2022
Monday 24th January at 7.15 pm
by Zoom
Hot off the Press! Meet the Authors!
Readings and discussion with
Alireza Abiz – Husam Eddin Baramo –
Dursaliye Sahan – Parwana Fayyaz –
Catherine Davidson & Anba Jawi
Alireza Abiz is an Iranian-born multi-award-winning Iranian poet, literary scholar, and translator. His latest poetry collection is The Kindly Interrogator (Shearsman).
Husam Eddin Baramo is a Syrian writer and journalist based in London. His poetry collection is Grave Seas (Palewell).
Catherine Davidson is a novelist, poet and essayist who grew up in California and now lives in the UK. She jointly translated with Anba Jawi The Utopians of Tahrir Square (Palewell).
Parwana Fayyaz was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1990. She is currently the Carmen Blacker Fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge University. Her poetry collection is Forty Names (Carcanet).
Anba Jawi. Born in Baghdad, she writes and publishes in Arabic and English. She jointly translated The Utopians of Tahrir Square (Palewell).
Dursaliye Şahan was born in Turkey and graduated from Anadolu University. She has published six stories, three novels, a cartoon and two children’s books. Her latest novel is Tottenham Boys (Dionysus).
£5 or £3 for 2022 Exiled Writers Ink members
Book now!
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/hot-off-the-press-meet-the-exiled-writers-tickets-243048924877
Monday 15th February at 7.30 pm
by Zoom
An Evening with 5 Iranian Women Poets and Writers
Click here to book: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/women-writing-for-right-a-panel-of-exiled-iranian-women-writers-tickets-257863204787
Women Writing Resistance through Poetry
Pen to Print brings you the following event in support of Women’s Empowerment Month 2022
About this event
Founding Director of Exiled Writers Ink, Dr Jennifer Langer will be joined by Elena Croitoru, Catherine Davidson and Anba Jawi as they provide different perspectives on contemporary poetry through the lens of place and conflict. Readings will be followed by a panel discussion about how poets can write about resistance.
The workshop explores and discusses diverse perspectives of women’s resistance based on three recently published poetry collections:
- The Country With No Playgrounds
- The Search
- The Utopians of Tahrir Square
Exiled Writers Ink, founded in 2000, brings together established and developing writers from repressive regimes and war-torn situations and it equally embraces migrants and exiles. Exiled Writers Ink develops and promotes the creative literary expression of refugees, migrants and exiles, increases their representation in the mainstream literary world and advocates human rights through literature and literary activism.
Please note this session will be recorded and will be available for you to view later and shared online.
Jennifer Langer’s powerful newly published debut poetry collection is The Search (Victorina Press). Jennifer is the founding director of Exiled Writers Ink. The organisation develops and promotes the creative literary expression of refugees and migrants and challenges the abuse of human rights through literary activism.
Jennifer is the editor of four anthologies of exiled literature, Five Leaves, as well as lead editor of Resistance: Voices of Exiled Writers (Palewell Press) and an Exiled Ink Magazine Editor. She holds a doctorate in Cultural Memory from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and is a SOAS Research Associate.
Elena Croitoru is a British-Romanian writer and she has an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She won the Charles Causley Poetry Prize, the South Bank Poetry Prize and placed in/was a finalist for prizes such as the Michael Marks Greek Bicentennial Pamphlet Prize, Bridport Prize & other awards.
Elena’s first poetry chapbook won the Live Canon Pamphlet prize and was published in 2021. Her first novel was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Prize – Best Unpublished Novel.
Twitter: @elenacroitoru
Catherine Temma Davidson is an American living in London and a dual UK/US citizen. Her novel based on stories about her Greek mother and grandmother, The Priest Fainted, was a New York and LA Times notable book of the year.
Catherine is an award-winning poet with two pamphlets published in the UK. She teaches Creative Writing at Regent’s University and is a former chair of Exiled Writers Ink. Her novel about apricot jam, genocide and memory, The Orchard, was published by Gemma Media in 2018.
Born in Baghdad, Anba Jawi studied Geology at the University of Baghdad – one of a generation of pioneering women geologists in Iraq. She gained her PhD from UCL London. She worked in the refugee sector for more than 20 years and was honoured with an MBE on the Queen’s birthday list in 2004 for her services.
Anba writes and publishes in Arabic and English. A chapter from her novel The Silver Engraver was included in the TLC Free Reads Anthology 2019 and two chapters were produced in a chapbook published by Exiled Writers Ink in 2021.
