This week’s literary news comes from our writers in Palestine, Serbia, and the United States. In Palestine, the winners of the Najati Sidqi Competition have been announced; in Serbia, the annual KROKODIL festival has welcomed an array of authors, with a particular emphasis on regional female poets and prose writers; and in the United States, the University of Notre Dame’s reading series began with a reading by Paul Cunningham and Johannes Göransson, in addition to the launch of a new program focusing on “Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance.” Read on to find out more!
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Palestine
Out of eighty-nine applications from different parts of Palestine and the diaspora, the three winners of the Najati Sidqi Competition for Short Story by Young Writers (2020) have been announced: “al-Barzakh” (The Isthmus) by Muhammad Atef Ghuneim from Nuseirat Camp in Gaza; “al-Toot al-Faased” (Rotten Berries) by Dunya Yusef Abdullah from Salfit, which is published in Arabic here; and “al-Khalaas ka Dam’a: Seeret Bukaa’ al-Sayyed Meem” (Salvation As a Tear: Crying Biography of Mr M.) by Majd Abu Amer from Gaza. According to the jury (which consisted of three renowned Palestinian writers: Safi Safi, Ziad Khadash, and Amani Junaidi), the prize “comes in recognition of the importance of the role of youth in cultural life and building a national society capable of preserving the history and memory of place and man,” as well as to honor the legacy of Najati Sidqi.
In a new venture between Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line, Tibaq Publishing in Ramallah published Qalaaqel Jameel wa Hiyaam (Jamil and Hiyam’s Turbelences) by Hani Salloum from Nazareth. The play is about a romantic relationship, taking place between the two cities of Nazareth and Haifa, which sheds light on the social transformations that have affected Palestinian Arab communities in Israel. This is the second literary work by Salloum, after his novel al-Khuruuj min Halaqat al-Raaqisseen (Exiting the Dancers’ Circle) was published in 1997.
Five Palestinian authors have been selected for the new Arabic Stories by emerging writers, published bilingually in Arabic and English by adda. adda is an online magazine of new international writing, which supports and promotes stories and literary talent from the Middle East. Arabic Stories is part of the project Short Stories by KfW Stiftung in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut and Commonwealth Writers. The five selected stories are: Mai Kaloti’s “The Madman of Almond Hill,” translated by Basma Ghalayini; Majdal Hindi’s “Fly,” translated by Katharine Halls; Eman Sharabati’s “A Story from the South” —her first published story—also translated by Halls; Huda Armosh’s “Walking on Quicksand,” translated by Nariman Youssef; and Mira Sidawi’s “The Story of Nasr,” translated by Basma Ghalayini.
Jovanka Kalaba, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Serbia
From August 28–30, for the twelfth year in a row, Belgrade hosted the KROKODIL Festival, an annual regional literary platform based in Serbia’s capital. Organized two months later than usual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s festival took its title from Roxy Music’s 1972 song “Remake Remodel,” with the idea of acknowledging the rapid changes brought on by the pandemic. In line with this, the festival aimed to promote relevant universal narratives by featuring renowned regional female poets and prose authors writing in the Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian language, contending that it is they who have primarily been effecting momentous changes in the regional literature.
Evening sessions were organized outdoors, as is usual every year, beginning at 8:00 p.m. in front of the Museum of Yugoslav History. These sessions comprised readings, sofa interviews, video conferences, and projections. On Friday 28 August, Serbian and regional authors Lana Bastašić, Lejla Kalamujić, Radmila Petrović, Adelina Teršani, Ana Vučković, and Milica Vučković were guests, while Maša Kolanović, Suzana Tratnik, and Olja Savičević Ivančević joined via video call. On Saturday 29 August, the authors Magdalena Blažević, Rumena Bužarovska, Jasna Dimitrijević, Biljana Đurđević, Senka Marić, Maša Seničić and Tanja Stupar-Trifunović featured, with Luiza Buharova, Monika Herceg, and Svetlana Slapšak joining via video call.
In addition to the evening sessions, the festival featured a debate program on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, the festival hosted the “Exile into Another Language” debate about the creative transition into another language. This was followed by “Achieving Freedom,” which discussed three important regional initiatives: Declaration on the Common Language, “Defend History” Declaration, and Declaration of Regional Solidarity and their synergic potentials. On Sunday, the program closed with two debates: “Anti/Fascism” looked at anti-fascist heritage and literature in the common language versus the strictly ethnic approach to literature; “Solidarity,” dedicated its topic to the explosion in Beirut, leading to a discussion about the idea and concrete examples of global and regional solidarity. The program was broadcast live via the festival YouTube channel and Facebook page @krokodilengagingwords. You can find more information about the festival’s work on its website http://www.krokodil.rs/.
On the subject of regional, ex-Yugoslav themes and initiatives still bearing relevance today, Bunt dece socijalizma (which can be translated as “the rebellious children of socialism”) was published by Laguna in June 2020, marking the fortieth anniversary of the Belgrade New Wave and a few years more since the beginning of the Yugoslav New Wave. Dušan Vesić’s third book on Yugoslav pop and rock culture talks about Azra, Električni orgazam, Film, amongst other first generation Yugoslav New Wave bands. In an interview given to the Serbian daily newspaper Blic, the author Dušan Vesić contends that the New Wave was born out of the generation’s need to fix the system they were living in (“Coca-Cola socialism,” as the historian Radina Vučetić calls it in her study of the same name) rather than destroy it. While maintaining that there are disputed aspects of the significance of the New Wave, Vesić asserts that in some ways it went much further than we are able to perceive, going as far as claiming that the New Way contributed greatly to the state socialism’s demise.
Edwin Alanís-García, Assistant Editor, reporting from the United States
The Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame kicked off the Fall 2020 reading series with two events held via Zoom. On Wednesday, September 2, the program hosted a reading by Paul Cunningham—poet, translator, and author of the interlingual poetry collection, The House of the Tree of Sores. After his reading, Cunningham spoke of his journey learning Swedish as a native English-speaker, and the challenges of incorporating two languages into an already hybrid text, a genre-bending work that is at once visceral and surreal. Headlining that evening, and facilitating the night’s conversation, was poet, professor, translator, and Asymptote contributor Johannes Göransson. Göransson read excerpts from his recent book, Poetry Against All, a diary chronicling the aesthetic and emotional process of writing his bleak, brutal, and sublime hybrid text, The Sugar Book. Between excerpts and anecdotes, Göransson offered an intimate and vulnerable (and at times even playful) look at The Sugar Book’s creation, as well as the influence of Francesca Woodman’s photography on the book’s apocalyptic and abject imagery.
Last week, Friday also marked the debut of a program launched by novelist, translator, and Associate Professor (and current program director) of Creative Writing, Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi. ‘Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Global Middle East and North Africa,’ is a series which “focuses on the study of literatures that have been shaped by histories of territorial and linguistic politics, colonialism, military domination, and gross human rights violations.” That morning’s guest was sociologist Neda Maghbouleh, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Migration, Race, and Identity at the University of Toronto. Reading and reporting from her most recent work, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race, Maghbouleh spoke of the racist political history of treating whiteness as a criterion for American citizenship, and how this history continues into the present quandary over definitions of whiteness. The implications of such categorization has far-reaching consequences both domestically and internationally; as Van der Vliet Oloomi pointed out, the American ascription of “whiteness” on certain populations also contributes to the cultural erasure of Blackness in Middle Eastern and North African populations. Along with reporting her qualitative sociological research, Maghbouleh also recounted personal stories of her experiences with racism and xenophobia in America, such as addressing the problematic (but all-too-familiar) question many Americans of color have had to face: Where are you really from?
Last week’s readings illustrate why Notre Dame’s Creative Writing Program is known as a hub for innovative translation, international writing, and literary experimentation—and with the launch of Van der Vliet Oloomi’s new series, it’s also affirming its status as a haven for international literatures in dialogue across scholarly disciplines.
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog: