Mizna+RAWIFest 2023

With a keynote address from Hala Alyan, join us for a weekend of poetry, dance, and art celebrating SWANA artists and beyond!

RAWI Craft Talk 1: An Exploration of Kinships with the Olive Tree

RAWI is holding a craft series! The first of our talks comes from Layla Feghali of River Rose Re-Membrance and the SWANA ancestral project.

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. We put on readings, panels, workshops, roundtables, conferences, and festivals that emphasize inclusivity.

RAWI members working on laptops around a long wooden table, engaged in lively discussion. photo by Shiyam Galyon.

Darine Hotait, film director and writer, speaks during a RAWIFest event. She wears a black dress and brown boots. photo by Shiyam Galyon.

A group photo taken of the Wet Hot Arab American Summer 2019 Cohort. Attendees smile and pose, some seated and some standing, on a sunny day outdoors with a string of lights above them. photo by Shiyam Galyon.

On the left is a photo of Susan Muaddi Darraj, wearing her long black hair down over a dark gray turtleneck top and sitting on a brown couch. On the right a poster with a white background and turquoise border reads "Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora. Edited by Susan Muaddi Darraj. Palestine Writes Press." Below the title text are nine illustrations of colorful doors, arranged in rows of three.

An Interview with Susan Muaddi Darraj, editor of 

Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora

How did you come to editing this anthology? Who were the guides, teachers, guardian angels, or ancestors who brought you here?


In 2021, I agreed to serve as the Director of Palestine Writes Press. It is a small independent book publisher that seeks to platform Palestinian voices in the diaspora and to highlight our experiences and cultural expression. It was always one of our goals to assemble an anthology of these voices, so I was excited to put the call out for submissions. It was even more exciting to review the many manuscripts that were sent to us for consideration.

I began working in earnest on the anthology shortly after the second annual Palestine Writes Festival, which was held in Philadelphia in 2023. It was an amazing, immersive weekend with some of the luminaries of our literary and artistic community. I think I was filled with the spirit of family, joy, and creativity after that weekend, and I brought that to my curation of the anthology.



2. What do you write/edit/curate towards? What do you write/edit/curate against?


I tried to offer a balance between established and emerging voices in this book: for some of these authors, this is their very first time being published, and that makes me proud. I curated a sense of inclusivity. Palestinians in the diaspora have a range of experiences, based on nationality, class, gender, and many other factors. I also tried to establish a sense of the diversity of genres in which our community writes: fiction, memoir, poetry, TV scripts, drama, and more.



3. How did you find the title of this anthology? What kinds of negotiations were involved—with yourself, the work, the publisher, or the world?


I always liked that line from Darwish, and I thought it speaks to the ways in which Palestinians have to fiercely protect our dreams.



4. We would love to know a little about your process of editing? Did anything about the experience surprise you?


I truly was surprised by the range of genres that were submitted to us. As you see, we have everything from fiction to TV scripts to personal essays to, of course, poetry. I was thrilled to see names that I had never heard before, and to read their work. I was very honored that they trusted us with their precious words, and I hope that the writers feel that we did justice to their vision in this book.

I was surprised by how long it took the book to be completed. This was not anyone’s fault but mine, but then again, we are a press that operates on a purely volunteer effort. However, what actually made it difficult to work was the ongoing genocide. I felt it was impossible to focus on creative writing, on assessing and editing this work, when I, like everyone else, was subjected to daily videos of pure horror coming out of Gaza. Therefore, the book took a lot longer to complete than I had intended, but the contributors were very patient and understanding. In some ways, it felt like we were all grieving together, and thus allowing each other the space to process and mourn.



5. How do you want this work to be read? What do you most wish for from your reader?


It’s funny: when Palestinians meet one another, even for the very first time, it only takes a few minutes for us to establish a warm connection in the interaction. I’m hoping to replicate that immediate connection here. I want readers to feel like they have landed among family and friends when they pick up this book. I want them to open the book to any random contribution and sit with that writer for a while, to see the world through their eyes, to experience their creativity, and to feel that instant bond.



6. Since this series is called Zaghrouta!, we want to know: how are you honoring/celebrating this anthology’s birth? How would you like us to honor/celebrate with you?


