Noor Naga 🇵🇸🇵🇸
@noor_naga
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IF AN EGYPTIAN CANNOT SPEAK ENGLISH @GraywolfPress WASHES, PRAYS @McClellandBooks
Toronto/Cairo
Joined February 2016
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As a
@GillerPrize
-shortlisted author, I stand with the protesters who disrupted the award ceremony on November 13th, and I ask that the charges against them be dropped. 1/4
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From today’s protest in Mississauga. You couldn’t get high enough to see the end of the crowd. If the press doesn’t cover us, we were there. In the thousands.
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Activists do not disrupt peace; they disrupt the silence of complicity. They do not disrupt order; they identify the disorder. We owe these activists our awareness, our aliveness. They did what we celebrate literature for doing: wake us up. 3/4
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Shhhh my babies are sleeping... I'll wake em up in a week so they can stand on the shelves with all the other good boys. In stores April 12th!
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✨✨The proofs are in, the cover is out. IF AN EGYPTIAN CANNOT SPEAK ENGLISH is on its way from
@GraywolfPress
in April 2022! ✨✨
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Over 2000 CanLit writers & editors call for charges to be dropped against the protesters at the
@GillerPrize
ceremony. If you haven't yet signed the letter, you have until tomorrow to do so here:
#NoBusinessAsUsualInCanLit
#CanLitSolidarityWithPalestine
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I join over 1700 Canlit writers, including this year's winner, Sarah Bernstein, and past winners
@omarelakkad
and
@swanmichaels
in asking
@GillerPrize
to drop the charges against the protestors. You can see and sign the letter here: 4/4
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Prior to their action, how many of us knew that the largest foreign shareholder in Elbit Systems is
@Scotiabank
with shares worth $500 million? As the death toll in Gaza surpasses 13,000, how can we as CanLit writers of conscience applaud the artwashing of a genocide? 2/4
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Every few years I return to this image, these objects. The evidence is all around us. It wasn't always like this. It doesn't have to be like this.
Before his wedding in '64, my grandfather took the train from Alexandria to Gaza to buy my grandmother's china. In the Nasser era, Gaza was where Egyptians went for imported goods. For contact with the outside world. May we see Gaza & all of Palestine liberated in our lifetime.❤️
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“There is a species of moth in Madagascar that drinks the tears of sleeping birds.”
—Jenny Offill
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Guys I have some dream-come-true to share: I'm going to be a wolf!!
A. Igoni Barrett & the editors
@GraywolfPress
picked my baby novel for the Africa Prize! I'm so honored by their kind reading and can't wait to share w/ you in Fall 2021, American Girl & Boy from Shobrakheit!!!!
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“If you talk to your plants,
they will talk to you.”
—Jhene Aiko
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Before his wedding in '64, my grandfather took the train from Alexandria to Gaza to buy my grandmother's china. In the Nasser era, Gaza was where Egyptians went for imported goods. For contact with the outside world. May we see Gaza & all of Palestine liberated in our lifetime.❤️
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From Fady Joudah whose words we wait for with every Palestinian massacre. May you never again have occasion to grieve on the page. May you be happy. May your children and my children hear of Palestine’s liberation. May they hear it from our lips because we are alive to speak it.
From Fady Joudah, a Palestinian meditation in a time of annihilation.
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Hello! My first book officially launches today. I still haven't seen a copy, but friends have sent me photo-proof that she really is out there. If you see her, please say hello! And may she have something you're looking for—even if only a distraction—in these difficult times. ❤️
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“I do not want to open, neither for food/ nor men. For loneliness, I keep a stone/ to kiss.”
—Aria Aber
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GUYS! This my first baby-book, out in less than a month with
@McClellandBooks
! She's got my hands + little heart. If you're in N. America, you can pre-order and get your copy before I've even seen one (much thx to Egyptian Customs). If you're in the Mideast, I'M WORKING ON IT 🙌
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"If I were asked for a definition of myself, I would say
that I am one who waits; I investigate my surroundings, I interpret
everything in terms of what I discover, I become sensitive."
—Frantz Fanon
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“Can’t go anywhere these days
without being told a turtle
has nerve endings in its shell.
Brush up against it, it feels you.”
—Natalie Shapero
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Toronto: I'll be moderating this conversation on Palestinian liberation and strategies for struggle w/
@saeedteebi
,
@JoyAndDefiance
,
@bharohh
,
@sannareya
and more. Join us for an evening of community, conversation, and commitment— towards healing and ongoing solidarity.