Booking is essential. Pen to Print and our partners reserve the right to remove participants who are found not to have booked a place for this session.
We encourage all participants to keep their cameras on during the session.
Pen to Print and our partners reserve the right to remove participants who are disruptive to a session.
Exiled Lit Cafe on Zoom
Navigators of New Maps
Visionary Writers of Exile Chart a New World Being Born
with Special Guest Sudeep Sen
Tickets available on Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/306480049077
Rethabile Masilo is an award-winning poet who has published four collections; his work has been called “offering against forgetting”. Currently based in Paris, he was born in Lesotho, where he lived until he was forced into exile with his family. His new and selected poems are scheduled to be published this year.
Isabel del Rio is a prolific bilingual poet, novelist and prose writer whose work is experimental, wide-ranging and above all, concerned with the possibilities of language and its ethics. Her autobiography in fragments, A Woman Alone, looked at the legacy of the Civil War in Spain refracted through one life. She uses fantasy, sci-fi and experimentation to investigate the oppression of women and nature.
Sudeep Sen is a world-renowned poet, editor and literary critic whose poems have been translated into over 25 languages. His prize-winning books include Postmarked India: New and Selected Poems from HarperCollins, and Fractals: New & Selected Poems/Translations 1980-2015. Recognised as one of the finest poets of India, his work has won numerous international awards. His latest collection is Anthropocene: Climate Change, Contagion, Consolation.
Sonia Jarema was born in Luton, to parents from Ukraine. Her work has been published by leading literary journals in the UK and her debut pamphlet, Inside the Blue House, was published by Palewell Press. In it, she writes about being a child of a diaspora and the legacy of violence. Her poetry and art collaboration with artist Cath Rive can be found on https://patternotion.blogspot.com/
Taffi Nyawanza is a Zimbabwean human rights lawyer and writer who lives in the UK. His short fiction has appeared in numerous UK literary journals including Afritondo, The Voice, Lumiere and The National Flash Fiction Review. His pamphlet The Men Who Have No Knees, was published by Exiled Writers Ink in 2021.
Exiled Writers Ink is back in person at a new venue!
Five outstanding writers from Latin America read and discuss their work.
Come and celebrate the work of the following poets:
Leo Boix is award-winning Argentinian poet and journalist based in London, whose recent collection Ballad of a Happy Immigrant was selected as one of the best five books of poetry by The Guardian in 2021.
Gaby Sambuccetti, an Argentinian writer based in Oxford, is the author of The Good, the Bad and the Poet; she founded the literary organisation, La Ninfa Eco and was awarded with the Von Schlippenbach PGT bursary at King’s College London.
Enrique D. Zattara, Argentine poet and novelist, literary critic and journalist, has published seven poetry books, two novels and the Anthology, Voces Equidistantes, Antología de Poetas Latinoamericanos en el Reino Unido (Equidistancias, 2022).
Denisse Vargas, is from Bolivia, currently based in London. Her poetry has been included in Invisible Presence, New Voices (2018).
Lester Gómez Medina, award-winning Nicaraguan-Costa Rican writer of poetry and short stories, recently published The Riddle Of The Cashew (EWI 2021), under the mentorship of Jane Duran.
Lala Jazz House
102 Kingsland Road
London E2 8DP
Hoxton Overground Station
Buses: 149, 242, 243
Exiled Lit Cafe
Monday 20th June at 7 pm
Quests: Exiled Writers in Search of the Truth
Come and hear our guests read from and discuss their stunning new work.
Ahmed Masoud
Ahmed Masoud is a writer and director who grew up in Palestine and moved to the UK in 2002. He is the author of the acclaimed novel Vanished – The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda (Rimal Books, 2015) and most recently Come What May (published May 2022, Victorina Press). Ahmed/Masoud has amassed a vast list/body of work of international theatre and radio pieces as well as founding Al Zaytouna Dance Theatre and more recently the PalArt Collective. In 2019, he worked with Maxine Peake on Obliterated, a theatrical experiment and artistic protest – you can learn about it here. Ahmed’s Theatre and Radio Drama credits include: Application 39 (WDR Radio, Germany 2018) Camouflage (London 2017), The Shroud Maker (London 2015 – still touring), Walaa, Loyalty (London 2014, funded by the Arts Council England), Escape from Gaza (BBC Radio 4 2011).