It’s hard, of course, to truly celebrate anything in these horrific times, but I want to honor these writers who continue to narrate their own stories, who continue to write and share their work, despite all the efforts to silence Palestinian voices. Every day that we survive, that we continue to write, that we continue to exist should be celebrated. It is remarkable that we endure, and yet, that is the Palestinian way.


***

is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and a 

 Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a 

. Her books include her linked short story collection, 

 children’s book series. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at 

, was published in January 2024 by HarperVia. It received praise from 

The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, 

 and it was named a Best Book of 2024 by 

ZAGHROURTA!: Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora, from Palestine Writes Press

A colorful collage of book covers from the included titles.

I had so much fun compiling a list of anticipated SWANA releases for RAWI 

, and several of the books I wrote about for that list turned out to be among my absolute favorite reads of recent years — Munir Hachemi’s 

 were particular standouts. This year, there is once again a rich collection of new releases by SWANA authors that I can’t wait to spend some time with in 2025.

There are many firsts in this list — debuts, first forays into new genres, first works in English, etc. — as well as many familiar voices. I’m also excited to see how many of these books offer really new and innovative sorts of stories, reflections, and poetics. As SWANA literature in English expands every year, it is always wonderful to see it move in new directions and push the limits of the types of stories we can tell (and have published) further and further.

This piece covers 31 particularly exciting releases from January-June of 2025, broken down into fiction (including YA), non-fiction, and poetry. I hope to be back in July to cover more new releases for the latter half of the year! As always, both the books selected for this preview and the consideration of what falls under “SWANA literature” are meant to be expansive and inclusive but not comprehensive.




 and I’m a huge supporter of poets writing novels generally, so 

 has been on my radar for a while. I’m excited to finally get a chance to read it and have seen a lot of early praise so far! A messy coming-of-age story of an Afghan girl growing up in Berlin, this story seems both familiar and wholly original.



Another debut novel by a writer who works in multiple genres — this time a playwright! If you enjoyed Isabella Hammad’s recent novel 

, the plot of this book, where a diaspora Palestinian helps put on a Shakespeare play in the West Bank, might seem a little familiar. But this book has a lot else going on, including arranged romance, family sagas, and relationships between mothers and daughters. It looks like a fun read!



This may be my personal most anticipated book of the year. A story of grief, political history, feminism, family secrets — this book seems to have everything I usually look for in a novel. Rakha has written many novels originally in Arabic, but I believe this is his first English language novel, and I look forward to digging into its pages.



I am cautiously intrigued by this novel, which offers a humorous take on a project of ISIS bride deradicalization from an author who worked on similar projects as an academic before leaving her former career. Since my own academic work focuses on critical terrorism studies and critiques radicalization and deradicalization theories and tactics from a gender studies perspective, I perhaps have a particular investment in this topic! But this is certainly a new sort of story, and I’m interested in what it has to say.



Amal El-Mohtar co-authored the hugely popular speculative queer romance-adjacent novel 

, but this is her solo debut and it looks excellent. Like 

, it’s a speculative novel, but leans more into fantasy/fairytale than sci-fi, and tells an enchanted and mysterious tale of sisterhood.



Laila Lalami has written across many genres including historical fiction, mystery, and non-fiction, but I believe this is her first outwardly speculative/SFF book. Despite the speculative landscape of a near-future where the main character is detained based on analysis of her dreams, Lalami’s narrative remains a deeply familiar one, tackling pervasive technology, surveillance, and state control.



A family saga centered on the chaotic, brilliant, beautiful lives of women is a classic format of the SWANA-American literature genre (if such a thing exists), but each take on it is different, funny, lovely and all of them feel sort of like being at home. 

 looks like a great debut novel and an excellent addition to the SWANA women family saga canon.



As an LA-based SWANA current PhD student, I may be a bit biased when I say this, but this novel about an LA-based SWANA recent PhD grad embarking on a project to marry rich looks SO fun. I can’t wait to read this one! If it’s as good as it seems, I already know what I’m getting all my PhD friends for Christmas next year…



Like many of this year’s novels, this book feels like a totally new and a little bit out-there kind of story in the best way. Characters whose cult-like love of Kafka leads them to join a resistance movement and attempt an assassination? What more could you ask for! Though Sönmez has written many books in Turkish, this is his first Kurdish language novel, perhaps a salient addition to its political themes.



