Radius of Arab American Writers | RAWIFest Day 2
Friday, June 11th starting at 9AM EST, hosted online
In collaboration with The Boston Foundation, RAWI is excited to host RAWIFest – a weekend of free virtual programming celebrating Anglophone SWANA literature and performance art, featuring new work from poets, spoken word artists, and performance artists!
Rather than following RAWI’s previous “conference” format, and in the spirit of openness and accessibility, the entirety of RAWIFest’s programming is free and open to the general public. This is made possible due to the generous support of the Boston Foundation (LAB), Mizna, Kundiman, The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies.
All events will be live-captioned.
Email rawifest@gmail.com with any questions about registration or the festival.
Day 2 Schedule
9AM EST
FOOD WORKSHOP W/ NOUR KAMEL & MARIAM BOCTOR
A food writing workshop that examines solidarities and politics around food and language with Nour Kamel & Mariam Boctor.
10:30AM EST
I WANT SKY – A GATHERING W/ RAWI, AAWW & MIZNA IN MEMORY OF SARAH HEGAZI
1PM EST
KURDISH AMERICAN POETS IN CONVERSATION
Holly Mason and Tracy Fuad are two queer, Kurdish-American poets. They will read from their forthcoming collections and follow with a conversation, with a special interest in how our partial, hyphenated, and modified identities fit into the broader conversation about intersectionality, assimilation, diaspora, and language, especially as related to our artistic work as poets and writers.
2PM EST
PROMPTS WORKSHOP W/ RAWYA EL CHAB
Facing an empty page is more of a trigger for anxiety than creativity. The process of writing shouldn’t always have to be painful and draining, at least not in the generative phase. By limiting some of our choices and establishing our structure beforehand, we can provide the imagination with some instruments to play, while leaving ample space to surprise ourselves. In this hour and a half long workshop, Rawya El Chab invites a maximum of 30 participants to explore what constitutes a prompt, in order for them to build their own, and design the extent and the constraints that will set free their creativity.
3:30PM EST
EXPERIMENTAL SWANA & DIASPORIC WRITERS PANEL
Join us for a reading centered on experimental writing featuring poets and writers Tarik Dobbs, Andrea Abi-Karam, Maya Salameh, and Emad El-Din Aysha. This event will bring together performers who bring a broad range of backgrounds into their writing, from work in science and technology, to work in visual arts. The event will end in a Q&A discussion on experimental and interdisciplinary modes of writing, moderated by Philip Metres. This event has generously been co-sponsored by the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies.
6PM EST
DEBUTS PANEL W/ KUNDIMAN & CAVE CANEM
Join us for a panel on debuts from marginalized literary communities featuring Kundiman prize winners Janine Joseph and Adeeba Shahid Talukder, Cave Canem prize winners Julian Randall and Aurielle Marie, Etel Adnan prize winner Danielle Badra, and Walt Whitman prize winner Threa Almontaser! This event will include a reading from all poets, and will end in a Q&A moderated by George Abraham on the debuts process, from writing to editing to submitting to publishing and beyond. This event has generously been co-sponsored by Kundiman.
7:30PM EST
FILM SCREENINGS
Join RAWIFest as we screen the works of poets and filmmakers Jessica Abughattas and Hind Shoufani as well as a sneak peek of the upcoming short film Tallahassee, directed by Darine Hotait, written by Hala Alyan.
Dinner Party (2020) dir. Jessica Abughattas | 4 minutes
At an interminable party of doppelgängers, a woman must contend with the burden of embodiment.
9PM EST
A HOST OF PEOPLE PRESENTS KILO BATRA: IN DEATH MORE RADIANT
A presentation of excerpts of Kilo Batra: In Death More Radiant. This new play, written by Mariam Bazeed and Kamelya Omayma Youssef and created in collaboration with theater ensemble A Host of People, engages with Egypt’s Prince of Poets Ahmed Shawqi’s 1927 play Death of Cleopatra. Our work explores the creation of that play with Shawqi and famed actress Fatma Rushdi who portrayed Cleopatra, the reconstruction of Cleopatra’s story, wrestling with history and reconstructions, as well as contemporary connections to Pan Arab identities, identities in regions of repeated conquest, the positionality of woman transnationally, queer identity in Arab culture, and questions of power. This piece weaves together our contemporary moment, Cairo in the 1920s, and the end of ancient Egypt to reckon with what remains, what repeats, what we are breaking free from, and finally, what we create instead. Kilo Batra: In Death More Radiant is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by the Arab American National Museum, and NPN.