Adriana Diaz Enciso
Adriana Díaz Enciso was born in Mexico and has lived in London since 1999. She has published (in Mexico) books of poetry, novels and collections of short stories. Flint (Contraband Books) is her first pamphlet published in the UK. She is the author of many lyrics for Mexican rock band Santa Sabina, and has written for the stage and TV. Her most recent novel, Ciudad doliente de Dios (Doleful City of God), (Alfaguara and the National Autonomous University of Mexico), is inspired by William Blake’s Prophetic Poems. Her latest literary translations include George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil and Walter de la Mare’s Seaton’s Aunt, also for the UNAM. She has contributed to over 30 literary publications in Mexico and other countries and is a columnist for Literal Magazine. She has been a trustee for Modern Poetry in Translation. She is currently working on her fifth novel (in English) and on the translation of a selection of British poet David Harsent’s work.
Goran Baba Ali
Goran Baba Ali has written and published various literary and journalistic works in English, Kurdish and Dutch. He recently published his debut novel in the English language, The Glass Wall, which includes some of his personal experiences as an ex-refugee. Since he left Iraqi Kurdistan in 1994, he has lived in various countries. He studied sociology in Amsterdam, where he was also the editor-in-chief of exPonto Magazine. After sixteen years living in the Netherlands, he moved to London in 2012 and has since spent most of his time writing, including a part-time freelance job reporting news about Iraq for the English language outlet INSIGHT. In 2019, he completed an MA in creative writing at Birkbeck, University of London. Goran founded Afsana Press to publish literary work of authors whose stories have a direct relation with current global social, political, cultural or environmental issues. For more information about the author, you can visit his website: www.goranbabaali.com
Nada Menzalji
Nada Menzalji is a Syrian poet, author, journalist, editor and translator. Her published poetry collections in Arabic include Withered Petals for Dinner and Thefts of a Nameless Poet. She has also written and published many articles and poems in prominent Arabic publications. In addition, her work has appeared in two poetry anthologies in French, and an anthology of Syrian poetry from the 1990s. Her first poetry collection in English is Traces and Blossoms (Exiled Writers Ink, 2021). She has participated in many poetry festivals and readings in Europe and the Middle East. She studied civil engineering at the University of Latakia, her hometown. She left Syria for London in 1998, where she worked for a number of Arabic newspapers, as well as being an Arabic editor for Ink publishing.
Zeleha Cafe
102 Kingsland Road
London E2 8DP
Hoxton Overground Station
Buses: 149, 242, 243
Tickets available on Eventbrite or at the door
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/quests-exiled-writers-in-search-of-the-truth-tickets-358643982807
The Poetry Translation Centre and Exiled Writers Ink
Monday 4th July at 7 pm
Habib Tengour
poet and anthropologist on his UK tour
Habib Tengour, the poet, sociologist and anthropologist is one of the most visionary voices of post-colonial Algeria. His poetry is steeped in the imaginative and cultural geography of the Maghreb: exile and dislocation only serving to heighten its musical registers.
The Poetry Translation Centre is delighted to present Consolatio, a new bilingual publication of English translations of poems from Tengour’s original collection of the same name. Consolatio has been translated collaboratively by UK poet Will Harris (RENDANG) and translator Delaina Haslam. Join Habib, Will and Delaina for readings from Consolatio in French and English, discussion about Habib’s life and work, and the collaborative process that Delaina and Will engaged in to produce the translations.
Taffi Nyawanza and Ziba Karbassi
Taffi Nyawanza is a Zimbabwean writer and human rights lawyer. His short fiction has appeared in Afritondo, The Voice: Untitled Anthology, The National Flash Fiction Journal, Kreaxxxion Review, PerHappened Mag and Lumiere. Taffi’s full collection was shortlisted for The St Lawrence Book Award 2020 and ‘Scatterlings’ was nominated for Best of the Net 2020 by National Flash Flood. His pamphlet is The Men who Have No Knees (Exiled Writers Ink, 2021).
Ziba Karbassi was born in Tabriz, north-western Iran. She has published ten books of poetry in Persian and two books in English and Italian and is widely regarded as the most accomplished Persian poet of her generation. She has read widely across Europe and America. Her poems have appeared in many languages throughout Europe, the UK and US. Her poetry has been translated into more than ten languages.Translations by Stephen Watts have appeared in such journals as Poetry Review and Modern Poetry in Translation. She was chairperson of the Iranian Writers Association (in exile) from 2002 to 2004, editor of Asar-nameh and on the editorial committee of Exiled Ink literature magazine in London. In 2010 she won the Golden Apple Poetry Prize for Azerbaijan. She was chair of Exiled Writers Ink in the UK between 2012 and 2014. In 2012, she was chosen by the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre (CPRC) at Birkbeck, University of London, as a revolutionary world poet.