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Karim Kattan was set to give a talk in Austria on the French language across borders. Then the Hamas attack happened—and suddenly, organizers wanted him to purge his speech of political content. But for the Palestinian novelist, this proves impossible.
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ATTN GULFIE KIDS: Did you grow up in the GCC? Are you as geographically-disoriented as I am? Suffer FOMO across multiple timezones? I'll be coediting
@commonmag
's Fall 2021 issue on itinerancy, 3rd culture, confused ideas of home. THIS IS FOR YOU! SUBMIT!!
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This review by
@NadiaOwusu1
for the NEW YORK TIMES brings all the feelings!!!!! Lmao what is life? Thank you, Nadia ❤️❤️
Noor Naga’s debut novel, “If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English,” begins with a meet-cute in Cairo between an Egyptian and an American. What follows is a propulsive and philosophical look at the forces of identity, belonging and globalism.
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Many thanks to the Arab American Book Award! And mabrook to all the other writers! I feel blessed to be in conversation with you all, learning and growing all the time 🌱☘️🌳
Congratulations to the 2021 Arab American Book Award winners of The George Ellenbogen Poetry Award:
Birthright by George Abraham
@IntifadaBatata
(
@buttonpoetry
)
Washes, Prays by Noor Naga
@noor_naga
(
@penguinrandom
)
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ATTN CANADIANS: YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE ARAB, MUSLIM OR JEWISH TO CALL FOR A CEASEFIRE. THE GENOCIDE IS FINANCED BY YOU. IT’S IN YOUR NAME. AS SETTLERS ON THIS LAND, YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO STAND AGAINST ETHNIC CLEANSING. THERE’S A MARCH IN EVERY CANADIAN CITY TODAY. BE THERE.
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Thank you to all the wolves who made it possible!!! Am so grateful to be celebrating fiercely with you all!
.
@noor_naga
’s IF AN EGYPTIAN CANNOT SPEAK ENGLISH is out today! Happy pub day, Noor!🐺⭐
“Naga impresses with her snappy prose . . . and has a gift for exploring varied perspectives. . . . This smart story is distinguished by its surprising empathy.”—Publishers Weekly
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"She deals with important issues with a gimlet eye and a rare sensitivity—it would be a massive understatement to call this novel a must-read.
In a word: brilliant."
The first review and it's got a star on it! Many thanks to
@KirkusReviews
! 😊😊❤️❤️
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Hello friends! A nice thing happened: I won the
@DisquietILP
fiction prize and the piece will appear in
@GrantaMag
which is nicer than nice!
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GUYS!
@commonmag
just published my essay about imaginings of Arabness and bedouin/city-dwelling relations in Alexandria. Enclosed, please find: two drownings and a murder, sea-side bougainvillea, also my lovely lovely grandmother.
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This is tonight for those who want to attend virtually. For those who've reserved a physical spot, looking forward to speaking with you soon 🇵🇸🇵🇸
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Very excited for this
@UofTEnglish
event with
@omarelakkad
and Smaro Kamboureli on March 9th!! Come through for a chat about fiction, ethics, migrants and precarity 👇👇👇
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Many thank yous to
@poetrymagazine
for taking an excerpt of my verse novel WASHES, PRAYS (out in March). In Cairo where books can be hard to find, I've spent 100+ hours eating poems off their site, so really feeling the circle of publishing life today!🔄
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Next spring is going to going to make all the other springs blush! Can't wait to debut with this DREAM TEAM and DREAM PUBLISHER!!
@canisialu
!!
@michaelprior06
!!
@pantsmclee
!!
@McClellandBooks
!! 🥰🥰🥰
We’re excited to announce that poetry editor Dionne Brand has acquired rights to four collections from Nancy Lee, Canisia Lubrin, Noor Naga and Michael Prior! Read about their upcoming Spring 2020 books:
@pantsmclee
@canisialu
@Noor_Naga
@michaelprior06
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FRIENDS! Here at last is
@commonmag
's Arabian Gulf Portfolio where you'll find work by myself, Deepak Unnikrishnan,
@zeinabeck
@talhaydar
@farahali06
@monakareem
@al_wabr
@priyankasacheti
@HeraNaguib
@HalaNAlyan
@anaffissahely
@RewaZee
@hitsamty
& more!✨
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Thank you
@PENCanada
for the surprise and the support!! Really very grateful and floaty like a happy ghost 🥰🥰🥰
PEN Canada announces Noor Naga as the winner of the 2019 2019 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award
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"What is the role of these accounts? What makes a particular history useful? For me, the fact that some people did this maybe makes other things seem more possible."
