Translating Gaza, Problematizing Translation: On Urgency, Critique & Publishing, Sponsored by Mizna
Saturday, March 7, 10:35-11:50 a.m. ET
Ballroom II, Baltimore Convention Center, Level 400
Three percent of US books are translations, amplifying the powers and pitfalls of the discipline. The fraction of Arabic to English work, especially in light of Gazan genocide, holds clear urgency and impact despite risks of fetishism, voyeurism, and complacency—endemic to this literary field and ripe for critique, if not paralysis. Here, the theory and praxis of translating within empire are discussed through two contrasting, complementary publications by their editors.
is an exiled Gazan poet and award-winning author. He is an honorary fellow in writing at the University of Iowa and the author of the ebook A Gaza of Siege & Genocide and three books for children and young adults in Arabic. His work also appears in anthologies and journals, including Michigan Quarterly Review and Arrowsmith Journal. His poetry manuscript received an honorable mention from the Emerging Writer Fellowship. He has headlined over one hundred readings at US organizations and universities, including Harvard and Stanford. His poetry has been translated into more than ten languages, including Spanish and Bengali. He was the 2025 author in residence at UCLA and teaches at Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges.
Huda Fakhreddine is a writer, translator, and associate professor of Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice, and the coeditor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry. Her translations include Jawdat Fakhreddine’s Lighthouse for the Drowning; The Universe, All at Once: Selected Poems from Salim Barakat; and Palestinian: Four Poems by Ibrahim Nasrallah. She is also the author of a book of creative nonfiction titled Zaman saghir ta?t shams thaniya (A Brief Time Under a Different Sun) and the poetry collection Wa min thamma al-alam (And Then the World). She is coeditor of Middle Eastern Literatures.
Mona Kareem is a poet, translator, essayist, and the author of four poetry collections and several chapbooks, including I Will Not Fold These Maps. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Yale Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bard College, Princeton University, the Center for the Humanities at Tufts, the Arab American National Museum, and Poetry International, among others. In addition to her writing work, Kareem teaches at Washington University in St. Louis. She is also the translator of several books, including Octavia Butler’s Kindred.