Zeleha cafe
102 Kingsland Road
London E2 8DP
Overground: Hoxton Overground Station
Buses: 149, 242, 243 along Kingsland Road
Pay in cash at the door (£5 or £3 for EWI 2022 members) or by Eventbrite
Poetry
A Force for Togetherness?
Poetry: A Force for Change?
A summer night of poetry, music and conversation
with
Anna Blasiak
Anna Blasiak is a poet, writer, translator, journalist and literature co-ordinator of the European Literature Network. Anna writes poetry in Polish and in English. Her bilingual poetry and photography book (with Lisa Kalloo) is Kawiarnia przy St James’s Wrena w porze lunchu / Café by Wren’s St-James-in-the-Fields, Lunchtime (Holland House Books). She recently co-translated Renia’s Diary by Renia Spiegel as well as a book-length interview with a Holocaust survivor: Lili Stern-Pohlmann in conversation with Anna Blasiak. She is one of the editors of Babiniec Literacki.
Fouad M. Fouad is a poet and public health physician. Currently, he works as a professor at the American University in Beirut and a senior researcher at King’s College London. In 1980, Fouad was one of a group of younger Syrian writers to participate in the formation of the Aleppo University Forum, a group that made a novel contribution to modern poetry in Syria and the Arab region. He has published five collections, the most recent a bilingual Arabic-English (co-translation with poet Norbert Hirschhorn), Once Upon a Time in Aleppo (Hippocrates Press, 2020).
Mehrangiz Rassapour
Poet, literary critic and editor of Vajeh (Word) magazine, she was born in the south-west of Iran. She has published four collections of poetry in Persian and her work has been widely translated. At an international poetry festival in France, her poems wer highly acclaimed and she was given the title ‘The Dawn of Literature’ in the culture section of Le Temps. Her first collection in English is The Planet of the Immortals (Exiled Writers Ink, 2021).
Maestro Tabla Player Yousuf Ali Khan
British Bilingual Poetry Collective
BBPC (British Bilingual Poetry Collective) is made up of poets and poetry lovers, with a focus on multilingual sharing of poetry for the purpose of mental wellbeing and community building.
Betsey Trotwood pub (first floor)
56 Farringdon Road
London
EC1R 3BL
Pay in cash at the door (£5 or £3 for EWI 2022 members)
Register Now on Eventbrite
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/in-between-truths-tickets-403508744517
Catherine Temma Davidson is a novelist, poet and essayist who grew up in California and now lives in the UK. Her novel based on stories about her Greek mother and grandmother, The Priest Fainted, was a New York and LA Times notable book of the year. She is an award-winning poet with two pamphlets published in the UK. She teaches Creative Writing at Regent’s University and is a committee member of Exiled Writers Ink. Her novel about apricot jam, genocide and memory, The Orchard, was published by Gemma Media in 2018.
Nasrin Parvaz became a civil rights activist when the Islamic regime took power in Iran. She was arrested, tortured and spent eight years in prison (1982-90). Her novel The Secret Letters from X to A, is published by Victorina Press. In 2019, her memoir One Woman’s Struggle in Iran: A prison memoir was an Award-Winner in the Women’s Issues category of the 2019 International Book Awards.
Paloma Zozaya-Gorostiza is a novelst poet and preformance artist who was born in Mexico City. She studied Stage Management at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and has produced and performed in a variety of multimedia shows using texts from the great Latin American poets. Her poetry has been included in various anthologies. Her first novel, Redencion was published in Spanish, in 2019 and in English under the title Harutu Woman in 2021, both by Victorina Press.
Dr. Anba Jawi MBE was Born in Baghdad and studied Geology at the University of Baghdad – one of a generation of pioneering women geologists in Iraq. She gained her PhD from UCL London. She worked in the refugee sector for more than 20 years and was honoured with an MBE on the Queen’s birthday list in 2004. She writes and publishes in Arabic and English. A chapter from her novel The Silver Engraver was included in the TLC Free Reads Anthology (2019) and two chapters were produced in a chapbook published by Exiled Writers Ink (2021). She also worked as a translator and editor of the recently published The Utopians of Tahrir Square (Palewell Press) an anthology of protest and witness poetry from Iraq.