—
@yasminelrifae
reflects on the feminist group Opantish a decade later in
@BOMBmagazine
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I had the honor to interview
@yasminelrifae
about her long-anticipated book Radius from
@VersoBooks
. We spoke about mass hysteria, sexual assault and the unending work of feminist resistance in Egypt. You can read our convo in
@BOMBmagazine
👇👇
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Biggest thank you to
@elamin88
for his beautiful insights and sensitive questions on what it means to wait for love and lose it. And then to keep praying when you do. We really could have kept going all day, I'm so grateful 🙏🙏🙏
For
@CBCSunday
, I interviewed
@noor_naga
about her new novel-in-verse Washes, Prays. We talked about loneliness, moral decisions, and difficult love. It was a generous, joyful conversation and I wish it could’ve gone on forever. Listen to it here:
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The book launch next week is cancelled but thx to those who sent me photos of their copies! Also BIG thanks to
@Shazia_R
who wrote the most generous, sensitive review in
@quillandquire
. Writing is so solitary, it's a shock to be seen and so with-nessed👀👀
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Hello! I'm doing one zoom-reading + book talk about Washes, Prays this Saturday. If you want to join the conversation, email majlisNY
@gmail
.com for the link and I'll see you there! (This the last of the zooms for me because burnout—but I'm excited!!) ❤️❤️❤️
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Hello! I'm reading at this event tonight and the line-up is jaw-dropping. When else can you get this much Arab-Anglo magic in one (zoom)room? Come through!
4/25 Celebrate
#ArabAmericanHeritageMonth
with
@IntifadaBatata
@noor_naga
@tariqLuthun
@PhilipMetres
@daniel__barnum
@LailaLalami
@laypay
@SaharMustafah
@Marlin_Poet
@OmarjSakr
@mohja
@YPPLaureate
@RAWInews
To RSVP:
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When you are a quiet person working remotely full-time, texting—like virtual teaching, zoom meetings, answering emails, and unpaid editing—becomes screen-time labor. Even texting friends! Even texting fam! We're doing the best we can! 😭😭😭
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"I can well understand why children love sand."
—Wittgenstein
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My eid gift this year is Sanna Wani's review of WASHES, PRAYS and I didn't know a review could BE so critical but also theological, poetical, scaly, feathery, side-scuttling like a crab? Thank you for engaging so deeply with the faith-work of this book. I'm terribly moved 😭😭
my first-ever review! for
@thepuritan
of
@noor_naga
’s WASHES, PRAYS— tied together Noor’s words with Dionne Brand’s with bell hooks’ with
@sachikomurakami
’s with more~ thank you to
@emiliekneifel
for helping craft a review with all the weirdness left in ✨
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Guys, the audiobook is out! Five hours, two voices. Featuring the absolute STAR
@aminelgamal
as gentle rumbling boy from Shobrakheit and—for maximum metafictional fun—myself as the voice of American girl. Currently $8 on :)
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GUYS LOOK! I thought this baby novel was doomed to the woods forever, so thrilled that an excerpt has been let inside the lovely house of
@GrantaMag
! Thank you
@DisquietILP
for getting the door, and Lucy Diver for brushing her hair! 👉👉👉
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"She has good bones. I mean her bones carry the rest of her and they believe her." -Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
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I'm honored to be reviewed with such depth and sensitivity. What a gift! So many thank yous to
@manalaalneela
and
@frictionseries
for bringing this piece to my day ✨✨
IF AN EGYPTIAN CANNOT SPEAK ENGLISH is the incredible new novel from
@noor_naga
and
@GraywolfPress
. "It is wholly captivating and will challenge you in ways you don’t see coming." Read
@manalaalneela
's glowing review here:
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My last issue as Fiction editor & couldn't hope for a better exit! An Egyptian fam caught in the war of Sarajevo, a teenager's disappearing act gone morbidly wrong, and a house-sitter with a secret in a house with a bigger secret! Ft
@rehamemam21
@shaelinbishop
@DanieShokoohi
💅⚒️
Issue 49: Spring 2020 is here! Many thanks to the contributors, editors, and staff who have put together another great issue. Stop scrolling and check it out
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COMING YOUR WAY SOON. This issue has been such a joy to work on, I can’t wait for you all to see it!✨✨
We're so excited to finally preview Issue 21, with a seashell cover tribute to our featured portfolio of writing from the Arabian Gulf! Make sure to subscribe by next Thursday, September 30th for a copy.
