Flames of Remembrance

Holocaust: an event or situation in which many people are killed and many things are destroyed
(by Fire or by War); any mass slaughter or reckless destruction of life.

Three acclaimed poets read to remember the legacy of the Holocaust

January 31st 2023 @ 7pm

Jennifer Langer is the founding director of Exiled Writers Ink, editor of five anthologies of exiled literature and a poet. Her debut poetry collection is The Search (Victorina Press, 2021). She holds a doctorate from SOAS in the literature of exiled Iranian Jewish women. She is the daughter of refugees who escaped from Nazi Germany.

Alireza Abiz is a multi-award-winning Iranian poet, researcher, teacher and translator, based in London. He has written extensively on Persian contemporary literature and culture. His scholarly book ‘Censorship of Literature in Post-Revolutionary Iran: Politics and Culture since 1979’ was published in 2020 by Bloomsbury. He has five poetry collections in Persian, and a selection of his poetry translated into English The Kindly Interrogator was published by Shearsman in 2021.

Viv Fogel is a known psychotherapist of 40 years in her field, an educator, an artist and a poet. A second-generation adopted child of Holocaust survivor refugees, her poems have been published in various magazines and anthologies since the mid-seventies, have been read on radio, and she has one previous collection and two pamphlets. Her second collection Imperfect Beginnings is out in February 2023 (Fly on the Wall)

Aziz Isa Elkun is an Uyghur poet, writer and academic who was persecuted by the Chinese authorities due to his student political activism. He has published poems, stories and research articles in Uyghur and English with his first book being Journey from the Danube River to the Orkhon Valley. His major editing and poetry translation work Uyghur Poems is forthcoming from Penguin Random House in September 2023.

Exiled Lit Cafe @ 49 Great Ormond Street, London WC1N 3HZ.
Refreshments, book stall & conversations
in a beautiful Georgian house

Pay in cash at the door (£5 or £3 for EWI 2023 members)

Exiled Lit Cafe

Monday 13th February at 7 pm

Poplars in the Desert

Please join us on February 13th at West London Welcome for an evening of shared words featuring:

• Dame Harriet Walter
• Anna Perera
• Agnieszka Studzinska
• Kamal Mirawdeli
• Isabel del Rio
• Writing from the West London Welcome Community
• Writers from Exiled Writers Ink Poetry Cooperative
• Hosted by Catherine Temma Davidson

Harriet Walter DBE is the patron of West London Welcome.

Anna Perera is an ex-teacher and author of eight books, including the critically acclaimed Guantanamo Boy which was nominated for numerous awards, translated into a dozen languages and adapted into a sell-out play in London and regional theatres. She has acted as a judge for Amnesty Young Journalist of The Year Award, Young Muslim Writers’ Award, and The Jhalak Prize. She also writes screenplays, gives workshops in the U K and abroad and is a Reiki Master. Since 2018, the novelist and poet, Catherine Temma Davidson and Anna have been carried away by the talent in the weekly Book Club they run for refugees and asylum seekers at West London Welcome.

Agnieszka Studzińska has an MA in Creative Writing from the UEA. Her first debut collection, Snow Calling was shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award 2010. Her second collection, What Things Are is published by Eyewear Publishing (2014). Her most recent collection is called Branches of a House (Shearsman Books 2021). She has currently finished her PhD at Royal Holloway University of London exploring how the image of the house is appropriated in contemporary American poetry. She teaches creative writing for The Poetry School, among other educational institutions.

Kamal Mirawdeli is an accomplished British Kurdish poet and writer living in London. His father was a poet and mayor of the town Marga where Kamal was born in 1951. He left Iraq in 1981 and studied literature (MA and PhD) at Essex University. He has published four collections of poetry in Kurdish and various books on philosophy, history, literature and politics in Kurdish and English. His poetry collection in English, Kurdish Odyssey was published in 2021.

Isabel del Rio is a British-Spanish poet, author and linguist. Born in Madrid, she has lived in London most of her life. She writes and has published poetry and fiction in both English and Spanish. Her poetry collections include Madrid Madrid Madrid, Dolorem Ipsum, and Cuaderno de notas. Her most recent fiction includes Paradise & Hell, A Woman Alone: fragments of a memoir, and La autora del fin del mundo. She has worked as a broadcaster and journalist for the BBC World Service, and as a translator for a London agency of the United Nations. She is the co-founder of the independent imprint Friends of Alice Publishing (FoA) and is currently studying for a PhD in Creative Writing. Her website is www.isabeldelrio.com

Catherine Temma Davidson (host) is a British American novelist, poet and teacher, whose work has won awards on both sides of the Atlantic and been widely anthologised. Her novel, The Priest Fainted, was a New York and LA Times book of the year. She published The Orchard in 2018, which remains a popular Gemma Media novel in the literacy community and at West London Welcome. Every week she learns something new from the writers who share their work with her.

