BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.4.7//EN TZID:Europe/London X-WR-TIMEZONE:Europe/London BEGIN:VEVENT UID:6006@artinliverpool.com DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20200713T180000 DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20200713T190000 DTSTAMP:20200708T153256Z URL:https://www.artinliverpool.com/events/liverpool-arab-arts-festival-wri ting-the-palestinian-city/ SUMMARY:: Liverpool Arab Arts Festival: Writing the Palestinian City DESCRIPTION:\nWriting the Palestinian City\n\n\nMonday 13 July\, 6:00 pm - 7:00 pmFree\n\nLiteratureWatch Online\nSign up here to receive the link\ n\nIn Association with Comma Press.\n\nWriting about life in a city can be a rich and fulfilling experience. It ties you to a place\, where what you write can shape both your identity and how other people spend their days. It gives you ownership.\n\nYet\, when we talk about Palestine\, when we t hink of words written about Gaza\, Ramallah and East Jerusalem\, there is an added layer of friction. Palestine is a physical place\, but one with a global identity\, which changes whether you are ‘inside’ or ‘outsid e’.\n\nIn this unique event\, we gather three writers to explore the cha llenge of writing about the Palestinian city\, both in fact and fiction. H ow do you decide where to set your story\, how do you build you ‘nameles s’ city? How does Palestine’s vast diaspora impact on this writing?\n\ nChaired by Ra Page from Comma Press\, Writing the Palestinian City will be a passionate and reflective discussion exploring the fundamental partne rship between identity and the written word.\n\n \;\n\n\n\nAuthor bios \n\nMaya Abu Al-Hayat is a Beirut-born Palestinian novelist and poet livi ng in Jerusalem\, and working in Ramallah. She has published two poetry bo oks\, numerous children’s stories and three novels\, including her lates t No One Knows His Blood Type (Dar Al-Adab\, 2013). She is the director of the Palestine Writing Workshop\, an institution that seeks to encourage reading in Palestinian communities through creative writing projects and storytelling with children and teachers. She contributed to\, and wrote a forward for A Bird is Not a Stone: An Anthology of Contemporary Palestini an Poetry\, and is editor and contributor to the Comma’s forthcoming T he Book of Ramallah (2021).\n\nTalal Abu Shawish (born 1967) is Assistan t Director of the Boys Preparatory School for Refugees in Gaza. He has pub lished three short story collections – The Rest are Not For Sale\, The Assassination of a Painting (2010) and Goodbye\, Dear Prophets (2011) – as well as four novels: We Deserve a Better Death (2012)\, Middle E astern Nightmares (2013)\, Seasons of Love and Blood (2014)\, and Urba n House (2018). His work has won three awards (the Ministry of Youth and Sports’ Short Story Competition in 1996 and 1997\, and the Italian Sea T hat Connects Award\, 1998). Shawish was President of the Association of Ne w Prospects for Community Development\, 2007- 2011\, and is a member of th e Palestinian Writers Union. He was born in Nuseirat Refugee Camp. Until t hey had to flee in 1948\, his father lived in the town of Beer el Sabea\, and his mother in the village of Barqa. His short stories have appeared in Comma’s The Book of Gaza and Palestine + 100.\n\nMazen Maarouf (bor n 1978) is a writer\, poet\, translator and journalist. Maarouf holds a ba chelor degree in General Chemistry from the Lebanese University (Faculty o f Sciences). He has published two collections of short stories Jokes for the Gunmen (translated into English by Jonathan Wright\, and winner of th e inaugural Al-Multaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story)\, and Rats that Licked the Karate Champion’s Ear. He has also published three collection s of poetry: The Camera Doesn’t Capture Birds\, Our Grief Resembles Bre ad and An Angel Suspended On a Clothesline (2012). He also works as a t ranslator into Arabic. In 1948 all four of his grandparents (as well as hi s father who was six years old at the time) fled the village of Deir Al Qa si in the mountains of Galilee and travelled on foot to Lebanon. His paren ts lived in Tel El-Zaatar refugee camp until the late seventies when they had to flee again at the start of the Lebanese civil war.\n\nImages: (L-R) Maya Abu Al-Hayat\, Talal Abu Shawish and Mazen Maarouf.\n\n\n\nComma Pre ss is a not-for-profit publisher specialising in the short story and fict ion in translation. It is committed to a spirit of risk-taking\, and aims to put the short story at the heart of contemporary narrative culture.\n\n \nBook Tickets ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.artinliverpool.com/wp-content/upload s/2020/07/Writing-the-Palestinian-City-768x512-1.jpg END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Europe/London X-LIC-LOCATION:Europe/London BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20200329T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:+0000 TZOFFSETTO:+0100 TZNAME:BST END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR