Palestine Festival of Literature

PalFest (Palestine Festival of Literature) is an annual event that aims to bring a cultural festival of international standard to audiences in Palestine to assert "the power of culture over the culture of power." In recognition of how restricted movement is for Palestinians the Festival travels throughout Palestine, staging events in several cities.

Patrons of the Festival include Chinua Achebe, John Berger, Mahmoud Darwish, Seamus Heaney, Harold Pinter, Philip Pullman and Emma Thompson. It is supported by the British Council, the Open Society, the A M Qattan Foundation and Riwaq among others.

Ahdaf Soueif is the founding chair. The Founding Board are Victoria Brittain, Alison Elliot, Brigid Keenan, John Horner (Treasurer) and Sheila Whitaker.

Inaugural Festival

Between 7 and 11 May 2008 the festival traveled to the cities of Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem - while the authors also visited Hebron. The venues included: Dar al-Tifl (Jerusalem), Al-Kasaba Theatre (Ramallah), Dar Annadwa (Bethlehem) and the Palestine National Theater (Jerusalem) - all of which sold out. The format generally took on a series of a readings followed by discussions and questions from the audience.

The authors were also joined by Palestinian performers. In Bethlehem, El Funoun Dance Troupe performed a series of their dances and on the final night in Jerusalem, Yasmeen, from The Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, played. What was meant to be a sextet "turned into a quartet because the lute player and the percussionist were refused entry to the city".^[1]

The festival also ran workshops with students at Bir Zeit University and Bethlehem University. Students were given a list of the attending authors and asked to come up with their own workshop titles.

The 16 artists in attendance of the 2008 festival were: Khalid Abdalla, Daniel Alarcon, Mourid Barghouti, Victoria Brittain, William Dalrymple, Roddy Doyle, Esther Freud, Nathalie Handal, Suheir Hammad, Ian Jack, Brigid Keenan, Jamal Mahjoub, Pankaj Mishra, Andrew O'Hagan, Hanan al-Shaykh, Raja Shehadeh, and Ahdaf Soueif.

On returning to the UK, Ahdaf Soueif wrote that the festival "was an enlightening experience - but not always for the right reasons".^[2]

2009 Festival

Palfest 2009's Poster. The graffiti is a line from Um Kulsoum's "Be3id 3annak." It reads: "my life, is torment"

The 2009 festival toured to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jenin, Hebron and Ramallah over six days. The artists involved were: Suad Amiry, Victoria Brittain, Carmen Callil, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Suheir Hammad, Nathalie Handal, Jeremy Harding, Rachel Holmes, Robin Yassin-Kassab, Brigid Keenan, Jamal Mahjoub, Henning Mankell (accompanied by his wife, Eva Bergman), Deborah Moggach, Claire Messud, Michael Palin, Alexandra Pringle, Pru Rowlandson, Raja Shehadeh, Ahdaf Soueif and M G Vassanji.

On both the opening and closing nights attempts were made by the Israeli police, acting on court order, to prevent the festival from taking place, since the Palestinian Authority was involved.^[3][4][5][6] Both times the festival relocated: to the French Cultural Institute on the first night^[7] and to the British Council on the last.^[8] Outside of Jerusalem, events and workshops were held in Jenin, Hebron, Bethlehem and Ramallah.

PalFest continues its work throughout the year, running extended writing workshops and videocast seminars wherever possible.^[9]

2010 Festival

The 2010 Festival took place from May 1 to 6, with events in Jerusalem, Nablus, Jenin, Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah.^[10]

Participants included: Susan Abulhawa, Taha Muhammad Ali, Suad Amiry, Geoff Dyer, Adam Foulds, Suheir Hammad, Nathalie Handal, Remi Kanazi, Henning Mankell, Raja Shehadeh, Ahdaf Soueif, William Sutcliffe, members of Wildworks theatre company - and many more.

An offshoot of the Festival has been the formation of the Palestine Writing Workshop - a series of extended creative writing courses run with small groups of students. To date, five week-long courses have been taught on topics ranging from spoken word poetry to creative non-fiction.^[11]

In October 2010 the first of PalFest's literary internships was launched: a young graduate from Hebron spent six weeks working at Bloomsbury Publishing in London, while two others were hosted by the Southbank Centre to work on their flagship poetry festival, Poetry International.^[12]

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References

External links

• Official Website - features author blogs, videos, press clippings and more.
• PalFest on Twitter
• PalFest on Facebook
• Robin Yassin-Kassab on PalFest in PULSE Media
• Claire Messud on PalFest in the Boston Globe
• Deborah Moggach on PalFest in the Guardian
• Ursula Owen's account of attending the 2011 PalFest on History Workshop Online