Mizna+RAWIFest 2023

With a keynote address from Hala Alyan, join us for a weekend of poetry, dance, and art celebrating SWANA artists and beyond!

RAWI Craft Talk 1: An Exploration of Kinships with the Olive Tree

RAWI is holding a craft series! The first of our talks comes from Layla Feghali of River Rose Re-Membrance and the SWANA ancestral project.

Established in 1993, RAWI is a national organization that provides mentoring, community, and support for Arab American writers and those with roots in the Arabic speaking world and diaspora. We are a non-profit 501(c)(3) literary organization dedicated to supporting and disseminating creative writing and scholarly writing by Arab/SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) Americans and those from the Arabic speaking world–which often means creating space and highlighting voices and people threatened by erasure. We put on readings, panels, workshops, roundtables, conferences, and festivals that emphasize inclusivity.

RAWI members working on laptops around a long wooden table, engaged in lively discussion. photo by Shiyam Galyon.

Darine Hotait, film director and writer, speaks during a RAWIFest event. She wears a black dress and brown boots. photo by Shiyam Galyon.

A group photo taken of the Wet Hot Arab American Summer 2019 Cohort. Attendees smile and pose, some seated and some standing, on a sunny day outdoors with a string of lights above them. photo by Shiyam Galyon.

My new semiannual tradition of writing about the most anticipated SWANA books coming out in the next six months is one of my favorite parts of the year, something that briefly helps cut through these seemingly endless times of violence and struggle for our communities. There’s always something new, unexpected, and life-affirming to be found in literature! Preparing these lists has also helped me find some of my own favorite books in recent years. From the first half of this year, I loved Mariam Rahmani’s 

I’ve been lucky to receive many galleys of books coming out between July and December, and I’ve tried to at least start all of the ones I’ve received. This list includes books I have started and loved, some I’ve finished, and some I’ve yet to read but which look really exciting! I’ve tried to include even more work in translation and from authors located around the world as much as possible. There’s so many different types of books on this list, truly something for everyone so I hope you all find your next reads!

Here are 30 anticipated new releases from July-December of 2025, broken down into fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. As always, both the books selected for this preview and the consideration of what falls under “SWANA literature” are meant to be expansive and inclusive but not comprehensive.

In addition to the new books, I wanted to give an honorable mention to some of the titles I missed on my January list that came out in the first half of the year, many of which I’ve already read and loved!

Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora, 

edited by Holly Mason Badra (University of Arkansas Press)

Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature

(Spiegel & Grau);  Iman Mersal’s brilliant 

 (Transit Books, trans. Robin Moger) was also brought back in print.

 (Action Books, trans. Catherine Cobham); Hajer Mirwali’s 

(Two Lines Press, trans. Robin Moger); Fatima Qandil’s 

 (Hoopoe, trans. Adam Talib); Aram Mrjoian’s 

(HarperVia); and, one of my personal favorite books of the year so far, Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s 

I adored Ayşegül Savaş’s most recent novel 

it was one of my favorite books of 2024! What really made it special was the way Savaş builds up the intimacies of the characters through glimpses at the regular experiences of everyday life. That’s why I was so excited to see that she’s releasing a short story collection all about intimacies and the distances that erode them. I can’t wait to get my hands on this book!

by Mansoura Ez-Eldin, trans. Paul Starkey 

I’m really looking forward to digging further into 

, a book that opens with a poetic, almost fantasy-like dreamscape of a past life that really draws you in. I was recently rewatching the 

episode “The Field Where I Died” and the start to this exciting new novel in translation really reminded me of the beautiful monologues of past lives in that episode. I’m fascinated by this speculative premise of switching between the ancient and the modern!

This is the second and final book in Sara Hashem’s fantasy duology. The first book, 

, tells the story of Sylvia, the heir-in-hiding to a kingdom thought to be completely destroyed, and in the second we see whether she will get her kingdom back and what she might lose in the process. Inspired by Egyptian legends and history, this book looks like a great option for fans of high fantasy with a little romance… but of course, read book 1 first!

