Palestine Writes Literature Festival

Palestine Writes will be the first North American literature festival dedicated to the celebration and support of Palestinian literature. From March 27-29th, 2020, the weekend before Land Day in New York City, we will bring together writers, artists, publishers, booksellers, and scholars to read, present, and hold conversations about literature and the intersections between culture, struggle, society and politics. The common threads uniting all participants are the love of books and a consistent commitment to social justice and liberation struggles, especially in Palestine. Our festival will showcase voices celebrating Palestinian life, devoted to the belief that art challenges repression and creates bonds between Palestine and the rest of the world.

Palestine Writes will highlight the richness of Palestinian art for an audience that may not have had the opportunity to experience this work due to lack of linguistic access (limited translations) restrictions on movement of Palestinians, and the repression of Palestinian speech. It will be a groundbreaking celebration of the power of Palestinian artistic visionaries and their supporters, bringing us together in the spirit of Mahmoud Darwish’s sentiment that we “have the right to smell autumn’s fragrances and ask the night for a dream.”