Workshop Participants: How to Write Your Nakba Story?
Date: 
March 17 2023

We are delighted to announce five writers of Palestinian heritage selected to participate in the How to write your Nakba story? virtual workshop. 

The writers emerged from dozens of applicants from around the world. They reside in exile in Colombia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Qatar, longing for their ancestral hometowns of Jenin, Bethlehem, Akka, Yafa, Gaza, Jerusalem, Bir al-Sabe', and Silwad. Their stories are about resistance, displacement, love, family, sacrifice, and identity. We are thrilled to include their stories in a series that documents new voices and untold histories from the collective Palestinian consciousness. The series will be illustrated and published in English and Arabic on May 15, 2023. 

To commemorate 75 years of the Nakba, the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA is organizing a writing workshop that centers Nakba stories told by descendants of its survivors. This workshop is co-sponsored by the United Palestinian Appeal and the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. It is the first of what we hope to be many opportunities for young Palestinian writers to engage with the Institute and seek it not only as a reliable archive of information but also as a space for creation. Read about the workshop in the February 24 announcement


Meet the workshop participants: 

Samah Fadil is an Afro-Palestinian writer, editor, and translator who resides in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Her words can be read in FIYAHPalestine SquareSkin DeepMizna, and more. She was a guest speaker for Black Lens on Palestine and a performer for Global Indigenous Solidarities: a Poetry Reading, organized by Yale University Art Gallery in conjunction with Yale University Native American Cultural Center. Fadil served as content editor for the winter 2022 Black SWANA Takeover issue of Mizna. She is a Cinephilia Film Development Workroom fellow. Her project, Wander, is an official selection for the Cinephilia Advanced Lab. Fadil is interested in showcasing historically marginalized experiences through storytelling, poetry, and visual art. 

Marah Abdel Jaber is a Palestinian writer, researcher, and creative currently pursuing her master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago Center. Her work focuses on constructions of Palestinian identity within and beyond occupied land, historical preservation, Palestinian creative movements, and the imagined Palestinian space. Marah is devoted to accessible knowledge production, progressively engaging in innovative methods of interweaving the academic space with creative production to globalize education on Palestine.

Abdulla Moaswes is a writer, researcher, translator, and educator. His current academic explorations focus on the globalization of settler colonial logics. He has previously written about the politics of food, with special reference to chai karak, and the socio-political role of internet memes in South and West Asia. In addition to this, Abdulla also writes poetry and speculative fiction.   

Odette Yidi is a Palestinian-Colombian cultural entrepreneur, researcher, writer, and educator interested in Arab-Latin relations and in the intersection between migration and identity. She holds an MA in Near and Middle Eastern studies from SOAS, University of London, and is the executive director of the Institute of Arab Culture of Colombia.

Zain Assaf is a graduate of Georgetown University in Qatar. She majored in Culture and Politics and minored in History. She also pursued a Certificate in Media and Politics, offered jointly by Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) and Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q). Her thesis examined mainstream media's framing of the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. She is currently a part-time Assistant Engagement Producer at Al Jazeera English. She has written for Palestine Square and Doha News.

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