Order of events:
Doors open at 6:45
Featured Writers from 7:00
Dame Harriet Walter reads the work of the West London
Welcome Writers Writers from the EWI Poetry Community read their poems
Q&A Panel

Tickets available on eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poplars-in-the-desert-writing-for-resilience-community-hope-with-wlw-tickets-532054688897

Exiled Lit Cafe

Monday 6th March at 7 pm

Other Voices Project

Bertina Lopes: Mozambiquan-Italian painter, Whitechapel Art Gallery

On The Frontline

part of the Alternative Arts East London Women’s History Festival

with

Aviva Dautch
Hamdi Khalif
Shazea Quraishi
Yvonne Green

This event will feature women poets who will provide insights into the complexity of identities.
Plus discussion

These are challenging times for Muslims, Jews and Black people with these groups on the front line.

Shazea Quraishi is a Pakistani-born Canadian poet and translator based in London. Her poems have appeared in UK and US publications including The Guardian, The Financial Times, Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, and anthologized in The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write among others. Her books include The Glimmer (Bloodaxe, 2022), The Taxidermist (Verve Poetry Press, 2020), The Art of Scratching (Bloodaxe, 2015) and The Courtesans Reply (flipped eye publishing, 2012). A Complete Works alumna, Shazea is a tutor at the Poetry School and writer in residence with Living Words.

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.

Hamdi Khalif is a writer from London who was born in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. In 2015-2016, she toured with her collective Bards without Borders on their show, ‘Shakespeare is dead get over it!’ tour Hamdi then studied for an MA in Creative Writing and then undertook the year-long Novel Studio at City, University of London. She is currently working on her first novel about the status of women in Somali society in the 1940s-50s.

Yvonne Green is a poet descended from Boukharian Jews. Her pamphlet, Boukhara (2007), won The Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition. She has published four full-length collections with Smith|Doorstop, including; The Assay, Honoured and Jam & Jerusalem. Her volume After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin was a Poetry Book Society’s Translation Choice in 2011, and her Selected Poems and Translations was published for Kindle by Smith|Doorstop in 2014. Her work has been translated into Hebrew and published in Israel by Am Oved.

Exiled Writers Ink has a key role to play, firstly, in bringing together a diverse range of writers in the creative process in four London workshops, and secondly, in expanding the conversation to involve communities in London.
We hope creative alliances will be formed to work together against intolerance.

We aim to form a collective of writers to perform and engage with London communities.
Be part of the collective!

Zeleha Cafe
102 Kingsland Road
London E2 8DP

Arrive early to have a meal, snack or drink. Support the Cafe run by an exiled writer.

Pay in cash at the door (£5 or £3 for EWI 2023 members) or by Eventbrite

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/other-voices-on-the-frontline-tickets-549394021307

With thanks to the Edge Fund and Zeleha Cafe

Tuesday 11th April at 7 pm

Protest Poetry and Art

Abbas Zahedi studied medicine at UCL before completing his MA in Contemporary Photography at Central Saint Martins. His work has been widely exhibited and he has won numerous awards. He is an associate lecturer at the Royal College of Art. Abbas blends contemporary philosophy, poetics and social dynamics with performative and new-media modes.

Mabel Encinas is a Mexican migrant poet based in London. She is a member of Las Juanas and SLAP (Spanish and Latin American Poets and Writers). She has published collective books as well as fanzines of poetry and short stories. Her first children’s book is I am Adila from Gaza (published by Victorina Press), and her second one will be I am Lupita from Oaxaca. Mabel works at a university and her research is a coproduction between her university and Musiko Musika.

Maryam Sandjari Hashemi is a multidisciplinary artist and a Spiritual coach. Her art practice includes Visual Art, Performance, Textile also modelling and Acting. Her paintings are in acrylic or mixed media and are rooted in her upbringing in Iran and her subconscious woven into inspirations from her daily colourful life. She studied Graphic Design at Azad University where she developed her skills and distinctive painting style.

