Literature Talk - "You Have Not Yet Been Defeated": Writers from Egypt
BrusselsA political and poetic evening about the role of authors under repressive regimes
In the frame of the 30th
ENCATC Congress, GiannaLia Cogliandro Beyens and Gudrun Heymans wish to offer a
networking opportunity to participants attending the 2022 ENCATC Congress and
leading actors of the European and Brussels cultural sphere.
After a networking drink, the Cultural Happy hours guests are invited to a
political and poetic evening about the
role of authors under repressive regimes. Egyptian poets and philosophers
reflect on the living history of ancient Egypt. Writing serves
as an act of resistance and a way to remember oppression, but it also forms the
foundation for new ideas for a different future. The evening's title is based
on the book of the same name by Alaa Abd el-Fattah, an independent philosopher
and political prisoner, who was published in English last year. The line is a
lovely metaphor for the fight for justice, as well as a message of hope. To
close the evening, Iman Mersal will recite some of her poems.
The event at BOZAR will see the participation of With Lina Attalah, Ahdaf
Soueif & Iman Mersal.
Lina Attalah
is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Mada
Masr, an independent Egyptian online newspaper. Awarded in 2020 by The Times and the Knight
Foundation, she is particularly active in the fight for press freedom.
Ahdaf Soueif
is the author the bestselling novel The
Map of Love, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and
numerous other novels, of which 8 are translated in English. As a journalist
she has been a key political commentator on Egypt and Palestine, and throughout
the 2011 uprisings in Cairo she reported front the ground for The Guardian and appeared on
television and radio. She is also the founder of the Palestine Festival of
Literature, PalFest.
Iman Mersal is
generally considered as one of the most important Egyptian poets living today.
She is the author of several books of poems and a collection of essays, How to Mend: Motherhood and Its Ghosts.
This fall the New York publisher Farrar Strauss & Giroux will publish The
Treshold, a selection of her poems in English translation. She is Professor of
Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Alberta, Canada.
Organised by ENCATC in partnership with the Creative Europe Desks Vlaanderen in
the framework of the very successful Cultural Happy Hours initiative,
this gathering will be once more a unique occasion for you to learn, network
and set up connections with colleagues based in BXL and beyond.