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Naomi Shihab Nye (born March 12, 1952) is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and American mother. Her first collection of poems, Different Ways to Pray, explored the theme of similarities and differences between cultures, which would become one of her lifelong areas of focus.
Her other books include poetry collections 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, A Maze Me, Red Suitcase, Field Trip and Fuel; a collection of essays entitled Never in a Hurry; a young-adult novel called Habibi (the semi-autobiographical story of an Arab-American teenager who moves to Jerusalem in the 1990s) and picture book Lullaby Raft, which is also the title of one of her two albums of music. (The other is called Rutabaga-Roo; both were limited-edition.)
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Archive for the ‘Literature’ Category
Naomi Shihab Nye
Sunday, October 25th, 2009
Loubna Haikal
Sunday, October 25th, 2009Loubna Haikal is a Lebanese born Australian doctor and writer from Aktanit, Zahrani. She migrated to Australia with her parents in 1969. She has written for the theatre; ‘Near Saida’, a Folkloric Ballet, commissioned by the Melbourne Arts festival, and ‘Points of Exit’, a play in two acts, about power and political compromise. Her other works include: ‘Seducing Mr Maclean’, a novel, published by Picador 2002, a satire about a family of immigrants trying to make it in Australia. Short stories, broadcast on ABC radio national, and published in anthologies, literary magazines and on the web. She has appeared at many writer’s festivals as a speaker and commentator. She is currently working on her second novel.
Nathalie Handal
Sunday, October 25th, 2009Nathalie Handal is a poet, playwright, and writer. She has lived in Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Arab world. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, such as, Poetrywales, Ploughshares, Poetry New Zealand, Stand Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Perihelion, and The Literary Review; has been translated into more than fifteen languages.
Her poetry has also been set to music and performed at venues such as Lincoln Center, The Chamber Music Northwest Summer Music Festival in Portland, Oregon and The River Run Centre, Canada. Handal’s poetry has also been featured in numerous galleries and/or traveling exhibits and she has collaborated with different visual artists.
www.nathaliehandal.com
Amin Maalouf
Sunday, October 25th, 2009A Lebanese author who wrote in French, and his works have been translated into many languages. He received the Prix Goncourt in 1993 for his novel Rock of Tanios. Maalouf’s novels are marked by his experiences of civil war and migration. Their characters are itinerant voyagers between lands, languages, and religions. Amin Maalouf website
Edward Said
Sunday, October 25th, 2009The late Edward Said, born in Jerusalem of Christian Palestinian descent, was a Columbia professor and well-known literary and social critic, as well as a respected music reviewer, and wrote a column appearing in “The Nation.” Professor Said authored more than a dozen volumes on everything from the Middle East to English literature. Said earned an B.A., summa cum laude (1957) from Princeton University and an M.A. (1960) and a Ph.D. (1964) from Harvard University, where he was awarded the Bowdoin Prize.
Yusuf Ibish
Sunday, October 25th, 2009Ibish was a distinguished scholar whose interests spanned both pre- modern and modern Islamic culture and societies. His particular field of specialisation was pre-modern Islamic political thought, but his interests and expertise ranged far. His professional life was spent teaching, at the American University in Beirut, Cambridge and Amherst. He leaves a legacy of some 30 books: bibliographies and documentation of Arab politics, treatises on Islamic political theory, analyses of Muslim society and biographies. Among his most important later works in Arabic is an invaluable concordance to the Koran, listing references to each verse from the 20 most significant commentaries, spanning many centuries and schools of thought.
Michael Naimeh
Saturday, October 24th, 2009Michael Naimeh is a world renowned Lebanese writer. He completed his law studies at the University of Washington in 1916 and returned to Lebanon in the early thirties where he wrote many literary works in Arabic in his beautiful hometown of Baskinta in the mountains of Lebanon.
Among his best known books is the Book of Mirdad, a mystical text first published in Lebanon in 1948, which was translated into English and published in London in 1962.
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The mystic Osho had this to say about The Book of Mirdad. He said, “There are millions of books in the world, but ‘The Book of Mirdad’ stands out far above any book in existence.” The book is a parable about a monastery that stood where Noah’s ark came to rest after the flood subsided. It describes the very nature of human existence and Man’s relation to the God within. It is told through the eyes of the monks as their lives change when a mystical stranger, Mirdad, enters the monastery. Osho says, “It is a small book, but the man who gave birth to this book – and mind my words, I am not saying ‘the man who wrote this book’, nobody wrote this book – was an unknown, a nobody. And because he was not a novelist, he never wrote again; just that single book contains his whole experience. The name of the man was Micahel Naimeh.” While it is not factually accurate that Naimeh never wrote again, one finds it hard to imagine that there could be more to mysticism or to life than what has been described in ‘The Book of Mirdad’.
Mr. Naimeh was a biographer and longtime associate of Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese writer, artist, poet, and philosopher and he penned the first Biography about him (first published in Arabic) in 1934. The biography was later translated into English and reprinted in 1950.
He was fluent in three languages: English, Russian and Arabic
If you ever want to visit Michael Naimeh’s village of Baskinta, here’s some useful contacts:
Lodging in Baskinta
Mar Sassine Convent– Tel: 04 288 030
Khoury Hanna Guesthouse – Tel: 03 134 593
Monte Sannine Hotel – Tel: 04 251 122
Lodging in Kfar Aqab
Gites du Liban – Tel: 04 280 316 (summer only)
Local Guides
Carole Akl – Tel: 03 825 068
George Hobeika – Tel: 03 451 113
Carlos Hobeika – Tel: 03 580 901
Nader Tebshrani – Tel: 04 250 055
Naguib Mahfouz
Saturday, October 24th, 2009Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian novelist who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism.
