RAWIFest 2025 will be held from from Friday, October 10, to Sunday, October 12 in Houston, Texas. Keynote speakers will be Fady Joudah and Noor Naga. The conference consists of readings, panels, workshops, roundtables, and celebrations of both emerging and established SWANA creatives.

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RAWIFest is a biannual conference that has been held for three decades and running, bringing together Arab and SWANA creatives as well as non-SWANA allies–not only poets, prose writers, and playwrights, but visual artists, performance artists, musicians, educators and scholars–both in diaspora in North America as well as from other regions. RAWI especially invites Black, Indigenous, and other people of color interested in our programming to apply.

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At RAWIFest, we aim to create a space where we can talk amongst ourselves and highlight voices and people threatened by erasure. The conference consists of readings, panels, workshops, roundtables, and celebrations of both emerging and established SWANA creatives. In a global climate where opportunities for Arab and SWANA creatives to share our experiences and insights is limited, RAWI’s biennial gathering provides a rare opportunity to bring a large number of Arab American and SWANA writers, artists, and scholars (and their readers, allies, and admirers) into the same inclusive and welcoming space so we can engage in various dialogues otherwise unavailable to us.

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For full program and festival FAQ from our 2023 RAWIFest, co-hosted with Mizna, please see this blog post. For full list of performers and bios from 2023, please go here.