I started reading this and can’t wait to get back to it! This is a modern retelling of

about a young Palestinian man immersed in the meticulous task of planning the perfect party where he can come out to his friends and family. The writing is charming and quite funny at times, and our narrator Firas Dareer is a very endearing character. I love a classics retelling, and this one seems particularly compelling!

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (And His Mother)

Rabih Alameddine is one of my all-time favorite authors and indeed one of my most read authors, so I mean it as no small compliment when I say I think his latest novel is one of his very best. 

 is a perfectly witty and tender portrait of the chaos and dogged persistence of one catty Lebanese philosophy teacher and his lovingly annoying mother. Great voice, heavy topics, funny prose, and a rich cast of characters!

This novel follows a wealthy Kuwaiti man whose youngest son has left home and joined a jihadi movement in Syria, breaking with his family. A sort of mystery-thriller that grapples with the intimate realities of political violence, this new translation sounds like a very distinct addition to SWANA literature in English!

Adib Khorram started as a prolific writer of queer YA romance, but in the last couple years has started writing more queer adult romance. His latest, 

, promises a fun vacation romance between Ramin and Noah, two recently single former classmates, who maybe always had a little bit of a crush on each other. Sounds like a perfect September reading jaunt for when you’re not quite ready for summer vacation to end!

, the story of a disabled boy growing up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, opens with a truly striking line: “I shall tell you lies. You are going to believe them, and in the end, you will thank me for them.” In only the first few chapters of this novel, I’m captivated by the sharp narrative voice and can’t wait to see where it takes me!

Not sure what’s in the water but this is the second SWANA book about Kafka of the year?? No complaints from me! This one is a novelization of the affair between Milena Jesenská and Kafka that exists somewhere between truth and fiction. This promises to be a fascinating feminist historical reimagining! It’s also Estima’s debut novel, following a previous short story collection.

(HarperCollins, September 23) - YOUNG ADULT

We’ve already established that I’m a big fan of classics adaptations, so of course I was delighted to hear about this YA romance inspired by 

A gothic historical tale of immortal boys in love, spanning a hundred and thirty years – this is the sort of unique book that makes me so excited about the types of stories young SWANA readers have access to now.

Deena ElGenaidi’s debut novel follows two Egyptian American siblings navigating the loss of their mother against the backdrop of the Egyptian revolution. Spanning from Egypt to the US, this book is great for anyone interested in stories about grief, family secrets, and feminism with unruly characters.

I love Hayan Charara’s poetry, so I was really excited to see that he has a debut novel coming out this fall! Something of a mystery, something of a horror story about a strange wave of child suicides that strikes an unnamed city, this book is ultimately a sort of political horror about the way that violence shapes our reality and the stakes of living and having children in a hostile world. As important now as ever for SWANA literature!

I really enjoyed this historical gothic mystery about a Syrian Scottish woman who travels to a remote Scottish island for an archaeological diving expedition and gets tangled up in the ghostly traces that haunt the island and her own personal ghosts and relationship dramas. There’s a beautifully developed cast of characters, setting, and lore to this story, making it a really intriguing–and sometimes spooky–read!

I’m a bit of a baby when it comes to horror, but I’ll have to make an exception for Eman Quotah’s second book. I loved her first book, 

, and the first chapter of this already had me hooked! The opening is gory and yet somehow deeply poetic. Definitely check this out if you’re into freaky djinn stories!

If you, like me, are a SWANA woman who grew up reading or writing fanfiction, this is a big year – there are not one, but 

 forthcoming novels about SWANA women who write fanfiction. This one is a contemporary romance novel following Joonie, an Iranian-American fanfic writer who is trying to find love but can’t quite seem to fall for anyone other than her fantasy book boyfriend… or can she? I found this to be a fun, surprisingly wild, and unabashedly cringe romp with good banter!

The plot of this novel – centered on the family of a dying Palestinian prisoner and resistance fighter – sounds exactly like something I would really enjoy, rich with interpersonal intimacies and political exploration. I look forward to spending some time with Sahar Mustafah’s new novel, and am excited to see such exciting stories finding space at the only Palestinian-owned publishing house in the US!

by Sener Ozmen, trans. Nicholas Glastonbury

This dryly funny, delightfully inventive, and politically sharp novel is so engaging to read, and brings something really unique to the field of SWANA literature in English. The creative use of footnotes and endnotes and meta elements of the unfinished stories within the story really bring this book to another level and ask the reader to engage the text deeply while always maintaining a degree of humor. If you like Rabih Alameddine’s style, this is a great book for you!

by Meryem El-Mehdati, trans. Julia Sanches 

The second fanfiction girl book of the year! I’m so very excited for this one, which follows a 25-year-old with a terrible job at a supermarket chain who gets through the day by writing fanfiction about her coworkers. Julia Sanches translated one of my favorite books last year (

by Munir Hachemi), also about a dejected young Spanish-speaking North African humorously navigating labor exploitation. So I have high hopes that this will be just as good!

by Ata Nahai, trans. Chiya Parvizpur & Hourieh Maleki Qouzloo 

I’m fascinated by this Kurdish translation which tells the story of the years following the Iranian Revolution while blurring the lines between author and characters in an inventive meta form. Many of my favorite SWANA novels (e.g. Noor Naga’s 

) play with metafiction, blurring reader, characters, and author to excavate power, so I imagine this will be a really exciting addition to that body of work.

I adore Leila Chatti’s poetry and had the great pleasure of taking a workshop with her a few years ago, so I was thrilled to see that her second poetry collection is a collection based on her own exercises with poetry, playing with form and language and inspiration. For a poetry collection this book is truly massive, and it also includes substantial craft notes. What a gift to get to spend some time with!

A creative dialogue between the poetry of Omar Sakr and the visual arts of Safdar Ahmed, this collection aims to excavate the horrors of the genocide in Gaza, to examine the nightmarish reality of bearing witness to and living in complicity with such mass violence. The engagement of poetry and visual arts feels like a particularly powerful way to explore witness

This bilingual poetry anthology features poems from writers currently living in Palestine, and specifically centers mostly recent poems from 2023-2024 that highlight the complex experiences of Palestinians in the midst of genocide. While the introduction to this text limits itself by failing to name Israel’s genocide as the explicit condition that shapes its contributors’ lives, the poems in this collection deserve to be read in their own right. From remembrance to imagined futures, the poems in this anthology are a powerful and timely invitation to shared struggle.

Pulitzer-winning Armenian poet Peter Balakian has a new book of poetry coming out that looks like a fascinating play with form. One long poem divided into three parts, tracing a narrative arc from the 1960s to the present, this collection reworks and combines poems from his previously published collections. I love to see poems evolve and become recontextualized, so I’m excited and intrigued by this!

I wasn’t familiar with Rachelle Rahmé’s poetry before seeing that this debut collection was coming out, but after reading through some of the poems I’m really intrigued! There’s a really precise and innovative way she pieces language together – a writing style that forces the reader’s attention. I look forward to giving Rahmé’s work my attention.

Becoming Baba: Fatherhood, Faith, and Finding Meaning in America

Somewhat unexpectedly, two of my favorite books I read in the first half of the year – Hala Alyan’s 

 – were nonfiction books interrogating SWANA parenthood. Maybe I’ll finish out that trilogy with Aymann Ismail’s new memoir, which looks like a fascinating interrogation of Muslim American fatherhood.

edited by Yousef M. Aljamal, Norma Hashim, Zoe Jannuzi, & Noor Nabulsi

This anthology is another important collection of works by Palestinians in Gaza, narrating their experiences of the ongoing genocide through stories of both horrific violence and communal resilience. This anthology is both an essential call to witness and action for those of us outside Gaza, and a critical archive of the genocide from Gaza’s storytellers.

Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love

Samin Nosrat, author of the famous cookbook 

which seemingly changed the lives of every amateur cook I knew in 2017, is finally out with a second cookbook this year! Emphasizing cooking as both ritual and a tool of community building, this looks to be a great resource for making cooking a joyful experience, from the kitchen to the shared table.

