Palestine Festival of Literature

“One of the problems we’re having in America is that there are a lot of people who are still under the if-but-for Netanyahu fantasy” Ta-Nehisi Coates on the inherent racism of Zionism. From the powerful conversation between Coates, Tareq Baconi and Nesrine Malik last week.

Tonight in Ramallah: How does incarceration extend beyond prison walls to become a system that governs bodies, knowledge, and public space? Fred Moten and Lena Meari will join us at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center for a talk, in collaboration with Birzeit University.

Kanafani’s writing was ‘so dangerous’ to Zionism he was assassinated for it in 1972. Read Rashid Khalidi’s new intro to Kanafani's translated work in The Key: www.thekeymagazine.com/p/ghassan-ka...

‘Why did God bind me to this city if it was destined to disappear in such horror?’ Read Bisan Nateel’s diary from Gaza on The Key. www.thekeymagazine.com/p/gaza-genoc...

Tonight at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah. 7.30pm. Simultaneous translation will be available. www.palfest.org/full-schedul...

Announcing our 2026 public program in Palestine with events coming up in Ramallah and Gaza City, starting tomorrow: Monday October 26th. www.palfest.org/full-schedule

London: Nov 17 we launch CONFRONTING ZIONISM with Noura Erakat, John Reynolds & Rafeef Ziadah. This will be the *only* UK event. Don't miss this chance to hear from some of the most influential thinkers on Palestine working today and their new work. Tickets: www.palfest.org/full-schedul...

We hosted a landmark conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tareq Baconi and Nesrine Malik at London's Southbank Centre this week. You can watch the whole event here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=652E...

“How beautiful it is to die for you.” The martyr Heba Abu Nada, killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in 2023, in her poem “Olive.” The Key is honored to publish three of her poems, newly translated by Huda Fakhreddine, alongside a tribute from her sister Somaia.

The @palfest.bsky.social book of the week this week is one of ours: A Diary of Darkness by @samahzaq.bsky.social. It is a profound and unnerving portrait of a genocide administered through successive wars and endless cycles of displacement and scarcity. www.coastallinespress.com/p/a-diary-of...

South Lebanon’s villages are being erased in real time, aided by a U.S.-brokered blackout on satellite imagery. Zaynab Mayladan reports for The Key: www.thekeymagazine.com/p/south-leba...

🎥 “If you liberate Palestine, you liberate the world.” At our London launch of Discipline with @ibraaz.bsky.social, Randa Abdel-Fattah reflected on Palestine, Australia, and the liberation struggles that are bound together.

Tareq Baconi’s "What Now? On Palestine, Freedom and Our Global Future" is the Oct/Nov PalFest Bookshelf pick, paired with a print from Adam Rouhana’s "Before Freedom." Subscribe by Nov. 30 to get it as your first shipment! www.palfest.org/bookshelf

“we love what we can do in our homes, walk between rooms, kiss our wives, wear no clothes” — Zena Agha on media language and genocide, written while raising a newborn through it. All four of her poems are on The Key now: www.thekeymagazine.com/p/zena-agha-...

Our book of the week this week is May Ziadeh's MUSINGS OF A YOUNG WOMAN, a genre-defying book that combines essays, reflections, poems, even a microplay. MUSINGS OF A YOUNG WOMAN is out now from our friends at @arablit.bsky.social. Order your copy now, directly from their shop!

تقرير زينب ميلادان لمجلتنا عن تدمير جنوب لبنان اتترجم للعربي على إيد @7iber تقدروا تقروه هنا: www.7iber.com/%D8%B9%D9%86...

Zaynab Mayladan’s report for The Key on how Israel is wiping south Lebanon’s homes off the map is now available in Arabic, thanks to our friends at @7iber! Read it in Arabic: www.7iber.com/%D8%B9%D9%86...

“So, one question remains: Why did God bind me to this city if it all was destined to disappear in such horror?” Bisan Nateel, a young writer in Gaza, on memory and loss along the road to Khan Yunis. Read now on The Key:

In this introduction, Khalidi draws a line from Israel’s assassinations of cultural figures in the 1970s - Kanafani himself among them - to its targeting of journalists, writers and artists in Gaza today www.thekeymagazine.com/p/ghassan-ka...

‘It’s the language you speak because you drink the blood of my people. I can’t trust it with my memories.’ - Yahya Ashour, ‘The Violence of English’ www.thekeymagazine.com/p/yahya-asho... @palfest.bsky.social

“Like all his work, this book resonates with Kanafani’s burning commitment to the Palestinian cause.” Rashid Khalidi on Ghassan Kanafani’s “Palestinian Resistance Literature Under Occupation.” Read his introduction on The Key now: www.thekeymagazine.com/p/ghassan-ka...