Another exciting new family saga, this novel about an Armenian family from Beirut centered around the Lebanese Civil War has at least a superficially similar premise to one of my favorite novels of the last few years, 

 by Hala Alyan. There’s few things I like more in a book than a funny, sad, complicated story of multiple generations grappling with war, displacement, and personal struggles, so I’m really looking forward to reading this one.



This is the third installment of Huda Fahmy’s YA graphic novel series and it grapples with a high school-aged main character dealing with her parents’ divorce. It’ll always be amazing and brilliant and cool to me that books like this exist (even more so when they’re graphic novels!) for SWANA young people in ways that felt so out of reach when I was that age not all that long ago!



The second book in Chelsea Abdullah’s fantasy series, 

, is finally coming out this year and continues the story of Loulie, a merchant in a world where jinn are hunted, who gets sucked into complex power struggles. This second book finds Loulie trapped in the realm of jinn and promises chaos, magic, and intrigue. As always, I’m happy to see more SWANA authors producing “Arabian fantasy” works that are grounded in actual histories and cultural mythologies when so much of the genre’s popularity has happened without SWANA authors at the helm.



Jackie Khalilieh’s second YA romance novel looks really charming and fun and exceedingly relatable. Who amongst us hasn’t been a type-A Arab girl with anxiety and chaotic insecurity about dating? One day, hopefully soon, we will get an Arab girl To 

-style teen romcom film adaptation and I think Jackie Khalilieh’s work might just be what gets us there.



 by Yigit Karaahmet, trans. Nicholas Glastonbury 

I’m not usually a big reader of thrillers, but this book, which combines messy love triangle drama with crime, might just be the exception. I’m totally intrigued by the plot and like many of the novels coming out this year, this story feels genuinely fresh and new to the landscape of SWANA lit. Extra exciting that it’s in translation! This one is definitely on my list.



Yet another really innovative story, this book follows a young Somali woman living in London who is transported into an alternate reality where she witnesses the life she would have lived had her parents never left Somalia. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen themes of diaspora, displacement, alternate forms of belonging tackled in such a direct and speculative way, and I find the approach really refreshing!




Hot Date!: Sweet & Savory Recipes Celebrating the Date, from Party Food to Everyday Feasts

I am on record saying that no SWANA books list would be complete without a cookbook, and this year that role is fittingly filled by a date-based cookbook. This book also promises snippets of historical context about the history and use of dates from SWANA to Palm Springs, which is particularly intriguing to me because I 

 about this very history a couple years ago. I also admitted in that poem that I’m not a big dates fan, but I do love a good dates-based dessert, so I’ll have to give this one a try.



Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal

Mohammed El-Kurd’s Perfect Victims builds on work he’s been producing for years, and particularly over the last year, which explores the limits of how Palestinians and the Palestinian struggle are perceived and made legible. El-Kurd writes in the tradition of Edward Said’s formative work “Permission to Narrate,” expanding an essential critique for our time.



One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Omar El Akkad’s non-fiction debut, prompted by bearing witness to the genocide in Gaza as well as El Akkad’s long career as a journalist, attends to the profound alienation many of us are too familiar with by now, of existing in a country which would seek to kill you if you were on the other side of a border, and will probably still seek to kill you slowly on this side of it. It asks if and how we might seek possibility in a desperate time.



I know Roza Nozari’s beautiful art from instagram but am not yet familiar with her writing. This memoir looks really exciting! I’m especially enamored with the concept of a memoir that is also about someone else, Nozari’s mother, and how she seeks to weave her own history and her mother’s history together to explore belonging, queerness, exile, love, and the stories we tell about all of it.



How precious and lucky that we still get to experience new Etel Adnan book releases after her passing. Published in what would have been her 100th year, this book combines three essays of Adnan’s written between 1984 and 1995 and reflecting on her life in and beyond Beirut. I know that her words will resonate with our current realities and keep her present with us in times of disaster.



