24 May '23
On Saturday 11th March, a small audience at Rich Mix saw a discussion where the jumping off point in situating discussions of Palestinian literature in the contemporaneous moment was breaking from pasts, to focus on presents. At AWAN festival: Palestinian Literature Now, to define the present for the panellists was not a question of what but exploring whose present, reframing the discourse of literature in an awareness of contemporary fiction and self-representation. They discussed how possible it is to do this, setting discussions apart from iconic Palestinian writers from the 60s-70s, apart from the Global North, apart from trauma. It felt important that all of the panellists came together from different representations of Palestinian identity to navigate this complex discussion in this open forum.