RAWIFest, RAWI’s bi-annual conference for 2023, in RAWI’s 30th year! 

The conference will take place October 26 through 28 in Minneapolis and online. This event is FULLY-HYBRID, those choosing to attend online will be able to fully participate. The conference will kick-off with a keynote address from novelist and poet Hala Alyan. The full slate of performers, panels, and events has been announced – get ready for music, dance, an incredible slate of readers, and opening & closing night parties! 

How to attend

In person registration: In-person registration is $200. Includes free breakfast + lunch, and more! In the spirit of accessibility and care, all in-person attendants will be required to mask during the duration of the conference. SPACE IS LIMITED: We have a cap of 100 in-person attendants. Need-based waivers are available; for a 50% discount waiver, please email rawifest@gmail.com.

Register here

The festival will be held at Open Book; the space has an elevator & gender-neutral bathrooms; if you have accessibility concerns or questions, please e-mail us at rawifest@gmail.com.

Virtual registration: Virtual registration is free! All panels and performances will be conducted on/streamed on Zoom. We strongly encourage donations so we can continue to make free offerings like this for future programming.

Register here

We hope to see you there!

SCHEDULE

About the conference

Established in 1993, RAWI is a national organization that provides mentoring, community, and support for Arab-American writers and those with roots in the Arabic speaking world and diaspora. We are a non-profit 501(c)(3) literary organization dedicated to supporting and disseminating creative writing and scholarly writing by Arab/SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) Americans and those from the Arabic speaking world–which often means creating space and highlighting voices and people threatened by erasure.

Mizna is a critical platform for contemporary literature, film, art, and cultural production centering the work of Arab and Southwest Asian and North African artists. For more than twenty years, we have been creating a decolonized cultural space to reflect the expansiveness of our community and to foster exchange, examine ideas, and engage audiences in meaningful art. Named City Page’s Nonprofit of the Year in 2020 and a Regional Cultural Treasure in 2021, we publish Mizna, an award-winning SWANA lit and art journal; produce the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival, the largest and longest running Arab film fest in the Midwest; and offer classes, readings, performances, public art, and community events, having featured over 400 local and global writers, filmmakers, and artists.

Hala Alyan is the author of the novel “Salt Houses,” winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize. Her latest novel, “The Arsonists’ City,” was published in March 2021 and was a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of four award-winning collections of poetry, most recently “The Twenty-Ninth Year.” Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, LitHub, The New York Times Book Review and Guernica. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter, where she works as a clinical psychologist.