The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders

I’m really excited for Sarah Aziza’s debut book — her essays and published letters to George Abraham since the start of the genocide have been both such a balm and an unsettling. Her writing on Palestine always challenges me and gives me new ways of thinking and being in community. I expect her memoir, on personal and familial traumas, eating disorders, and the echoes of history in the body, will continue to do just that.



Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials

, this book, co-written with his wife Penny Johnson, promises to be a brilliant reflection on Palestinian history and existence that is deeply grounded in place and in the landscape of Palestine. Amidst so many powerful books on Palestine coming out recently, I haven’t seen a ton of talk about this one yet, but I hope it’s on everyone’s radar!



Hala Alyan is one of my very favorite writers of both poetry and fiction, so I’m thrilled to see her make her non-fiction debut. If her often very personal poetry is any indication, her memoir promises to be a stunning, devastating, sharp book with absolutely magical prose. There’s something very special about seeing an author tackle similar themes across three genres, feeling the familiar contours of narrative laid over distinct forms.




What I love about Farid Matuk’s poetry is how he writes with such precision and attention to language, sound, and the narrow space of the line. This is especially true in 

 from which this new collection draws its title, so I really look forward to seeing where he takes these sounds and feelings.



 by Nasser Rabah, trans. Emna Zghal, Khalid Al-Hilli, Ammiel Alcalay

Translated poetry so rarely gets the attention it deserves, so I hope everyone will check out this bilingual edition of Nasser Rabah’s poetry, the first full translation of Rabah’s work into English. This book combines previously published works from his Arabic collections with new poems written since October 2023, chronicling the unfolding genocide. You can get a taste of some of Rabah’s poetry 

This year’s poetry releases include a ton of debuts or first US publications from SWANA poets and janan alexandra’s come from is one such debut I’m personally really excited for. alexandra’s poetry is really playful with language and often moves fluidly between English and Arabic to destabilize both, such as in 

. I can’t wait to have the space of a full-length collection to dig into her work!



Mandy Shunnarah’s debut poetry collection is coming out with Diode this spring and looks to be another treat in Palestinian poetry this year. I love how 

 plays with form, drawing on the structure of the play to build a poetic scene, and I look forward to seeing where the rest of the book carries these themes and this style.



Dark Star Requiem in the Key of Nova by Hind Shoufani

US-based readers may be more familiar with Hind Shoufani’s work in film — she co-wrote the wonderful 2020 Palestinian short film 

 — but she is also a poet with several previous works published in Beirut! This will be her first collection published in the US, and its poems cross time and geographies as an ode to place, exhaustion, grief. I love how her long, winding, irreverent poems 

 suck you in and I can’t wait to see more of this in her collection.



This anthology has been a long time in the making and I know that when I finally get to read it, it will fill me with every human emotion. George Abraham and Noor Hindi are brilliant editors who have thoughtfully collected poems from numerous Palestinian writers, known and unknown, living and martyred. Can’t wait to hold this beautiful collection in my hands.



Shameless self-promo moment — my own chapbook is coming out this year! It’s about and after the X-Files, if you’re into that sort of thing, but also if you aren’t. The brilliant Jane Wong says of the chap: “From the X-Files to familial inheritance to questioning the self/selves to the terror of the surveillance state, each poem acts as a kind of ghostly guide through what makes us both alien and human.” For a preview, 

Fargo Tbakhi is one of our greatest living poets without a full-length collection, but that tragedy will soon be made right with the release of 

 this June. Tbakhi writes with an unmatched political precision and poetic inventiveness, pushing form and language to their limits. There are many poems I could point to that support this claim - 

 I so look forward to digging into this collection, which I know will challenge me and sit close to the heart.


 (she/her) is calling on you to join the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and all oppressed peoples globally, from wherever you are, in whatever material way you can. To learn from Palestinian resistance the everyday practice of refusal. She is writing from somewhere in Los Angeles, where she is a PhD student in American Studies & Ethnicity. Her poems appear in Apogee, AAWW, Mizna, and elsewhere, and her debut chapbook is forthcoming with Game Over Books in 2025. Find her on twitter @sa_miathrmoplis.

In the first half of 2025, new SWANA releases give us fresh types of stories and approaches! 

Mentorship

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ZAGHROURTA!: Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora, from Palestine Writes Press

31 New SWANA Books in 2025: January-June Releases