“Sketch Me a Happy Palestine” is the first English-language publication of Moroccan-born writer Kebir Ammi’s chapbook-length poem Dessine-moi une Palestine heureuse (2025)
July 24, 2025
The following is an excerpt from Christopher Rivas’s novel Rough Magic, which traces the arc of a relationship as it flares, stretches, and eventually fractures.
A writer in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza contemplates the many losses across multiple displacements and what the destruction wrought on Gaza says about the nature of this world.
“Gaza Voices” is a collection of stories, poems, and reflections that journey on the moving locomotive of literature and history. These are not mere words on a page; they are the breath of survival, the rhythm of defiance, the heartbeat of a people whose story has been written in the ink of struggle.
Nettel delivered the following keynote talk, “Escribir con luz,” in Spanish, alternating with the English read by her translator, Rosalind Harvey.
“I heard the earth whisper to the tree / whose branch had been snapped by the wind: / a stronger bud will grow, you’ll see, / in place of your missing limb,” from “In This Dream,” by Sahar Rabah (trans. Wiam El-Tamami)
“Dreaming of a clear sky, unmarred by airplanes. / Of clouds observing their own reflection in the windows’ tears. / An innocent day: no news of dead friends in the mail,” from “Dreaming of a Clear Sky,” by Nasser Rabah (trans. Wiam El-Tamami)
“A moment ago I was screaming under ash and rubble — / A final missile sent me vaulting up your way / and now I’ll inform you of what you’re incapable of / understanding!,” from “To That Final Missile, My Thanks,” by Hend Jouda (trans. Ali Al-Jamri)
Misfire
A Russian police officer tracks the surprising release of a prisoner to fight in the war against Ukraine. Recalling the prisoner’s capture, the officer regrets his gun’s misfire. Or was it?
A Cough
In this flash fiction from Argentina, a woman with a long list of symptoms empties herself during a medical exam.
Pizza
A mourner at a funeral reflects on the role of queer elders.
Myth lives on in Central Asia, but it has changed shape. Through multimedia projects, audiences become participants in rituals rather than mere participants, and multimedia artists create myth anew.
As Nettel’s principal English-language translator, Harvey shared insights from her translation of Nettel’s work, including how ambiguity makes readers active agents in meaning creation and the feature of doubling—of one thing containing, if you look closely and courageously enough, something else.
In his plea for the planet, in which “humans understand themselves as a harmonious part of the Earth, neither more nor less than other animals, plants, and rocks,” Spanish writer Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga advocates a new geo-humanism that restores nature to the center.
Traversing the Human/Simian Divide: A Conversation with Prateek Vats
A conversation with Prateek Vats, whose film Eeb Allay Ooo! is part of an emergent oeuvre of multispecies cinema from India.
Punishment Without Crime: A Conversation with Laila Lalami
A conversation between Emily Doyle and Laila Lalami, whose The Dream Hotel, takes a harrowing look at data-driven surveillance.
Doubt and Interpretation in Someone Like Us: A Conversation with Dinaw Mengestu
An interview with Dinaw Mengestu, whose latest novel Someone Like Us, is both “mystery and meditation” that “challenges [the] dominant narrative with a multiplicity of stories.”
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