"poets using AI"

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Dima Wannous’s ‘Damascus: A Tomb and a Prison’ "We passed a vast area near my house in Mazzeh, its surface covered with unfinished cement buildings. The driver told me it was a residential and commercial development owned by Asma al-Assad. The next day, one torture survivor told me the purpose of the project was to hide corpses[.]"

Dima Wannous’s ‘Damascus: A Tomb and a Prison’

"We passed a vast area near my house in Mazzeh, its surface covered with unfinished cement buildings. The driver told me it was a residential and commercial development owned by Asma al-Assad. The next day, one torture survivor told me the purpose of…

la puissance de la douceur: "certain encounters do not necessarily heal but still preserve something essential against the world’s brutality: the possibility of a relation intimate enough to near suffering--yet disciplined enough not to consume it"

Sheikh Zayed Book Award Announces 2026 Winners Organizers at the Sheikh Zayed Book Award (SZBA) today announced their 2026 winners across ten categories.

Sheikh Zayed Book Award Announces 2026 Winners

Organizers at the Sheikh Zayed Book Award (SZBA) today announced their 2026 winners across ten categories.

Four Women in Berlin At a Berlin residency, a Gazan writer fleeing genocide expects solitude—and instead finds unexpected kinship among women bound by grief.

"What I learned from Hanadi was that one can come very near another people’s wound without trying to claim it as one’s own. There is an ethics in that nearness — a form of love, too." Alaa Alqaisi.

themarkaz.org/four-women-i...

CPJ calls on Kuwaiti authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Kuwaiti-American journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, detained under new security and fake news laws.

Read more: cpj.org/2026/04/cpj-...

#FreeAhmed #FreeAhmedEldin

Enjoy this wonderful conversation between WWB contributors Yasmeen Hanoosh and Elliot Colla! Head to our website to explore their work.

Translation and Solidarity in Times of Imperial Mass Violence In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Elliott Colla look into two dimensions of translation, which Colla calls the solidaristic and the hegemonic, and the parti…

"Translators (and interpreters) are the mediators—middlemen—who work the line between colonizer and colonized, occupier and occupied. They work along the frontier, wherever that is."

arablit.org/2026/03/25/t...

New Poetry in Translation: ‘Obituaries’ “The city wakes up in obituaries.”

The city wakes up in obituaries.

Every dawn we hear or read news

of its death in a disappearing face.

The city wakes up within its walls

and remains alive in its death

with no children or relatives to mourn.

arablit.org/2026/04/14/n...

Ahmed Khaled Tawfik’s ‘The Wall’ “The Wall,” by the massively popular Ahmed Khaled Tawfik (1962-2008) is from his collection “Now I Understand.”

Classic Egyptian horror spec-fic by Ahmed Khaled Tawfik:

"The Wall"

From the collection Now I Understand, translated by Noor Sahnoun (Noor Tarek) and Melissa Krawczyk

arablit.org/2026/04/13/a...

Thyme Travellers 2 – Call for Submissions Roseway, an imprint of Fernwood Publishing, will be publishing a sequel to the award-winning and acclaimed anthology Thyme Travellers featuring speculative fiction by Palestinian writers. Editor So…

Please share as widely as possible.

This is open to Palestinians anywhere in the world, published or not.

Call for Palestinian fantasy, science fiction, and horror stories! Pro rate pay: soniasulaiman.com/thyme-travel...

💚

Get your copy at arablit.org/shop/

THE END OF THE SAHARA has been super popular at the Maktaba @ibraaz.bsky.social & this is great news! A brilliant thriller writer to watch...

There are also short films about all of the shortlisted titles; you can watch them on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=VbZ2...

Congratulations to Said Khatibi on winning the 2026 International Prize for Arabic Fiction for 'I Resist the River's Course.'

(Yes the IPAF organizers are calling it Swimming Against the Tide.)

arablit.org/2026/04/09/s...

From Areej Gamal’s ‘Mariam, It’s Arwa’ Areej Gamal's Sawiris-winning novel Mariam, It's Arwa appeared at the end of last month in Addie Leak's translation. The titular Arwa and Mariam meet near Cairo University during the 2011 Egyptian uprising, and the encounter changes them both.

