In this week’s round-up of global literary news, our editors cover a progressive writing workshop in Milan, an honouring of a major Palestinian poet, and a celebration of African writing in Lagos. Read on to find out more!
Veronica Gisondi, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Italy
When engaging with texts and their authors’ experiences, distance often becomes the instrument through which meaning is managed and subjective responses modulated—whether in reading, writing, criticism, or translation. Through the conflation of the personal with the private (and the classification of the latter as a “non-political” domain), the innermost truths of human experience have largely been excluded from public discourse. Lea Melandri’s scrittura di esperienza (experiential writing) offers a radical alternative to this logic—which stems from the same matrix that historically split mind and body, reason and emotion—by reuniting personal life and social language.
In a one-day workshop hosted by Milan’s Collettivo ZAM (Zona Autonoma Milano), Melandri—a leading Italian feminist thinker, journalist, and writer—introduced a small group of participants to a method born out of her involvement with non-authoritarian pedagogy and feminist movements in the late 1960s and 1970s. In the wake of feminism’s autocoscienza, which first revealed the systemic origins of individual struggle, Melandri treats “the self” as an archive containing “millennia of history,” acknowledging that most of it lies beyond our awareness. “The self has been reduced to the particular experience of an individual,” noted Melandri as she briefed us on the day ahead. “Feminism has taught us that personal lives aren’t history’s waste, but constitute its core.”
The instructions that followed were straightforward: read the texts she distributed, pause where attention stops, underline, transcribe, and immediately follow with one’s own associative thoughts in writing. By centering the fragment, this method destabilizes dominant narratives and suspends their authority. As Melandri explained, the fragment helps to “externalize what’s inside” and, as a working unit, facilitates movement between self and other, bringing another’s voice into the present moment and connecting memory and presence, word and thought. An agent of chaos, the fragment rejects narrative coherence; it “creates disorder” and, crucially, “de-privatizes experience.”
Melandri stressed that, unlike autobiography or autofiction, experiential writing is not a genre but a “political practice” which, echoing techniques such as automatic writing and free association, reveals the paradox at the heart of human experience—that going inward brings us closer to what is most shared. “What we have in common is, paradoxically, precisely what is buried.” Here, writing becomes a site of investigation rather than confession; the goal is not to tell a story nor to narrate one’s life, but to restore a space and time of relation for disparate, singular, first-hand accounts of intimate reality.
In the early 1970s, when Melandri first began teaching working-class housewives in state-funded 150-hour courses, women were still denied their individuality. The prevalence of first-person narratives in contemporary literature points to a set of correlated, if unresolved, issues concerning the relationship between selfhood, literature, and authority. It also draws attention to the legitimacy of experience as a form of knowledge, particularly in its gendered configurations. Melandri’s work responds by insisting on the necessity of inventing another language, one that draws from inner life to question the given and the inherited: a language that never ceases to interrogate itself and ourselves, refuses to settle into certainty, and keeps us open to what we have yet to know.
Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large for Palestine and the Palestinians, reporting from Palestine
Palestinian writer and poet Ibrahim Nasrallah has been named the twenty-ninth laureate of the 2026 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, a major honor often dubbed the “American Nobel” for its global prestige and impact within the literary world. Nasrallah’s acclaimed novel, Time of White Horses, was previously the only Arabic-language work among the nine finalists for this cycle, marking a significant achievement for Arabic literature on the international stage.
The Neustadt Prize, presented every two years by the University of Oklahoma’s World Literature Today, recognizes exceptional literary achievement in any genre and language, and remains one of the most esteemed international recognitions for writerly talent. Its selection process is unique; rather than nominations from outside organizations, each juror—an accomplished writer—puts forth a candidate. This year, the novelist Shereen Malherbe nominated Nasrallah, highlighting the universal scope and deep human resonance in his writing, especially as it relates to the Palestinian experience. Time of White Horses presents a sweeping narrative spanning the transition from the late Ottoman era through the upheaval of the 1948 Nakba, all set in an imagined Palestinian village. The novel masterfully blends historical detail and rich storytelling, having previously earned a spot on the International Booker Prize shortlist.
The 2026 Neustadt Prize finalists list featured diverse global voices, including writers from Ukraine, the United States, Sudan, France, and Japan. Notably, Nasrallah is the first Arab laureate since Algerian novelist Assia Djebar in 1996, underscoring the significance of this accolade for both Palestinian and Arabic literature overall.
World Literature Today’s executive director, Robert Con Davis-Undiano, described Nasrallah’s win as a pivotal moment for how Western audiences engage with Palestinian culture. Nasrallah’s works are widely accessible in English translation, including recent titles released by World Poetry and available through AUC Press and Interlink Books.
Bethlehem Attfield, Editor-at-Large, reporting for Nigeria
Earlier this month, the ninth Quramo Festival of Words was held at Eko Hotels and Suites in Victoria Island, Lagos, opening with the theme ‘A Brave New World,’ which emphasises the festival’s commitment to showcasing Africa’s growing creative scene. The convener of the annual festival, Gbemi Shasore, also spoke on how the theme invites reflection on the unprecedented changes happening in the world.
The festival featured an exciting lineup, including engaging panel discussions and inspiring masterclasses led by prominent figures in the creative industry, as well as a workshop headlined by the Kenyan-American writer and academic Mukoma wa Ngugi. Other highlights include the announcement of the Quramo Writers Prize. In a ceremony held on the third day of the festival, Hubaidat Oyinkansola Ishola was awarded one million naira as the winner. Her manuscript, What Breaks, What Binds, will soon be published by Quramo Publishers.
The much-anticipated 2025 Nigeria Prize for Literature was also announced earlier this month. The winner, Oyin Olugbile, received a prize of $100,000 for her Yoruba mythology-based novel, Sànyà. Meanwhile, in the category of Literary Criticism, Okwudiri Anasiudu was announced as the winner, receiving the $10,000 award for his paper entitled ‘Afropolitan Identity and Afrodiasporic Otherness in Selected African Novels.’
Lastly, I want to share an interesting article, ‘When Algorithms Read African Literature,’ published recently in The Kalahari Review. It explores the intriguing prospective of how Nigerian literary criticism might look like with the use of algorithms. It prompted me to reflect on whether the unexpected ‘disruptive works’ that the algorithm identified might be connected to marketing algorithms that influence literary trends. Overall, it encourages us to consider how computational analysis can reveal patterns that truly reflect a work’s social impact.
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