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Just saw that this piece I wrote about The Crocodiles has been published and the book's many lovers and creators are celebrating w/o me! This is one of my fav novels by
@Sultans_Seal
available in
@RobinMoger
's superb tr. A book I continue to learn from and return to. Please read!
‘Nine years later and counting, did all this happen, just so we might write about it?’
@noor_naga
on why The Crocodiles by
@Sultans_Seal
is the best book of 2013.
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From the diary of a Gazan mother of four, I hear the voice of Toni Morrison's Sethe, another mother of four. “I took and put my babies where they’d be safe,” Sethe says after she'd murdered her two-year-old with a handsaw. There are fates worse than death. Every mother knows.
Day 11: an idea kept coming & going. What if I killed my kids and saved them from going through this horror? From running for their lives in the middle of the night. From being homeless. From losing a brother. Or a mother. I have to save them somehow. I am their mother after all.
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Is there any greater joy than reading a dear friend's unpublished manuscript and being absolutely FLOORED?
The older I get, the more it happens! ❤️❤️❤️
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Happiest moment in quarantine: granny and me squinting at google classrooms, figuring it out together, so we can each move our courses online tomorrow. She’s now telling everyone about The Zoom. 🥰🥰🥰
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Heart-warming to be here with so many hot poets! 🔥🔥🙏🙏
Longlists are HERE for the LCP Book Awards!
We are honoured to be able to celebrate these poetry collections and poets.
See the full announcement:
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"When a poet tells me that he 'knows a type of sadness that smells of pineapple,' I myself feel less sad, I feel gently sad."
—Bachelard
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“What were the missing organs in men that made them stroll through life as courteously unfaithful, nonverbal creatures?”
—Michael Ondaatje
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Today is the launch event for
@commonmag
's Arabian Gulf Portfolio! Come hear these brilliant writers discuss the possibilities for literary landscapes and communities, what it means to write from and for this region, and what the future of Gulfie literature might look like!✨✨✨
Last chance to register! Make sure you sign up for the release of Issue 22, hosted by
@noor_naga
@jen_acker
@ACinquiry
, with contributors
@monakareem
@talhaydar
!
The virtual event will be at 4:30 PM EDT this afternoon. Hope to see you there!
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Simone Weil says “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
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“If you’re small and the thing you evade is big (have you ever had this dream?), then the only place to hide is a place where the big thing can’t fit. But then you have to stay there, in the small place.”
—Martin Amis
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Thank you, Dana for this long meaty review! (Spoiler alerts, left and right, but) I'm so grateful for all the time you spent thinking with me through this novel's questions ❤️❤️❤️
Rare are books that can truly be called experimental, but Noor Naga’s first prose novel "If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English" (
@GraywolfPress
) is one such rarity: it's sharp, switched-on, and self-interrogating.
Review by
@DeeKayHansen
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Taking a twitter break to save my brain. If it's urgent, you probably have my number ❤️❤️
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😭😭😭
Reading this novel by
@noor_naga
has been an emotional rollercoaster. At first, u find yourself right in the middle of a big story-- a diasporic girl returns to an impossible home, falls in love w a proletariat revolutionary. class & gender dynamics, Cairo from this specific gaze
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This is tonight, friends! Can't wait to hear
@omarelakkad
and have a little chat. Come through😁😁
Very excited for this
@UofTEnglish
event with
@omarelakkad
and Smaro Kamboureli on March 9th!! Come through for a chat about fiction, ethics, migrants and precarity 👇👇👇
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When the ones the book is written for write back... thank you Nermeen 😭😭😭❤️❤️❤️
Today I want to talk to you about this very important book written by the wonderful fellow Alexandrian and all-around lovely human being Noor Naga. I haven't finished reading this book (I'm afraid I won't be able to stop sobbing), but it's essentially about (contd.)
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Toronto! If you're free tonight, I'll be talking high-key muslim mistresses, low-key drake appreciation at 7 in Koerner Hall, along with some other incredible artists, and writers. Come through! 🙌🙌🙌
Tonight,
@RBC
presents The
#WalrusTalks
The Future of the Arts, in Toronto, featuring
@LidoPimienta
,
@WandaNanibush
, Shary Boyle,
@adampaolozza
,
@noor_naga
,
@menondwarka
and
@sarahtai
!