From Areej Gamal’s ‘Mariam, It’s Arwa’

Areej Gamal's Sawiris-winning novel Mariam, It's Arwa appeared at the end of last month in Addie Leak's translation. The titular Arwa and Mariam meet near Cairo University during the 2011 Egyptian uprising, and the encounter changes them both.

In the Details: Masks, Memory, and Narrative Defiance "A Mask the Color of the Sky" practices what it clearly laid out: using literature to engage obsessively with colonial details, to challenge them, and to insist on a Palestinian narrative.

In the Details: Masks, Memory, and Narrative Defiance

"A Mask the Color of the Sky" practices what it clearly laid out: using literature to engage obsessively with colonial details, to challenge them, and to insist on a Palestinian narrative.

2 Arabic Titles on EBRD Literature Prize’s 2026 Shortlist The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) today announced the 10-book shortlist for its 2026 EBRD Literature Prize. The unusual lit prize honors books from nine of the countries in which the Bank operates.

2 Arabic Titles on EBRD Literature Prize’s 2026 Shortlist

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) today announced the 10-book shortlist for its 2026 EBRD Literature Prize. The unusual lit prize honors books from nine of the countries in which the Bank operates.

You can subscribe to our Wednesday poetry newsletter, ed. Mennan Salih, here: arablitpoetry.substack.com

Forthcoming April 2026: Egyptian Village Novel and Two Big Anthologies This month, a novel set in the Egyptian countryside and two big literary anthologies with Arabic work in English translation.

Forthcoming April 2026: Egyptian Village Novel and Two Big Anthologies

This month, a novel set in the Egyptian countryside and two big literary anthologies with Arabic work in English translation.

Thyme Travellers 2 – Call for Submissions Roseway, an imprint of Fernwood Publishing, will be publishing a sequel to the award-winning and acclaimed anthology Thyme Travellers featuring speculative fiction by Palestinian writers. Editor So…

Hey! So, remember that award winning anthology of Palestinian speculative fiction I edited?

We’re doing another one! soniasulaiman.com/thyme-travel...

ooh! thanks!

A Look Back at ArabLit: March 2026 A look back at March 2026 in Arabic literature and translation.

A Look Back at ArabLit: March 2026

A look back at March 2026 in Arabic literature and translation.

🚨IF YOU ARE IN BERLIN, save the date to join our May 3, 2026 launch of SYRIA: Fall of Eternity, a massive 300-page anthology of Syrian art & literature.

(More details on readers & discussants forthcoming.)

spore-initiative.org/en/programmi...

On the Field of Arabic Studies Translator-scholar Jonas Elbousty talks with Roger Allen about his journey in the field of Arabic Studies.

On the Field of Arabic Studies

Translator-scholar Jonas Elbousty talks with Roger Allen about his journey in the field of Arabic Studies.

Don't miss the latest "Between Two Arabic Translators" conversation.

Find them all here:
arablit.org/between-two-...

& sign up for the monthly newsletter:
between2translators.substack.com

New Poetry in Translation: ‘Who Am I?’ “Who am I? / I am not myself.”

Who am I?
the birds ask me
circling above my head,
dancing in loops with the wanderers,
staring into the hollows of my eyes,
sinking into their bright brown light,
then departing through my tear-filled gaze.

arablit.org/2026/03/26/n...

New Poetry in Translation: ‘Who Am I?’

"Who am I? / I am not myself."

Translation and Solidarity in Times of Imperial Mass Violence In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Elliott Colla look into two dimensions of translation, which Colla calls the solidaristic and the hegemonic, and the parti…

Don't miss this month's "Between Two Arabic Translators," a discussion between Yasmeen Hanoosh and Elliott Colla: Translation and Solidarity in Times of Imperial Mass Violence

arablit.org/2026/03/25/t...

Translation and Solidarity in Times of Imperial Mass Violence In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Elliott Colla look into two dimensions of translation, which Colla calls the solidaristic and the hegemonic, and the particular role translation has played in the US military.

Translation and Solidarity in Times of Imperial Mass Violence

In this “BETWEEN TWO ARABIC TRANSLATORS” conversation, Yasmeen Hanoosh and Elliott Colla look into two dimensions of translation, which Colla calls the solidaristic and the hegemonic, and the particular role translation has played in…