Abol Froushan is an Anglo-Persian poet, translator and critic. He has a PhD from the Imperial College of London. Abol is the Iran Editor of Poetry International Web and was the chair of Exiled Writers Ink, UK. Two selections of Abol’s poetry have been published: A Language Against Language (English) 2008 by EWI and the bilingual volume, I need your desert for my sneeze (in Persian & English) in 2009 by PoetryPub. Other publications include English translations of Ali Abdolrezaei: No one says yes twice, (2012) by London Skool.

Rouhi Shafii is a sociologist, writer, translator of Persian poetry into English and an accidental poet. She has published eight books in Persian and English and numerous articles. A collection of her poetry in English and her memoirs in Farsi are forthcoming. Rouhi is chair of Exiled Writers Ink and involved in the Campaign to Stop Honour Killings in Iran and in Amnesty International. She is helping to set up an online school for girls in Afghanistan as well as helping the victims of recent protests in Iran.

Open Mic

Curated and hosted by Afsaneh Gitiforouz

Betsey Trotwood pub (first floor)
56 Farringdon Road
London EC1R 3BL

Pay by Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/exiled-lit-cafe-protest-in-poetry-and-art-from-mexico-and-iran-tickets-588455144177
or in cash at the door (£5 or £3 for EWI 2023 members)

Anwar Hamed is a London-based Hungarian-Palestinian novelist, critic, and poet. As a multi-linguist, Hamed traverses between English, Arabic, Hebrew and Hungarian for his creative and academic contributions including the much applauded, Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora. He has published eight novels including The Stones of Pain, Sheherazade Tells Tales No More, Grounded Birds, as well as the International Prize for Arabic Fiction nominee, Jaffa Makes the Morning Coffee. Currently, he works for BBC World Service and is a member of a society known as Bush Writers.

Dzifa Benson is a Ghanaian- British, multi-disciplinary artist who explores identity, heritage and being via a constellation of literary and non-literary art forms, journalism, as well as immersive technologies. In addition to being an acclaimed poet, curator, dramaturge, and playwright whose theatre productions have been presented at the Royal Opera House – among others- Dzifa is also a frequent contributor to the Guardian, Poetry Review, Philosophy Now, and the Times Literary Supplement with her reviews and essays. Following her most recent collection Staying Human Dzifa is working on a DNA-inspired transmedia project which encompasses culture, migration, memory, and identity.

JJ Bola is a poet, writer, Kit de Waal Scholar, and United Nations High Commission ambassador for refugees. As a self-proclaimed ‘refugee with a British passport’, Bola was confronted with that sense of ‘heimatloss’ in the UK, when he was prohibited from participating in international basketball tournaments despite being a national basketball player due to his citizenship status. Over the years, his poetic explorations into belonging, memory and identity have resulted in three sonorous poetry collections: Elevate, Daughter of the Sun, and Word– republished as Refuge, a novel; No Place Like Home and Mask-Off: Masculinity Redefined which deconstructs the myths surrounding masculinity and ‘manhood’.

Xaviera Ringeling is a London-based environmental researcher, Spanish teacher and New Voices prize-winning bilingual Chilean poet. Following the publication of her first poetry collection, Alba in 2019, she contributed to several anthologies, journals, and magazines such as Leyendo Poesia, Greenwich Poetry Workshop Pamphlet: The Tide Turns and Perro Negro, amongst others.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/4-writers-between-i-and-me-beyond-us-and-them-decolonise-the-mind-tickets-619243733677

June Exiled Lit Cafe

Thursday 8th June at 6 pm

 

Exiled Writers Ink is proud to host the London launch of

or
in cash at the door (£5 or £3 for EWI 2023 members)

Tuesday 4 July at 7 pm

Choman Hardi is an educator, poet, and scholar whose work is informed by an intersectional approach to inequality. She is renowned for her pioneering work on issues of gender and education. Choman returned home after twenty-six years of displacement, to teach English and initiate gender studies at the American University of Iraq- Sulaimani (AUIS). She founded the Center for Gender and Development Studies (CGDS) there. She is a Co-Director of the GCRF Gender, Justice and Security Hub, on which she is researching the role of institutions and practices in the construction of masculinity.

