Excerpts from the forthcoming volume of poems Exhausted on the Cross by Najwan DARWISH, in Kareem James Abu-Zeid’s translation from the Arabic and superbly introduced, can be read at The Paris Review blog.
Each year the International Literature Festival Berlin sponsors one or several Worldwide Readings when urgent challenges to justice and freedom arise. The 2016 reading is to draw attention to the imprisonment and imminent threat of death penalty to the Saudi Arabia-based Palestinian poet and curator Ashraf Fayadh , and to offer him our solidarity.
On Thursday January 14th 2016, the International Writing Program, UI Center for Human Rights, and the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature will be joining many other literary organizations and writers worldwide, to read from Fayadh’s work, and to call on the Saudi authorities to improve the country’s human rights standards.
We hope you will join us that day, 12noon to 12:30pm, at the Shambaugh House (430 N. Clinton; 335-0128). Please email us if you’d like to participate by reading from one of Fayadh’s texts , or if you’d like additional information; feel free to spread the word.
A comment on this situation by our 2015 Saudi alum Raed Al-Jishi can be found on our house blog.
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