Launch Party for Your Name, Palestine by Olivia Elias

Join us for an exciting evening celebrating the launch of Olivia Elias' new book, , in an English translation by Sarah Riggs and Jérémy Robert. This event will take place on Friday, September 29, 2023 at 7:00pm Eastern at , at 51 Bergen St, Brooklyn NY.

Featuring readings by Mirene Arsanios, co-translators Sarah Riggs and Jérémy Robert, and Olivia Elias herself, as well as musical performances by Jenny Luna and Adam Good.

Doors at 7:00pm. Performance begins at 7:15pm sharp. Hosted by Tamaas/World Poetry Books ?

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Be sure to RSVP below to secure your spot. We can't wait to see you there! ?

This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Poet of the Palestinian diaspora, born in Haifa in 1944, Olivia Elias writes in French. She lived until she was 16 years old in Lebanon where her family took refuge in 1948, then in Montréal-Canada, before moving to France. Her most recent collection, was published in 2019 by la Feuille de thé, in the original French, and an English translation, , translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, was published by World Poetry Books in 2022. Characterized by terse, laconic language and strong rhythms, her poetry shows a deep sensitivity to the Palestinian cause, the plight of refugees and human suffering in general. Her work, translated into English, Arabic, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, has been published in numerous journals and in anthologies. A special edition chapbook of Elias’s poem , in a translation by Sarah Riggs and Jérémy Robert, is forthcoming from World Poetry in September 2023.

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Mirene Arsanios is the author of the short story collection, (Ashkal Alwan, 2015), (UDP, 2019), and more recently, (Futurepoem, 2022). She has contributed essays and short stories to e-flux journal, Vida, The Brooklyn Rail, LitHub, and Guernica, among others. Her writing was featured collaboratively at the Sharjah Biennial (2017) and Venice Biennial (2017), as well as in various artist books and projects. Arsanios co-founded the collective 98weeks Research Project in Beirut and is the founding editor of , a bilingual English/Arabic magazine for innovative writing. She teaches at Pratt Institute and holds an MFA in Writing from the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College. Arsanios currently lives in New York where she was a 2016 LMCC Workspace fellow, and an ART OMI resident in fall 2017. With Rachel Valinsky, she coordinated the Friday nights reading series at the Poetry Project from 2017-19. She lives and works in Brooklyn.

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Sarah Riggs is a poet, activist, and co-founder of Tamaas. She is the author of seven books of poetry in English, most recently: (1913 Press, 2015), (Chax, 2020) and (Roof Books, 2021). She has translated and co-translated six books of contemporary French poetry into English, including Etel Adnan's (Nightboat, 2019), recipient of the Griffin International Poetry Prize and the Best Translated Book Award in 2020.

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Image courtesy Frédéric Tcheng.

Jérémy Robert is a translator between English and French who works and lives in his native Réunion Island. He published French translations of Sarah Riggs’ Murmurations (APIC, 2021, with Marie Borel), Donna Stonecipher’s Model City (joca seria, 2020), and Etel Adnan’s Sea & Fog (L’Attente, 2015). He recently translated Chibuihe Obi Achimba’s poem, “a sonnet: a slaughter field,” which was published on Poezibao’s website, and Michael Palmer’s Little Elegies for Sister Satan, excerpts of which were posted online by Revue Catastrophes.

Jenny Luna is a musician whose interests span a wide array of musical genres. She grew up listening to the music of her bilingual cultural background: Bachata, Merengue, and Mariachi, and she has studied both classical and jazz vocal styles. She has also studied classical piano and Middle Eastern hand percussion. She resides in Brooklyn, NY.

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Image courtesy April Renae.

Adam Good is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston. With a foundation in jazz guitar, his interest in the music of Eastern Europe and Turkey began in the mid-90s. His talent on tambura, Turkish ud, guitar, and knowledge of Turkish makam have made Adam a fixture of New York’s Balkan and Middle Eastern music scenes. He plays regularly with the ensembles Dolunay and Pontic Firebird, and with clarinet master Souren Baronian’s ensemble Taksim. His self-released CD, entitled Dances of Macedonia and the Balkans, features several of his folk compositions alongside familiar melodies. Adam lives in Brooklyn and regularly teaches in the New York City area.

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Tamaas | تماس is a cross-cultural arts organization inviting collaborative engagement with the social imperatives of our time through curatorial practices, movement workshops, collaborative projects, an annual translation seminar, literary publications, and more, working to redistribute resources across disciplines.

World Poetry Books is committed to publishing exceptional translations of poetry from a broad range of languages and traditions, bringing the work of modern masters, emerging voices, and pioneering innovators from around the world to English-language readers in affordable trade editions.

Host or Publisher Tamaas & World Poetry Books