She is the author of critically acclaimed books in the fields of poetry, academia, and translation. In 2011, her Leverhulme Trust-funded post-doctoral research, Gendered Experiences of Genocide (Routledge) was named a UK Core Title by the Yankee Book Peddler. Since 2010, poems from her first English collection, Life for Us (Bloodaxe, 2004) are studied by secondary school students as part of their English curriculum in the UK. Her second collection, Considering the Women (Bloodaxe, 2015), was given a Recommendation by the Poetry Book Society and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her new novel, Whispering Walls, tells the story of a Kurdish family as they confront their ghosts in the tense weeks leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and is published by Afsana Press.

Sundra Lawrence has performed her work across the UK and internationally. Her poetry and short stories have been broadcast on television, radio and podcasts. Sundra won the Aryamati Poetry Prize (November 2021) for poems on the theme of peace and social change. Her Chapbook, Warriors, was published by Fly on the Wall Press in 2022. Sundra’s work has also appeared in art exhibitions in London and Shanghai, and she is published in numerous anthologies including the Los Angeles Review, Too Young Too Loud Too Different, Corsair (2021) and Bloodaxe’s forthcoming anthology Out of Sri-Lanka (2023).

Sundra is interested in the edges of identities, communities; and histories.
Sundra is a second-generation Sri Lankan Tamil, she is influenced by her mother’s
stories of family and back home. Sundra’s grandfather worked for the Port
Commission and her great-uncle was a prison officer at the notorious Welikada
Prison; they were Tamils working amid some of the earliest parts of episodes in the
Sri-Lankan civil war.

Malka Al Haddad is an Iraqi human rights defender, living in exile in the UK. Al-Haddad worked as a lecturer at Kufa University, Iraq, and taught literary criticism. Malka’s poetry collection, Birds Without Sky, which was published in the UK, (all proceeds are donated to two UK charities), and longlisted for the Leicester Book Prize 2018. A pamphlet of this collection’s first section was also long-listed for the Cinnamon Press Poetry Pamphlet Competition in 2017. She has a Master’s degree in Arabic Literature from Kufa University and has recently attained an MA at the University of Leicester, in the Politics of Conflict and Violence.

Malka’s poetry captures the history and culture of her homeland and is a chronicle of her journey into exile and the welcome she found in Britain. She has read her poetry in various locations across the country, including at the House of Commons to Members of Parliament. She is a poetry editor of the Other Side of Hope magazine, the UK’s first literary magazine of Sanctuary, accredited by the City of Sanctuary UK.

Mariana Serapicos is a Brazilian writer and filmmaker living in London for the past ten years. She’s had films screened at the Kids Toronto Film Festival and won the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Competition in 2016. She has also published essays and short stories on The Dillydoun Review and Scribble.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/celebrating-the-small-press-tickets-646509115167
or
£5 and £3 for EWI 2023 members on the door – cash only

Wednesday 16th August at 7 pm

On the Frontline:
Beyond the Stereotypes

A literary focus on the complexity of identity in relation to Jews and Muslims, two of the groups on the front line confronting racism.

with Gabriel Spiers, Nada Menzalji, Ariel Kahn,
Selim Jahan, Shahaduz Zaman

Ariel Kahn is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Middlesex University, where he is also a member of the Interfaith network. Originally training as a rabbi, he studied English at Cambridge, then African and Indian Literature at SOAS. He set up the Arab Israeli Book Club together with Palestinian novelist Samir El Yousef, dedicated to building bridges, creating a space for understanding and empathy. He is the author of Raising Sparks, his first novel (Bluemoose Books, 2019).

Nada Menzalji is a Syrian poet, author, journalist, editor and translator. She studied civil engineering at the University of Latakia. Her published poetry collections in Arabic include Withered Petals for Dinner and Thefts of a Nameless Poet. Her chapbook in English is Traces and Blossoms (Exiled Writers Ink, 2021). Her work has appeared in international anthologies and she has read her work widely in Europe and the Middle East. She was the guest poet at the 2019 UN celebration of the International Day of the Arabic Language.

Gabriel Spiers is a rapper/spoken word poet from north west London. While at school, he developed a passion for rap music/poetry which he started to write and perform himself. Now, while a solicitor by trade, he continues to write and perform for a variety of audiences and is a veteran of the monthly Exiled Lit Cafe open mic slot. He also recently participated in the Exiled Writers Ink ‘Other Voices’ project, consisting of a series of poetry workshops.

Shahaduz Zaman is a reputed writer in Bengali literature who has published over 30 books in different genres. He won the Bangla Academy Literary Award in 2016 in the fiction category, the highest national award for literature in Bangladesh. A number of his books have been adapted into films and theatre. An anthology of English translations of his stories has been published by University Press, Bangladesh. He is a medical anthropologist and a trained physician and works as a Professor in Medical Anthropology and Global Health at the University of Sussex.

