Mizna Online

Uncrafted #5: An Interview with Zaina Alsous

March 5, 2026
by Hazem Fahmy

Craft is honed or realized through repetition: we are what we do, among and again, in writing and in life. Craft is relevant insofar as it advances the political and philosophical traditions we are rooted in, ideally of the people against those who seek to extract, exploit, and dominate.

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THE HUNGERING YEARS—An Excerpt

February 24, 2026
by Summer Farah

Etel, if I had known you in life instead of art I know we would have found places to disagree, but of one thing I am sure—we mourn together. We ask each other to live.

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for my sisters who entered the Nile with open eyes

February 13, 2026
by Umniya Najaer

sister is the river cold?

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Uncrafted #4: An Interview with Rasha Abdulhadi

February 4, 2026
by Hazem Fahmy

The literary terrain is a site of struggle, but never merely representationally. Much as both rightwing and liberal institutions would love to have us believe, the production of literature does not exist outside of the vicious political economy of the United States. It is not enough to point to this or that institution being materially or rhetorically complicit in this country’s various atrocities–though that is certainly an urgent aspect of the struggle–but rather to question: what kind...

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The Road to Ramtha

January 29, 2026
by Sanad Tabbaa

We followed the mosque motorcade to the graveyard. The first thing I saw when I stepped out of the car was a rusted, burned-out barrel. On the ground next to it was a sun-bleached container for a pair of underwear, one of those plasticky cardboard ones with a buff guy on the front. They’d already mostly buried him. It was hot and they wanted to be done as quickly as possible. 

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The Poem Is Good

January 27, 2026
by Muna Abdulahi

The poem talks to god at night
The poem reminds their children and each other to be patient
With hardship comes ease they utter

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Chahine's Cinema of Obsession

January 22, 2026
by George Iskander

I posted an excerpt of Enayat on my story, and one of my old college classmates messaged me, “Did you know my mom wrote this book?” I didn’t. I told him to tell her I was a fan of the book. I sat for a while and wondered about obsession.

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30 NEW SWANA BOOKS TO READ IN 2026

January 16, 2026
by Samia Saliba

My original list for this piece had over 65 SWANA titles releasing in the first half of 2026. That’s too many, but what a beautiful problem to have! So here are 30 of the most exciting adult titles coming this year, plus a few YA titles for fun.

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Uncrafted #3: An Interview with Farid Matuk

January 9, 2026
by Hazem Fahmy

In a literary landscape where institutional hegemony is rarely challenged, it is easy to forget that poetry as a practice and tradition cannot be encapsulated by the university writing program or the prestigious journal. It is easy to forget that publishing itself is but one avenue with which to engage with and produce literature, and that a literary practice in service of collective liberation will need to go beyond the limited bounds of a literary economy. In our conversation on the...

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Favorite SWANA Books of 2025: Reflections on Literary Abundance...

December 31, 2025
by Summer Farah and Samia Saliba

This year has been a big year for books by SWANA authors. Big in the sense that we’ve seen an impressive volume of work published in English this year, but also in the sense that those works have received a lot of recognition in literary spaces, from individual readers and by way of major literary awards.

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Khaltabeta Intimacies

November 21, 2025
by Nour Kamel

Pleasure: something you take in in gasps, as everything falls apart around you, as everything bets on your nonexistence and hastens it, actually.

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Two Poems

November 6, 2025
by Eman Abdelhadi

Don’t our children make pretty figures?
Would you like them in short clips?

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Palestine, Not Zion

October 24, 2025
by Su Hwang

. . . no empire needs to endure beyond the decree of honeybees.

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Suture Fragmentations—A Note on Return

October 7, 2025
by Sarona Abuaker

Return is inherently an experiment in phenomenology; to go or come back is a beckoning of how to arrive.

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So the Light Won't Leave Me

October 7, 2025
by Nima Hasan

Had my mother taught me to weave grief,
I would have made a sweater to shield me from this fear
and you would have heard me singing
as if I had never died. 

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