Literary Panel Discussion

In contemporary Arab literature, readers are likely to encounter the fabled djinns (genies) of the Arabian Nights as well as spaceships hailing from the future. Arab authors have highlighted the importance of the imagination as a powerful driving force in enriching individual lives and in providing parallels for the political and social conditions of the Arab world. A panel of novelists and poets will address the role they assign to fantasy and the magical as a means of creating relevant art. Event Timing: 90 minutes
 
Panel Moderator
Ferial J. Ghazoul (Iraq) is a scholar, critic, and translator. Educated in the Arab world, Europe, and the United States, she has written extensively on gender issues in modern and medieval literature and is the author of Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context (AUC Press, 1996). Ghazoul is professor of English and Comparative Literature at the American University in Cairo.
 
Panel Speakers
Fadhil Al-Azzawi (Iraq) is one of the Arab world's leading experimental writers. Born in Kirkuk, Iraq, he participated in Iraq's avant-garde Sixties Generation. He has been the editor of numerous newspapers and magazines and founded the poetry magazine Shi'r 69 (Poetry 69). His publications, now translated into more than 20 languages, include 10 volumes of poetry in Arabic and 1 volume in German, novels, short story collections, criticism, and numerous works of translation from English and German. Al-Azzawi is currently a full-time writer living in Berlin.
 
Amel Moussa (Tunisia) is a poet, sociologist, and cultural consultant at the Tunisian Association for Arts and Sciences (Beit Al-Hikma) in Tunis. Moussa has been a columnist at London's Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper since 2001. She is the recipient of Tunisia's National Creative Award for poetry, and the 2006 Arab Woman Organization's Award for best cultural commentary about Arab women.
 
Gamal Al-Ghitany (Egypt) is one of the Arab world's foremost men of letters. Editor-in-Chief of the Egyptian literary weekly Akhbar Al-Adab, he is a novelist. Al-Ghitany was apprenticed as a child with a carpet maker, and later worked in one of the factories of the Khan el-Khalili bazaar. His journalistic and literary texts have appeared in Egyptian and Lebanese newspapers since 1963. Al-Ghitany published a biography of Naguib Mahfouz in Beirut in 1980. In the same year, he was awarded Egypt's State Prize for Novels, a Merit of Science and Arts--First Degree. In 1985, he became head of the cultural section of the Al-Akhbar daily newspaper, where he had his own column. In 1987, he was named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France.

Part of ARABESQUE: Arts of the Arab World

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