"Let me relish in butchering this language. Let me destroy senses with it. This language destroyed me." In his first essay written in English, Yahya Ashour grapples with exile and a language he can't trust with his memories. Read now on The Key:

Our book of the week this week is Ghassan Kanafani's remarkable book-length essay PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE LITERATURE UNDER OCCUPATION, 1948-1968, translated into English for the first time by Tarif Khalidi.

One night only: Noura Erakat and John Reynolds launch "Confronting Zionism" in London, in conversation with Rafeef Ziadah. Nov. 17, 6:30 p.m., Friends House.

ICYMI: In issue 12 of The Key, we published Mahmoud Darwish's essay against the false promises of Oslo, in its first English translation by Sinan Antoon. Read everything on The Key for as little as $2/month: www.thekeymagazine.com/p/mahmoud-da...

Looking for a gift for a little reader? Our shop carries Arabic children's books from Palestine with the Tamer Institute for Community Education. Buy one or collect the whole set now. Subscribers to PalFest and The Key get 10% off.

Our book of the week this week is the "vivid, urgent and beautifully written" debut memoir NO LAND TO STAND ON by Mahmoud Khalil. You can get your copy from our bookshop now! shorturl.at/bR6hq

ICYMI: In issue 12 of The Key, @maryamalwan wrote about doxxing and biased hearings tied to her activism at Columbia, and why she's now suing the university. Read her piece, and more from The Key, for as little as $2 a month: www.thekeymagazine.com/p/columbia-s...

Four PalFest events are landing in London over the next few weeks, from Randa Abdel-Fattah to Ta-Nehisi Coates to Noura Erakat. See the full schedule and grab tickets now! palfest.org/full-schedule

This fall brings a wave of new writing on Palestine, and we’ve rounded up 16 titles worth your attention, from Mahmoud Khalil’s prison diaries to Adam Rouhana’s debut photobook. Our list spans memoir, poetry, and political analysis. Read now, only on The Key.

The Key is also excited to share a round-up of some of the exciting books coming out this fall, including Mahmoud Khalil's debut memoir, previously untranslated writing from Ghassan Kanafani, stunning photography and poetry from Palestine and more www.thekeymagazine.com/p/new-forthc...

In the latest edition of The Key, we have important reporting that shows similarities between what is happening in southern Lebanon today and the process of systemically erasing Palestinian villages during the Nakba www.thekeymagazine.com/p/south-leba...

London! Join us Oct 3 as Randa Abdel-Fattah launches her novel "Discipline" at Ibraaz, in conversation with PalFest's Omar Robert Hamilton. Tickets are available now: www.palfest.org/full-schedul...

ICYMI from The Key: “I wonder if shame is any more or less useless than love” Hannah Black on moral collapse, the hollowing out of English, and her love of Ms. Rachel.

“I want my body to remain whole, wrapped in a pristine white shroud, unmarred by the stain of red.” Mayar Nateel writes about her mother’s hands, marked by fear since 2014, and the ordinary death she now dreams of amid genocide in Gaza. Read now on The Key. www.thekeymagazine.com/p/gaza-genoc...

NEW from The Key: In Southern Lebanon, villages leveled by Israeli bombardment are being erased twice: once by the strikes, and again by the removal of landmarks and records that proved anyone lived there. Zaynab Mayladan reports.

ICYMI from The Key: “Though I know I did not stop the genocide, I know that I did not accelerate it either. That is not nothing.” Ismail Ibrahim on boycott, quitting his media job, and what personal refusal actually achieves.

ICYMI from The Key: “I wonder if shame is any more or less useless than love” Hannah Black on moral collapse, the hollowing out of English, and her love of Ms. Rachel.

ICYMI: Adam HajYahia writes for The Key: “The lineage of the repressed, the tradition of the oppressed, is nothing but a series of ongoing attempts to enact unrealized disorders.”

London! Join us Oct 3 as Randa Abdel-Fattah launches her novel "Discipline" at Ibraaz, in conversation with PalFest's Omar Robert Hamilton. Tickets are available now: www.palfest.org/full-schedul...

If you haven’t checked out Refusing Complicity — a project where writers discuss boycott, solidarity, and cultural power — Yasmin El-Rifae’s introduction is the perfect place to start, free to read on The Key now. www.thekeymagazine.com/p/introducin...

ICYMI from The Key: Sophie Lewis on Sde Teiman, where the rape of Palestinian detainees is filmed, joked about, and defended from the floor of the Knesset www.thekeymagazine.com/p/israel-rap...

63 DAYS OF SIT-IN makes its London premiere at Theatro Technis on 4 & 5 September, presented as a complete evening of theatre, film, and conversation. www.shubbak.co.uk/63-days-of-s...

“Do you see yourself as an intellectual?” Isabella Hammad and Hisham Matar ask themselves and each other questions after writing introductions to Edward Said’s books. Listen on the last PalFest podcast of the season on Radio Al Hara tomorrow at noon, Palestine time.