Against Literatures : Arts Breaking Free [Radical Book Fair]

Please check ticket info for this event below, incl. information about access.

How do we fight the erasures, silences and violence woven into literary culture in the west: How does the writer break free? And how does the reader?

This event will be chaired by poet and novellist, Fariha Róisín.

-- Our Speakers --

George Abraham (they/هو) is a Palestinian American poet, essayist, critic, performance artist. They are the author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America (Haymarket, 2026) and Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020), which won the Arab American Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. They are the Editor-at-Large of Mizna, and co-editor of HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE US: Palestinian Poetry (Haymarket, 2025) which was long-listed for the Palestine Book Award. They are a graduate of Northwestern’s Litowitz MFA+MA program, and teach at Amherst College as a Writer-in-Residence.

Remi Graves is a poet and drummer from London. A former Barbican Young Poet, their work has been featured on BBC Radio 4, at St Paul’s Cathedral and in various anthologies. Their debut pamphlet, with your chest, was published by fourteen poems in 2022. coal won the inaugural Prototype Prize (short-form category) in 2024.

Nida Sajid is a postdisciplinary educator, organiser and writer. She holds an MA in Cultural Studies from Birkbeck, University of London, specialising in experimental literature. She is the author of COOP: A Novelette (Hajar Press, 2025).

Fariha Róisín is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Ontario, Canada. They were raised in Sydney, Australia, and are based in Los Angeles. As a Muslim queer Bangladeshi, they are interested in the margins, liminality, otherness and the mercurial nature of being. Their work has pioneered a refreshing and renewed conversation about wellness, contemporary Islam and queer identities and has been featured in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and Vogue. They are the author of poetry collections How To Cure A Ghost (2019) and Survival Takes a Wild Imagination (2023), as well as the novel Like A Bird (2020), Who Is Wellness For? (2022).

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*Please note that masks will be required at this event ().

*Accessibility: All events will be professionally filmed & livestreamed. The Roxy is wheelchair accessible (including toilets) and we'll have provisions for neurodivergent guests including stims, quiet space and colour-coded lanyards.

*Events are £5 or free -we completely understand paying for one or two events and then getting free spots for others. The Radical Book Fair is entirely bookshop run and ticket sales are vital to keeping the fair sustainable and paying all our speakers so all support is heartily welcome!

*Featured books: The book & ticket option will select the most recently published book at any given event, if you’re not sure which book you want or don’t want that featured book, then buy a £5 voucher ticket that can be used for any of the books below. There are also which are £10, listed as a 'book', please note these are not redeemable at the fair, and rather a much appreciated contribution to the Fair's running costs,

*If you'd like to help make the book fair accessible to more folks, please consider adding to our pay-it-forward fund .

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Host or Publisher Lighthouse - Edinburgh's Radical Bookshop