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Shubbak Literature Festival 2017

shubbak aran lit at british library

Famous for his letter to Michael Gove, the artist Bob and Roberta Smith RA talks about the value of art in the school curriculum and the importance of visual communication since the beginning of civilisation. Bob and Roberta Smith RA founded the Art Party in 2013, a non-political organisation established to defend creativity and arts education. In this talk, the artist discusses the human experience of “making you mark” and “having your mark reproduced”. He believes in the importance of “things being graphic” and is willing to fight for art’s survival in the world today.

Bob and Roberta Smith RA on printmaking and art education

Kentridge’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the world and appeared in this year’s Summer Exhibition at the RA, where the Small Weston Room was dedicated to a display of his ink drawings and prints of indigenous South African trees.

In this podcast, the RA’s Artistic Director Tim Marlow talks to the recently elected Honorary Royal Academician about his diverse artistic practice, which encompasses films, drawings, theatre and opera productions.

William Kentridge Hon RA in conversation with Tim Marlow

One year on from a major season on the ‘Future of Housing’ in the UK, we look again at this ever more urgent question.

In the lead up to last year’s General Election, the RA organised the Future of Housing season, which looked with a critical eye at the various possible futures for housing in the UK. One year on, we survey the changed political landscape, and a housing crisis that, if anything, has only intensified. As the Housing Bill, which notably extends the right to buy to housing association tenants as well as putting a new focus on starter homes, passes through Parliament, our panel consider the challenges and possibilities that have emerged both independently and as a result.

Speakers:

Jack Self – writer and co-curator British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale 2016
Paul Karakusevic – Partner, Karakusevic Carson Architects
Claire Bennie – architect and development consultant; former Development Director, Peabody
Richard Blyth – Head of Policy, Royal Town Planning Institute
Jane Dudman – Editor, Housing and Public Leaders Networks, The Guardian (chair)

Photo: Houses, Robert Harding World Imagery / Alamy Stock Photo

The Future of Housing: A return

At the 2017 Women in Architecture Awards, Rachel Whiteread became the third woman to be awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize, which recognises those working in the wider industry who have made a significant contribution to architecture and the built environment.

In this lecture, recorded at the awards lunch at Claridge’s on Friday 3 March, Whiteread looks back at 30 years of sculpture and considers the relationship between her work and the world of architecture.

Rachel Whiteread: on sculpture

Ian Christie discusses the place of film as an art form after the revolution in Russia and the relationship between Soviet filmmakers and other artists of the time.

The status of film as an art form rose considerably after the revolution, with Lenin claiming that “of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important”. However, cinema’s success created bitter divisions among artists seeking support from the generally conservative regime, and encouraged disdain among some of the leading avant-garde artists of the time.

Christie is Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, University of London and advisor on film in the RA's exhibition 'Revolution: Russia 1917-1932'.

Film and the Soviet avant garde

What do we mean by Arabic writing against the grain in 2017? What are the inspirations, and the challenges, for the engaged Arab writer today? How do the wider global context, regional events, national regimes, personal stories, and the myriad of other artistic influences shape their work? And what does it mean to be a literary activist? Syrian British writer Robin Yassin-Kassab hosts a lively conversation exploring all this and more with three very different writers from across the region.

Novelist, poet and playwright Ali Badr was born in Baghdad. The recipient of several awards for his novels, his work has been translated into English (notably The Tobacco Keeper and Papa Sartre). Currently editor-in-chief of Marseille-based Arabic press Alca Books, Ali Badr has extensive experience of contemporary Arabic literary publishing.

Mona Kareem is a poet-writer-translator based in New York. She is the author of three poetry collections, some of which have been translated into French, English, Spanish, Dutch, German, Farsi, Italian and Kurdish. Her published translations include Ashraf Fayadh's Instructions Within and an Arabic selection of Alejandra Pizarnik's poems.

Ghazi Gheblawi was born in Tripoli, Libya, where he studied medicine and published his first works of fiction. He is the author of two collections of short stories in Arabic and published various literary works in English in several publications in the UK. He runs and hosts Imtidad Cultural Blog and Podcast, which focuses on literature and arts in Britain and the Arab world. He was recently appointed a trustee of The Banipal Trust for Arab Literature and was on the judging panel for the 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing. He is currently an editor at Darf Publishers, an independent publishing house based in London.

Writing Against the Grain

Syrian journalist and author Rasha Abbas has undertaken a month-long creative residency commissioned by Shubbak and the British Library, where she focused on the period of the Arab Union, as part of the research for a planned historical novel. This short-lived union between Syria and Egypt from 1958 to 1961 had a major influence on the subsequent political scene in both countries as well as the wider region. She will focus on the political events of this apex of pan-Arab nationalism and the era of populist pan-Arabism that followed it and lasted into the seventies. What are the questions that historical phase raises about Arab nationalism then and now?

The culmination of her research will be presented in this event in a narrative framed by specific tarot cards. The highly delineated lens of each card – Free Will, Forced Fate, Justice, and so on – will provide an idiosyncratic approach to the historical material in question. Speaking about her choice of title, Rasha Abbas said that Seven of Cups ‘is a card that tends to arise when you are in a situation with lots of different potential ways out, exposed to multiple illusions and realities, and you have to choose wisely.’

Displaced Syrian author Rasha Abbas is currently based in Germany. A contributor to Syria Speaks (Saqi Books, 2014), her recent book Die Erfindung der deutschen Grammatik (The Invention of German Grammar) is about accidentally getting involved in the avant-garde art scene and learning German from hipsters.

Rasha Abbas: The Seven of Cups

Celebrated British poet and multi-disciplinary artist Malika Booker returns to Shubbak to welcome four mesmerising poets for bilingual performances of their work. Join us for a celebration of the work of this diverse group of poets keeping the fragile flame of poetry alive in 2017.

Iraqi-American Dunya Mikhail is the author of The Iraqi Nights, Diary of A Wave Outside the Sea and The War Works Hard. Her honours include the Kresge Fellowship, the Arab American Book Award and the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing.

Golan Haji is a Syrian Kurdish poet and translator who now lives in Paris. His latest poetry collection, Scale of Injury, was published in Arabic by Al-Mutawassit, Milan, in 2016. His most recent translation into Arabic is Alberto Manguel’s News From A Foreign Country Came (Dar al-Saqi, Beirut, 2017). He will be premiering exclusive new work created for Shubbak.

Mona Kareem is a poet-writer-translator based in New York. She is the author of three poetry collections, some of which have been translated into numerous languages. Her published translations include Palestinian Saudi poet Ashraf Fayadh's Instructions Within and an Arabic selection of Alejandra Pizarnik's poems.

Sudanese poet Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi is one of the most acclaimed African poets writing in Arabic today. He has published two collections in English translation with the Poetry Translation Centre and was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award in 2015. He lives in the UK.

Keepers of the Flame: Contemporary Arab Poetry

Six years after the revolution and in the current climate of suppressed dreams, a new wave of Egyptian writers and artists are blending horror, realism and black humour to reflect on this painful phase of their nation’s history. Hosted by celebrated literary translator Elisabeth Jaquette, three Egyptians working in the continuum from nightmare present realism to dystopian futurism will read from and discuss their brave work and its troubling context.

Basma Abdel Aziz is an award-winning writer, sculptor, and psychiatrist specialising in the treatment of victims of torture. A long-standing human rights activist in Egypt, she is the author of several works of non-fiction. In 2016 she was named one of Foreign Policy's Leading Global Thinkers for her debut novel, The Queue, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette.

Ganzeer is a maker of installations, prints, paintings, videos, objects, guerrilla actions in public spaces, and comix. Like Basma Abdel Aziz, he was named a Foreign Policy Leading Global Thinker in 2016 for his current project, a graphic novel entitled The Solar Grid. Art in America Magazine has referred to his practice as ‘New Realism’.

Mohammad Rabie’s first novel, Amber Planet, won First Prize in the Emerging Writers category of the Sawiris Cultural Award Competition in 2011. Otared, his third novel, was published in Arabic in early 2015 to much critical attention and appeared in English in 2016, having been shortlisted for the 2016 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

The Waking Nightmare: Post-revolutionary Egyptian Dystopias

In a global literary market where even the major writers from the best known Arab literary countries – Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon – are not very widely read and translated, how does it feel to be a woman author from Yemen, or Libya? What is it like to write fiction from countries outside of the main literary geographies, whilst also being a woman in a patriarchal world? What are the pressures and the inspirations, the challenges and the opportunities of these multiple levels of marginalisation?

Writers Najwa Benshatwan and Nadia Alkokabany were invited to participate in a conversation with Bidisha. However, both authors were denied visas. Instead, they addressed the audience by video and read from their novels. Bidisha was joined in conversation by poet and translator Mona Kareem. 

Najwa Benshatwan grew up in Libya. The first woman in her family to be literate, she went on to win several Arabic literary prizes. Persecuted by the Gaddafi regime for her writing, she relocated to Italy, where she now lives. Her historical novel on Libya’s role in the slave trade, The Slave Pens, was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2017. She is currently working on a novel about female Eastern European migrants to Western Europe. 

Nadia Al-Kokabany is a Yemeni academic and a prolific literary writer. Her fiction has been translated into English, French, German and Italian, and she has won prizes in Yemen and Kuwait. Her 2016 novel, The Ali Muhsin Market is a tale of the many different ways the Yemeni revolution turned her city’s life upside down.

Hosted by acclaimed journalist, critic, political analyst and broadcaster Bidisha. Bidisha is a journalist, critic, political analyst and broadcaster. Her most recent book, Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices of London, is based on her outreach work with asylum seekers and refugees. Bidisha has just completed her sixth book, a collection of travel pieces from India, Italy and China.

Under the Radar: Women writing from outside the Arab literary mainstream

Palestinian-American novelist Susan Abulhawa is one of the most commercially successful Arab authors of all time. Her 2010 debut novel Mornings in Jenin, a multigenerational family epic spanning five countries and more than sixty years, looks unflinchingly at the Palestinian question – and became an international bestseller translated into thirty-two languages.

In 2015 The Blue Between Sky and Water, a novel of family, love and loss centred on Gaza, also met a vast global readership and huge critical acclaim from across both the mainstream and literary media. Her powerful, political and romantic fiction is written in English, yet it is deeply rooted in the land and language of her ancestors. Her work has earned her The Leeway Foundation Edna Andrade award for fiction and creative non-fiction, USA Book News Best Books Award for Historic Fiction, MEMO Palestine Book Award and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Award and she is the founder of the charity Playgrounds for Palestine.

In this special appearance, Susan Abulhawa is hosted by South Africa born British novelist, playwright and memoirist Gillian Slovo, recipient of the 2013 Golden Pen Award for a lifetime’s distinguished service to literature. Susan Abulhawa will read from her books and discuss her themes and her craft – from the historically specific and the politically engaged to the timeless and the universal.

Susan Abulhawa in conversation with Gillian Slovo

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest libraries. We hold over 13 million books, 920,000 journal and newspaper titles, 57 million patents and 6 million sound recordings. Open to everyone, the Library offers events, temporary exhibitions and a Treasures Gallery that displays over 200 items, including Magna Carta, a Gutenberg Bible and lyrics by The Beatles.