Mizna is growing our board!

We’re seeking passionate and committed individuals to join our board of directors. Board members enter into a relationship of trusteeship, collectively responsible for supporting Mizna’s mission, vision, strategic directions, fundraising, and overseeing business affairs.

This is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact and help steward Mizna’s future.

What we’re looking for:

• Strategic thinkers with diverse perspectives
• Specific experience with legal and fundraising, more generally, nonprofit experience
• Commitment to Mizna’s mission, vision, and values
• Knowledge about and passion for Arab and SWANA art, film, literature, performance, etc.
• Experience with programming or producing contemporary art, literature, film, performance etc.
• Ability to contribute 3-5 hours towards board duties monthly

Submit your application here

We’ll review all submissions and reach out to candidates who align with our needs for an initial conversation on a rolling basis.

Please contact ellina@mizna.org with any further questions.

The post Open Call: Join Our Board appeared first on Mizna.

The Cyprus Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale

Over the past eighteen months, the genocide in Gaza has laid bare the state of world, showing us the true brutality of neoliberal values and institutions, and the unadulterated depravity of settler colonialism. While much of the world has persisted in a state of complicit blindness, a blindness that tolerates the erasure and ghostification of Gaza, students, artists, writers, filmmakers, cultural workers, have been on the front lines of speaking out against genocide and imagining new forms of resistance and solidarity.

On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare…, the exhibition which represented the Cyprus Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale, invokes formal and conceptual notions of ghosts, always contextualized in relation to technology and power in Cyprus, specifically the country’s historic and current geopolitical role in the Levant region and in the genocide on Gaza. The artworks in this exhibition show us how ghost can be properly attended to and examined in order to develop a new sensory mode and thus a new way of engaging with the world around us. It was my pleasure to interact with and review this complex exhibition as my own form of digital ghost.

— Lamia Abukhadra, Art and Communications Director

Gaza is the ghost of the world, the persistent presence that, despite all efforts to erase it, to make it disappear, remains and resists. It is Gaza that has shown us the impossible: the horrors of settler colonialism at its most extreme and brutal, the ways in which resistance is possible in the smallest of gestures, and finally, the triumphant acts of return and reunification following the now-broken ceasefire agreement. The ghost of the world has shown us the world for what it is and what must be done, what alliances must be drawn in order to resist it. 

—Lamia Abukhadra

On Which Side of the Screen Lies the Ghost? The Cyprus Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale

My notification doesn’t go off as planned; I log in to the Instagram live tour fifteen minutes late. By the time I am able to join, I have missed the explanation of the exterior of the space as well as much of the first room. No matter, a record of the tour is saved and uploaded later, acting as a trace of the last days of the exhibition. Apart from a detailed press kit and the virtual conversations I had with some of the artists, this is the only way I encountered On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare…, the exhibition which represented the Cyprus Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. 

My initial meeting with some of the artists who collectively conceived, produced, and invigilated the 2024 Cyprus Pavilion—comprised of the Lower Levant Company (Peter Eramian and Emiddio Vasquez), Haig Aivazian, and the Endrosia Collective (Andreas Andronikou, Marina Ashioti, Niki Charalambous, Doris Mari Demetriadou, Irini Khenkin, Rafailia Tsiridou, and Alexandros Xenophontos)—took place on Zoom a few days before the exhibition was set to close. During our discussion, Andreas Andronikou mentioned that as the artists explored the varying intensities and materializations of the ghost in the machine, a key theme throughout the exhibition, the question “On which side of the screen lies the ghost?” was pivotal in conceiving the pavilion’s conceptual framework. Defined by the artists as the persistent, excessive presence of that which is repressed while paradoxically and simultaneously actively withdrawing, ghosts become the material in which speculative forms or methodologies can emerge. Within these alternative modes, that which has been repressed can be properly attended to and examined; a new sensory mode is developed. Through the process of “vigilance,” or the act of keeping vigil, the ghost in its many manifestations becomes a collaborator in sensing, imagining, and building new worlds from the one currently crumbling around us. 