Selim Jahan is a Bangladeshi economist and essayist who writes fiction and non fiction in Bangla and English. He was the Director and lead author of the Human Development Report, the flagship publication of UNDP. He previously taught at the Department of Economics, Dhaka University and was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge, Maryland and McGill Universities.

With discussion and Open Mic on the topic

Organised and hosted by Shamim Azad:
Exiled Writers Ink committee member and writer.

Betsey Trotwood
56 Farringdon Road
London EC1R 3BL

Tickets by Eventbrite
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/exiled-writers-ink-presents-beyond-the-stereotypes-of-muslims-and-jews-tickets-677933496337?aff=oddtdtcreator
or
On the door – £3 for EWI 2023 members and £5 others – cash only
Free for asylum seekers

Free Exiled Lit Cafe

Thursday 14th September at 6 pm

Resistance: Voices of Exiled Writers &

launch of The Punished Wound by

Simon Lichman

In 2020 Palewell Press published Resistance – Voices of Exiled Writers, the Exiled Writers Ink anthology that celebrates 20 years of Exiled Writers Ink and our work to support human rights around the globe. The anthology was edited by the Exiled Ink editorial committee and was launched during the pandemic.

Come along to the face-to-face relaunch featuring some of the wonderful contributing poets:

Anna Blasiak Born in Poland, Anna is a poet and translator. Her bilingual poetry and photography book (with Lisa Kalloo) Kawiarnia przy St James’s Wrena w porze lunchu / Café by Wren’s St-James-in-the-Fields, Lunchtime was published in 2020, as was Lili. Lili Stern-Pohlmann in conversation in Anna Blasiak (both Holland House Books). Her work has been published in magazines including Modern Poetry in Translation.

Leonardo Boix Leo is an Argentine-British poet, translator and journalist based in the UK. He is the author of an English collection, Ballad of a Happy Immigrant (Penguin) and two Spanish collections, Un lugarpropio and Mar de noche. Boix has won the Bart Wolffe Poetry Prize Award and the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry.

Handsen Chikowore fled from Zimbabwe. Handsen’s poems, on topics such as human rights, povety and animals, have been published in a range of magazines including The Spectator.

Amir Darwish is a poet and writer of Kurdish origin who was born in Aleppo and came to Britain as an asylum seeker. His poetry collections are Don’t Forget the Cous-Cous and Dear Refugee (Smokestack) and his memoir is From Aleppo Without Love.

Yvonne Green is a London born poet whose mother was Egyptian and her father German. Her poetry collections are Jam & Jerusalem, Honoured and The Assay (all Smith/Doorstep).

Ziba Karbassi Born in Tabriz, Iran, she has published seven books of poetry in Persian and has read her work extensively across Europe and America. Her poems have appeared in many languages and journals including Poetry Review. Her chapbook is Collage Poems (Exiled Writers Ink) and her tri-lingual collection is Poesie/Poems (Mille Gru).

Valbona Luta who was born in Kosova, writes a column for Teuta magazine in Prishtina and was a founder of FLO Fesival of Literature. She is also a poet who regularly participates in the Exiled Writers Ink Poetry Co-operative.

Mehrangiz Rassapour is a poet, literary critic and editor of Vajeh magazine who was born in south west Iran. She has published five collections in Persian and her work has been widely translated. Her chapbook is The Planet of the Immortals (Exiled Writers Ink).

We are also delighted to welcome Simon Lichman reading
from The Punished Wound – poignant poetry inspired by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Born in London, Simon Lichman is a published poet who is the founding Executive Director of the Centre for Creativity in Education and Cultural Heritage (CCECH), a non-profit-making organisation in Jerusalem, which brings together Jewish and Arab (Muslim and Christian) communities through education programmes based on folklore.

Kensington Central Library,
12 Phillimore Walk,
London W8 7RX
(inside the Town Hall building)

Free Exiled Lit Cafe

Thursday 19th October 2023 at 6 pm

Recycling Longing:

Voices of Exiled Writers

poetry, discussion & Open Mic

with poets

Saddiq Al Raddi, Momtaza Mehri,
Shamim Azad, Catherine Temma Davidson, Tamara Wilson

Saddiq Al Raddi grew up in Omdurman Khartoum in Sudan where he lived until forced into exile in 2012. He is one of the leading African poets writing in Arabic today. His latest collection is A Friend’s Kitchen (2023, Poetry Translation Centre) translated by Bryar Balalan and Shook. It is a profound collection that deals both with the spiritual incomprehensibility and physical reality of exile. His first poetry collection was Songs of Solitude (1996), and he has also published The Sultan’s Labyrinth (1996) and The Far Reaches of the Screen (1999 & 2000).

