Joao Guimarães Rosa says so beautifully that ‘every word has its shadow’. Taking cue from the Brazilian novelist’s exposition, Ananke’s Women in Literature Festival unveils a fascinating conversation that will delve into the migratory experience of language through translation and interpretation.
Eminent names from across South Asia, MENA and beyond will be gracing the third edition of Ananke’s Women in Literature Festival 2023 (AnankeWLF). Planned to be held on April 11th and 12th, independent publishers, authors, filmmakers, artists, writers and journalists will congregate remotely to engage in dialogue focusing on new immersive approaches to storytelling, publishing and experiential interpretations. The conversation will also center on the importance of inclusion in the production and dissemination of the written word, which not only envisions to diversify and democratize the publishing landscape, it offers access and representation.
The panel discussion, The Migratory Experience of Language will be held on the first day of festival – April 11th, 2023 at 4.00 PM UAE time and will be live-streamed on Ananke’s Facebook page – @anankemag with the option to participate in all live sessions via Zoom. To attend the session, email: media@anankemag.com (please write: Zoom registration in the subject line).
A journey that storytelling embarks on from a deep sense of loss. The loss that occurs not only as a result of linguistic repression due to (and among other things) hyper-nationalist fascism; but also through the spatial dislocation of form and language. The conversation will also focus on a story’s passage from loss to shelter from the notions of banishment and ostracism vis-à-vis the prospects and potential of gentrification and victimhood. Moving the discussion even further, the panel discussion will probe into the paradigmatic shift from ‘methodological nationalism to methodological transnationalism,’ which weaves an intricate tapestry of inheritance and refuge, also that of emancipation and ( to quote from Imaginary Homelands), ‘the notion that something can also be gained.’
Hammad Rind
This discussion will feature eminent names including, (in alphabetical order): Jayson Iwen, Mai Al Nakib, Sofia Rehman with Hammad Rind chairing the session.
Hammad Rind is a Welsh-Pakistani writer and translator. His debut novel ‘Four Dervishes’ (Seren Books, 2021), a satire loosely based on a dastan by Indian poet Amir Khusro, was long-listed for the British Science Fiction Association Award. He is the Urdu translator of Naveen Kishore’s debut poetry collection ‘Knotted Grief’. Hammad did a BA in English and Persian literature and law at the Punjab University, Lahore, and an MA in film making at the Kingston University, London. He is currently working on his second novel.
Jayson Iwen
Jayson Iwen’s book Roze & Blud won the 2020 Miller Williams Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. His other published books are Dick, Gnarly Wounds, A Momentary Jokebook, and Six Trips in Two Directions. He co-translated Jawdat Fakhreddine’s Lighthouse for the Drowning and Salim Barakat’s Come, Take a Gentle Stab. His poetry, prose, and translations have appeared in many journals, including Cream City Review, Fence, New American Writing, Nimrod, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pleiades, Tikkun, Water~Stone Review, and World Literature Today. He lives and works in the Twin Ports.
Mai Al-Nakib
Mai Al-Nakib is author of the novel An Unlasting Home and the short story collection The Hidden Light of Objects, winner of the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award in 2014. Her fiction has been published in Ninth Letter, The First Line, After the Pause, and The Markaz Review. Her essays have appeared in World Literature Today, BLARB: Blog of the LA Review of Books, and the BBC World Service, among others. She is associate professor of English and comparative literature at Kuwait University.
Dr. Sofia Rehman
Dr Sofia Rehman is an independent scholar specialising in Islam and Gender, an author, and educator. She is also a publisher at Neem Tree Press. She is the founder and co-ordinator of Leeds Lit Book Club which is now in its 7th year. During the global pandemic she launched the Islam and Gender read alongs in which she facilitates readings of academic texts penned by Muslim female scholars in conversation with a global virtual audience and has recently been featured by both Vogue Arabia and Refinery29. She is a contributor to Mapping Faith: Theologies of Migration edited by Lia Shimada and to Cut From the Same Cloth? Edited by Sabeena Akhtar. She has publications of her own due out with Oxford University Press and Kube Publications. You can connect with her on her Instagram @Sofia_reading where she talks about all things related to books, faith and academia.
Naima Rashid
Naima Rashid is an author, poet and translator. Her published and forthcoming books include Sum of Worlds (Yoda Press, 2023-2024), Naulakhi Kothi (Penguin Random House India 2023-2024), Chicanes (Les Fugitives, 2023) and Defiance of the Rose(Oxford University Press, 2019). Her writings have been widely published in journals of repute, including Asymptote, The Scores, Wild Court, among others. Her work was longlisted for National Poetry Competition 2019 and Best Small Fictions 2022. She is a collaborator with the UK-based translation collective, Shadow Heroes, which teaches young people to embrace all aspects of their linguistic and cultural heritage.
Partners of the event include Zubaan Books, Seagull Books, Zuka Books, Neem Tree Press, Yoda Press and Readomania. More partners and collaborators will be announced soon.
Watch this space for more information!
Festival Topics Ideas (not limited to the below)
Exploring New Pathways to Creativity and Literature
The Language of Grief vis-à-vis the Dialectics of Freedom & Autonomy
The Migratory Experience of Language
Digital Disruption & Content
Decentralizing the human to realize an inclusive world – Ending the era of the Vitruvian man
Reimagining Anthropocene: A post-humanist exploration of climate resilience, urbanism, and nonhuman habitat loss in South Asian fiction
Blurred Lines: On Science, Fiction and Fantasy
The Age of the Graphic Novel
Inclusive Publishing
Publisher’s Corner
Illustrated Resistance
Transnational Feminism in Print and Media
Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay
