Female Voices in Arabic Literature
Date July, 15 2021
Location Live Zoom Webinar
Sheikh Zayed Book Award, in collaboration with The Bookseller, hosted the literary discourse titled ‘Female Voices in Arabic Literature’ on July 15, 2021.
The webinar featured the 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award Literature winner Iman Mersal who joined translator Sawad Hussain and researcher Dr. Marlé Hammond to explore the female narrative voice, feminism, contemporary Arab women's literary trends in Arabic literature, their global popularity, and more. The webinar was moderated by writer and editor Marcia Lynx Qualey.
Highlights from the session are available for viewing on https://bit.ly/FemaleVoicesinARLitHighlights. The full session is available for viewing via https://bit.ly/FemaleVoicesinARALitFULL.
Speakers
Marcia Lynx Qualey
M. Lynx Qualey is the founder of ArabLit.org, a website that brings together translators, authors, publishers, critics, academics, and readers around discussions of Arabic literature in translation. She works as a book critic, reader, editor, and ghostwriter.She has written for Al Masry Al Youm English edition, World Literature Today, the Guardian, the Believer, as well as other publications.
Iman Mersal
Egyptian poet, writer, academic and translator. She works as an Associate professor of Arabic literature and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Alberta, Canada and currently resides in Marseille, France, where she holds the Albert Camus chair at IMéRA, the Institute for Advanced Study of Aix-Marseille University until July 2021, while working on a book entitled Al Laknah: Al Sawt fee Ghair Makaneh (Accent: the Displaced Voice). An anthology of her works was translated into more than twenty languages and she has five poetry collections published. Her most recent published works include Hatta Atakhlla Aan Fekrat Al Boyot (Until I Abandon the Idea of Homes) in 2013, Kayfa Taltaem: Aan Al Omoma wa Askhbahuha (How to Amend: On Motherhood and its Ghosts) in 2017, and Fee Athar Enayat Al Zayyat (In the Footsteps of Enayat Al-Zayyat) in 2019. Her book, Mamar Moetem Yasloh fee Talom Al Raks (A Dark Path Suitable for Learning to Dance), is one of the most important poetry books issued by the generation of the nineties in Arabic poetry.
Sawad Hussain
The winner of the 2019 Arablit Short Story Prize and two English PEN Translates awards. She co-teaches a workshop on translating Arabic comics at UK secondary schools via the collective Shadow Heroes. Her recent translations include resistance novella Passage to the Plaza (shortlisted for the 2020 Palestine Book Awards) and the groundbreaking experimental short fiction collection A Bed for the King's Daughter. She holds an MA in modern Arabic literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Dr. Marlé Hammond
Academic and Researcher at SOAS University of London