Momtaza Mehri is a Somali-British poet and essayist. Her debut collection is Bad Diaspora Poems (Penguin Books, 2023) was shortlisted for the prestigious 2023 Forward Prize plus she was the winner of an Eric Gregory Award, in 2023. Her collection poses the question ‘What does it mean to write diaspora poetry?’ She is a former Young People’s Poet Laureate for London and Frontier-Antioch Fellow at Antioch University (Los Angeles). A former Columnist-in-Residence at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space, she has also completed residencies at St. Paul’s Cathedral and the British Library.

Shamim Azad is one of the best-known Bengali poets in the UK. She is a bilingual author. She loves to tell stories and perform poems. She has written plays for theatre and published more than 30 books including novels, short stories and poetry both in English and Bengali.

Catherine Temma Davidson is a poet, novelist and essayist who grew up in Los Angeles, California and now lives in London. From a Greek and Jewish immigrant background, she often writes about cultural inheritance, crossing borders and the gift of multiple perspectives. She teaches Creative Writing at Regents’ University and works as a writing coach at Amnesty International. Her work includes the novel The Priest Fainted (1998) and Inheriting the Ocean (1996).

Tamara Wilson is a poet, human rights activist and academic. She is a post-nationalist poet and human rights activist with Armenian and Pontic heritage from Turkey. Alongside the exploration of identity and memory in hybrid literary/non-literary forms, she is interested in the retrieval of survival legacies, and reclaiming of suppressed identities and heritage sites.

Organised and hosted by Valbona Luta: Exiled Writers Ink Committee Member

Camden Art Centre
First Floor
Arkwright Road, corner Finchley Road
London NW3 6DG

Nearest tube: Finchley Road
Finchley Road and Frognal Overground is opposite

Donations welcome

THRESHOLDS:
Writers in a World on the Brink

Aziz Isa Elkun, Anna Perera, Zsuzsanna Ardó,
Lester Gomez, and Miki Lentin

Poetry and fiction readings will be followed by a discussion.
Hosted by Catherine Temma Davidson: Writer

Thursday 16 of November 2023 6-9 pm

FREE at the Camden Arts Centre
Drawing Studio, First Floor
Arkwright Road, corner Finchley Road
London NW3 6DG
Nearest tube: Finchley Road
Finchley Road and Frognal Overground is opposite
Donations welcome

Aziz Isa Elkun is a Uyghur poet and academic who has lived in London since 2001. A prolific writer in both English and Uyghar, he is the editor of the groundbreaking Uyghur Poems from Penguin, Everyman Library books. He has worked for many years as secretary of PEN’s Uyghar Centre and as a researcher at SOAS.

Anna Perera was born in London to a Sri Lankan Buddhist father and Irish, Catholic mother. An educator and story-teller, she wrote the novel Guantanamo Boy after learning about the child prisoners of Guantanamo Bay; it has been translated into a dozen languages and nominated for multiple awards, including a shortlisted Costa Children’s Award. A bestseller, it was also adapted into play. Her novel, The Glass Collector, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal award.

Zsuzsanna Ardó is an award-winning visual artist, writer and curator whose work crosses thresholds. She works with deep narratives around women, ecology and power and has been granted residencies around the world including in England, New York, Frankfurt and the Arctic. Her work is in private and public collections and has been exhibited at venues from the European Parliament to the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Palace of Westminster. Her work PlanetWoman was recently shown at UNESCO Paris.

Lester Gomez Medina is a Nicaraguan-Costa Rican poet who has lived in London since 2014. His poetry draws on his experiences of migration and his interest in language, springing from his BA in Philology and his MA in translation. His pamphlet, The Riddle of the Cashew was published by EWI under the mentorship of Jane Duran and he is working on his first collection.

Miki Lentin is a prize-winning short story writer and memoirist whose first novel, Winter Sun, will be released by Afsaneh Press this spring. Connecting Ireland and Israel by way of Tenerife, this is a story of a son who needs to ask his elderly father the important questions while there is still time.