News and Events

October 20, 2026

The National’s “Ten books by Arab writers to look out for this October” includes Paving the Sea by Rashid El-Daif. A masterwork of contemporary Arabic literature, Paving the Sea brings wit and satirical intelligence to profound questions about migration, identity, and the universal desire to belong somewhere that may no longer exist. Read the full article

June 8, 2026

Shelf Awareness interviews in their “Reading with” section. Caudell is the 2023 Veterans Writing Award winner for Black Heel Strings, a lyrical memoir that meditates on memory and identity as she traces her childhood in a Black family navigating poverty and racism on the Delmarva Peninsula. Read the full interview

May 22, 2026

Returns to Marrakesh / Retour à Marrakech was recently reviewed by Jordan Silversmith for Asymptote “Abdelwahab Meddeb walked to write or he wrote to walk; either way, the result is a city entering the notebook and the body simultaneously. Returns to Marrakesh, assembled from four sojourns in the red city spanning from 1968 to the 1990s, is ...

May 6, 2026

Helen Penet hosted Malcolm Sen to discuss his new book, Irish Anthropocene: Literature, Climate Change, Sovereignty. The book traces the ways in which contemporary Irish literature responds to climate breakdown. Drawing upon concepts of sovereignty, precarity, and disaster, Sen examines Irish literary works to reveal how they engage with the entangled relations between ecology, economy, ...

April 28, 2026

Marcia Lynx Qualey, author, translator, and editor of ArabLit, moderated a conversation on the art and challenge of carrying literature from the edge of the Arab world across linguistic and geographical boundaries. Participants: Marilyn Booth, translator of Honey Hunger, winner of the 2025 Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation Zia Ahmed, translator of The Raven of Ruwi and ...

April 28, 2026

In this conversation with R. Neil Hewison, discusses what brought him to Mohamed Mansi Qandil’s The Country Doctor’s Tale, the pleasures of the Egyptian village novel, Mansi Qandil’s attention to women’s pain, and what makes a “modern classic.” Read the full interview

April 6, 2026

Historian Philip Terrie reflects on fifty years of studying and writing about the region in an interview with Mark Obbie, Adirondack Explorer. Terrie is the author of several books, including newly released Wild Forest Lands: Finding History and Meaning in the Adirondacks. A blends memoir, philosophy and constitutional history of Adirondacks. Read the full interview

March 4, 2026

Translator Neil Hewison of The Country Doctor’s Tale by Mohamed Mansi discussed the book on the on New Books Network. This absorbing novel weaves together forbidden love, political corruption, and the clash between tradition and desire. Listen to the full interview

March 4, 2026

Editors, Minoo Moallem and Paola Bacchetta of Fatema Mernissi for Our Times were interviewed by Jadaliyya. “We began working together on projects related to Fatema Mernissi after her passing in November 2015. We wanted to ensure that Mernissi’s many contributions would not be forgotten.” Read to full intereview

January 13, 2026

Zia Ahmed, translator of The Raven of Ruwi and Other Stories of Oman, spotlights stories of the marginalized in a new reading list for The Markaz Review. “The titles on this reading list may not be unique in their portrayal of marginal characters and settings, but each one holds profound meaning for the writer. They offer ...