Pay in cash at the door (£5 or £3 for EWI 2022 members) or by Eventbrite
Zeleha cafe
102 Kingsland Road
London E2 8DP
Overgound: Hoxton Overground Station
Buses: 149, 242, 243 along Kingsland Road
Liverpool Street Station and 26 bus
Letters on the Wings of Doves
All My Life I Wanted To Be…
Meet exciting poets rooted in a range of exilic backgrounds
Featuring Eve Rubin, Aviva Dautch, Maria Jastrzębska, Viv Fogel, Liz Cashdan, Nazand Begikhani. Compère: Agata Palmer
Eve Rubin (posthumously) the author of All my life I wanted to be a New York Jew and Sometimes at Night I Watched myself in Candle-light. Eve Rubin was a Jewish lesbian feminist and socialist, and she lived in Hackney, until her death from cancer at the age of 60. Her father was a Jewish immigrant, and Eve grew up partly in the East London, where her father had the East End Kossoff’s bakery. Eve writes not only about the complexity of family and belonging, of being a second generation from a refugee family and a feminist, but also about Hackney streets, and about Calais and present-day refugees.
We will not only be hearing Eve’s work but also the work of poets who have focused on the issues important to Eve.
Aviva Dautch’s poems have appeared in publications including Ambit, Acumen, Modern Poetry in Translation, The North, The Rialto, The Spectator and The Poetry Review. Residencies and commissions include the Hay and Bradford Literature Festivals for the Gustav Klimt Centenary (2018), The British Museum for Refugee Week (2021) and The National Gallery (2022). She is the resident poetry expert on the BBC Radio 4 series “On Form” and the literary co-translator for BBC World Service Journalist Suhrab Sirat; her translation of his book-length poem The Eighth Crossing about his refugee journey from Afghanistan was published by Exiled Writers Ink in 2021
Maria Jastrzębska was born in Poland and came to the U.K as a child. Small Odysseys, her fifth collection, will be published by Waterloo Press later this year. Her selected poems The Cedars of Walpole Park (2015) were translated into Polish. Her poetry is much anthologised and features in the British Library Between Two Worlds – Poetry and Translation project. She co-translated Elsewhere by Iztok Osojnik (Pighog 2011) and The Great Plan B (Smokestack 2017). She is the co-editor of a number of anthologies, including Queer in Brighton (New Writing South 2014). Following a Wellcome Trust award, her drama Dementia Diaries toured nationally Recently, a triptych of film-poems of Maria’s poems was a part of Snow Q, which has been screened internationally.
Viv Fogel’s poems have been published in various anthologies and magazines since the mid-70’s. Adopted by refugee Holocaust survivors, once an art teacher involved with community and social education projects, she has, since the mid-80’s, worked as a psychotherapist. Her second collection Imperfect Beginnings is to be published with award-winning ethical press Fly on the Wall in February 2023. www.vivfogel.co.uk
Liz Cashdan is a poet living in Bristol. Her parents came to the UK in 1920 as Russian Jewish refugees. She teaches Creative Writing for the Open College of the Arts, and for the Folk House in Bristol. Her most recent publication is Things of Substance: New and Selected Poems (Five Leaves Publications 2013). She runs an online Stanza group for the Poetry Society and is poetry editor for Jewish Renaissance. She likes writing about people and places.
Nazand Begikhani is a writer, poet and Vincent Wright Chair 2019/2020 Visiting Professor, Sciences Po, Paris. She published eight poetry collections in Kurdish, French and English. Polyglot, she has translated Elliot and Baudelaire into Kurdish. In 2012, she received the Simone Landrey Poetry Prize for her collection “Le Lendemain d’Hier” (Editions de l’Amandier, Paris 2012 – reedited this year by the French Poets’ Society. A feminist, Nazand is also an ardent advocate of human rights. She survived the Kurdish genocide and experienced the murder of many of her family members, including her three brothers. She rebuilt herself in exile where she created a space for freedom and creativity, becoming the symbol of resilience and resistance.
The event is compèred by Agata Palmer, a poet member of Exiled Writers Ink, author of a poetry pamphlet From the Land of Marmite with Love. Her poems have been published in anthologies and magazines internationally.
£5.
£3 Exiled Writers Ink 2022 members.
Asylum seekers Free
‘Labyrinth of Mirrors’
A tale of discovery, alienation, prejudice and loneliness.
Original music by Fabio Turchetti, performed by London-based K.A.S and Fabio Turchetti.
Narrated by Antonio Riva. Text from “The Minotaur” by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
Zeleha Cafe
102 Kingsland Road
London E2 8DP
Arrive early to have a meal, snack or drink. Support the Cafe run by a Kurdish-Turkish writer.
Pay in cash at the door (£5 or £3 for EWI 2022 members) or by Eventbrite