The festival, set to be held in New York City, from March 27 and 29, 2020, promises to bring together ”writers, artists, publishers, booksellers, and scholars to read, present work, and have conversations about art, literature, and the intersections between culture, struggle, and politics.”
This festival is an outgrowth of the Palestine Literature Festival that was held, starting in 2007, in cities across Palestine.
Palestine Writes Back will highlight the richness of Palestinian art for a North American audience who may not have had the opportunity to experience this work due to lack of linguistic access (limited translations of Arabic literature), the severe restrictions on movement of Palestinians, and the censorship and repression of Palestinian speech. Palestine Writes Back 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.”