Preview forthcoming titles by SWANA authors out later this year, from poetry collections to novels to memoirs.

30 More SWANA Books in 2025: July-December Releases

On the left is a photo of Susan Muaddi Darraj, wearing her long black hair down over a dark gray turtleneck top and sitting on a brown couch. On the right a poster with a white background and turquoise border reads "Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora. Edited by Susan Muaddi Darraj. Palestine Writes Press." Below the title text are nine illustrations of colorful doors, arranged in rows of three.

An Interview with Susan Muaddi Darraj, editor of 

Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora

How did you come to editing this anthology? Who were the guides, teachers, guardian angels, or ancestors who brought you here?


In 2021, I agreed to serve as the Director of Palestine Writes Press. It is a small independent book publisher that seeks to platform Palestinian voices in the diaspora and to highlight our experiences and cultural expression. It was always one of our goals to assemble an anthology of these voices, so I was excited to put the call out for submissions. It was even more exciting to review the many manuscripts that were sent to us for consideration.

I began working in earnest on the anthology shortly after the second annual Palestine Writes Festival, which was held in Philadelphia in 2023. It was an amazing, immersive weekend with some of the luminaries of our literary and artistic community. I think I was filled with the spirit of family, joy, and creativity after that weekend, and I brought that to my curation of the anthology.



2. What do you write/edit/curate towards? What do you write/edit/curate against?


I tried to offer a balance between established and emerging voices in this book: for some of these authors, this is their very first time being published, and that makes me proud. I curated a sense of inclusivity. Palestinians in the diaspora have a range of experiences, based on nationality, class, gender, and many other factors. I also tried to establish a sense of the diversity of genres in which our community writes: fiction, memoir, poetry, TV scripts, drama, and more.



3. How did you find the title of this anthology? What kinds of negotiations were involved—with yourself, the work, the publisher, or the world?


I always liked that line from Darwish, and I thought it speaks to the ways in which Palestinians have to fiercely protect our dreams.



4. We would love to know a little about your process of editing? Did anything about the experience surprise you?


I truly was surprised by the range of genres that were submitted to us. As you see, we have everything from fiction to TV scripts to personal essays to, of course, poetry. I was thrilled to see names that I had never heard before, and to read their work. I was very honored that they trusted us with their precious words, and I hope that the writers feel that we did justice to their vision in this book.

I was surprised by how long it took the book to be completed. This was not anyone’s fault but mine, but then again, we are a press that operates on a purely volunteer effort. However, what actually made it difficult to work was the ongoing genocide. I felt it was impossible to focus on creative writing, on assessing and editing this work, when I, like everyone else, was subjected to daily videos of pure horror coming out of Gaza. Therefore, the book took a lot longer to complete than I had intended, but the contributors were very patient and understanding. In some ways, it felt like we were all grieving together, and thus allowing each other the space to process and mourn.



5. How do you want this work to be read? What do you most wish for from your reader?


It’s funny: when Palestinians meet one another, even for the very first time, it only takes a few minutes for us to establish a warm connection in the interaction. I’m hoping to replicate that immediate connection here. I want readers to feel like they have landed among family and friends when they pick up this book. I want them to open the book to any random contribution and sit with that writer for a while, to see the world through their eyes, to experience their creativity, and to feel that instant bond.



6. Since this series is called Zaghrouta!, we want to know: how are you honoring/celebrating this anthology’s birth? How would you like us to honor/celebrate with you?


It’s hard, of course, to truly celebrate anything in these horrific times, but I want to honor these writers who continue to narrate their own stories, who continue to write and share their work, despite all the efforts to silence Palestinian voices. Every day that we survive, that we continue to write, that we continue to exist should be celebrated. It is remarkable that we endure, and yet, that is the Palestinian way.


***

is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and a 

 Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a 

. Her books include her linked short story collection, 

 children’s book series. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at 

, was published in January 2024 by HarperVia. It received praise from 

The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, 

 and it was named a Best Book of 2024 by 

Mentorship

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30 More SWANA Books in 2025: July-December Releases

ZAGHROURTA!: Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing from the Diaspora, from Palestine Writes Press