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MOTHERS WHO LEAVE, FATHERS WHO LEAVE, GIRLFRIENDS AND COUSINS WHO LEAVE. ALSO RUM. ALSO FLAMINGOS >> New Fiction from the
@thepuritan
's Winter Issue 👇👇👇
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"Tomorrow, you’ll be waiting at my house. You’ll be waiting for your daughter... I don’t know how I’ll tell you that we got in the car and drove to the ferry, but only I came back."
Haunting new fiction from
@shaelinbishop
in the
@thepuritan
!! 👉👉👉
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To build something together one last time
there are so many questions,
like who would live there,
and if no one, why build it?
—new love poems by
@SaraFarag
on
@Sultans_Seal
! 🏡🔨🧱🔧🏡
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Thanks
@thisisworldtown
for publishing my little piece about crickets! Love the layout! Originally
@Sultans_Seal
:)
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“In the garden, I think there’s a circus. With elephants that can do tricks and a lady who eats fire.”
Read CHERRY AND JANE IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN by
@shaelinbishop
in the latest issue of the
@thepuritan
!! 🌲🌳🌴🌱🌾🌷🌼🌺🌻🌴🌳🌿
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FRIENDS! The folks
@nashvillereview
were kind enough to publish my novel excerpt in their fab new issue. Check it!
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“Poetry has to do with a satisfaction with limited things, a pairing down. It is the acceptance of a certain form of poverty. It is not endless construction.”
—Mo Fei (via Maggie Nelson)
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*Ahem*
TALKING HAMSTERS, LOVESICK HOUSES, WHITE-SAVIOR CULTS, BUTCHER-SKATERS IN ENVIRONMENTAL APOCALYPSE AND A MOTHER SYNONYMOUS WITH ANKLES. 👇👇👇
New Fiction in
@thepuritan
by these absolute QUEENS
@gray_cious
@GeorginaBeaty
@arablit
@jaclyndesforges
!!!
It's finally here 🎉 Our fall issue has launched! Check it all out here:
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"If you are assuming there are two bedrooms, you are both right and wrong. Who is to say that there are only two bedrooms? Every room can be a bedroom: you only need a bed, or not even that. You only need to sleep there."
—Carmen Maria Machado
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"This love will keep us through blinding of the eyes/
Silence in the ears, darkness of the mind."
—a frank oceanic prayer
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@AhmedNajiTW
Aww, Ahmed! I'm so happy it worked for you! Thank you again for reading and thinking through it😊😊
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Interviews are awful unless
@SaraFarag
does them, and then they are wonderful! It was just loveliness talking with you about poet-y things and muslim-y things, and I'm so grateful you took the time! Also
@MadaMasr
is just ❤️❤️❤️
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“She said she had claws on the inside too. Her heart bore a pair of claws that were useful for nothing, she told me, but scratching at itself.”
—from Monster Portraits by Sofia Samatar
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"I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body."
—Robert Desnos to his beloved.
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“To miss my life in Kabul is to tongue/ pears laced with needles. I had no life/ in Kabul. How then can I trust my mind’s long corridor,/ its longing for before?”
—Aria Aber
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From Mohamed Awad’s collection of engravings: Port Nine, Alexandria🌀🌀🌀
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YES to this piece by
@NiveenIshmael
in
@EgyptianStreets
on performative solidarity w/ Black America. We have our own history of ongoing racism to examine in Egypt, incl the Arab slave trade, Nubian exodus, Sudanese refugee population. We have our own black communities to stand by
“Decades of upper middle class cultural detachment&deliberate social,political disengagement all came to an end yesterday as Egypt’s glitterati voiced their support for Black Americans“
Egypt's Performative Solidarity with Black America | Egyptian Streets
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Arab Twitter: what are your favorite flash fiction pieces by Arab authors either written in English or available in English? Asking for my students! 🙏🙏
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For friends in DXB, I'll be talking about writing in/from/to the UAE with Deepak Unnikrishnan and
@farahali06
this morning at 10:00am! We'll be moderated by the wonderful
@SARAHAMDAN
and it is going to be so so good. Come through ✨✨
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When I ask, "God, who am I?" am/ I not just asking, Mother who are you?
—Aria Aber
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how
you gonna walk with your psst-psst hidden
all your psst-psst hiding
from me
and my tick-tick pointing
pants how now you gonna walk two-legged
with my panting
New poem out, brought to you by street harassment and
@Sultans_Seal
🙏🙏
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