On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare… invokes notions of ghosts, ghosting, and haunting through several formal and conceptual approaches, always contextualized in relation to technology and power in Cyprus. The exhibition title is extracted from the opening lines of a 2019 Forbes article¹ which details a Cyprus-based spyware operation run by Israeli tech millionaire Tal Dilian and the Intellexa consortium. The article describes a wildflower-lined street in Larnaca where an unassuming black van is parked, inside of which exists an arsenal of technology capable of hacking into nearby smartphones with the purpose of gleaning and intercepting all of the private correspondences within. The Intellexa consortium as well as other companies associated with or owned by Dilian were found to be involved in several scandals, including the selling of spyware to the oppressive regime in Egypt and a paramilitary group in Sudan, mass unregulated internet surveillance in Nigeria, the surveillance of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi government, and, most recently, receiving US Treasury sanctions for “developing, operating, and distributing commercial spyware technology that presents a significant threat to the national security of the United States.”² In referencing the black van scandal, the artists critically engage with the larger positionality of the nation of Cyprus as a covert or complicit ghostly presence in relation to the Levant region both historically and recently; a thoroughfare in which European, American, and Levantine geopolitical interests and dynamics meet. A mere 45-minute plane ride from the Levantine coast, Cyprus has long been a site for British and American military surveillance posts. The Treaty of Establishment of the Republic of Cyprus, signed in 1960 to grant Cyprus its independence from British colonial rule, includes several clauses granting the British government the right to maintain sovereign military bases in Akrotiri and Dhekelia, both of which remain active. More recently, Cyprus’ proximity to the Levant manifested through Cypriot residents hearing the 2020 Beirut Port explosion;³ in June 2024, the now-deceased Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened the nation, saying that it would be considered “part of the war” if it allowed the Israeli military to use its air or maritime spaces;⁴ and in January 2025, a report from the British Palestinian Committee laid out the extent of British military involvement in the genocidal war on Gaza, specifically mentioning the use of British RAF bases on the island of Cyprus for cargo transport to Israel and nightly surveillance flights over Gaza.⁵ Digging into the fantastical anecdote of the black van and the geopolitical associations it invokes, the artists collectively decided to create a framework for the entire exhibition to be the site of a speculative agency, Forever Informed. The aims of this agency, whose slogan is “smart solutions to weak signals” are left intentionally vague, but we are told that they gather information. The framing of the entire exhibition space as a parafictional surveillance company in disarray, in between setting up (appearance) and abandonment (disappearance), creates a space ripe for haunting. Each individual artwork is a complex examination of Cyprus’ geopolitical position that doubles as an exploration of this mysterious organization’s mythologies and imaginaries. The space itself existed as a satellite exhibition outside of the Biennale’s Giardini, an unassuming yet proximate presence haunting the main space of the 2024 Biennale. Rather than hiring the traditional gallery watchers to monitor and police the space, the artists themselves as well as invited residents took part in the practice of invigilation, drawing from the British use of the word invigilator: Those who look after a space. The practice of invigilation meant that the artists themselves stayed with their works and welcomed people into the space. Residents who took part in the Vigil Workspace were invited to perform and create discourse in relation to the exhibition as they sat vigil. Key to the practice of invigilation was the tours that the artists regularly gave of the space, thoroughly explaining the conceptual framework of the exhibition and the significance of each artwork in their own ways. 

Below is an abbreviated description of my experience attending a virtual walkthrough of the 2024 Cyprus Pavilion, partially embellished with additional information available in the pavilion’s press kit. 

**** 

I am sitting on one side of the screen, about to watch the tour of On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare… on Instagram Live, facilitated by the Lower Levant Company. 

The phone camera is fixed on a view of an LED screen mounted vertically, like a phone screen, inside the facade of the Cyprus Pavilion. For a few minutes, we watch as the video looping on the LED monitor appears to glitch, fragmenting clips from a 2019 Forbes documentary which contains footage granted by the spyware dealer Tal Dilian of his black van conducting surveillance on a wildflower-lined street. The ambient noise of footsteps—assumed to belong to exhibition viewers drawn in by the screen’s alluring advertisement-like brightness—continue around the camera holder. In the darkness of early evening, the LED screen emanates light so strongly that it is the only thing the camera is able to capture, the surrounding environment is too dark and thus underexposed. 

The camera-holder, Peter Eramian, a member of the artist duo Lower Levant Company, backs up and Emiddio Vazquez, the other LLC member, appears in-frame and welcomes us to “the last ever tour” of the Cyprus Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. 

In addition to LED Screen (by Forever Informed), Vazquez points us to the other piece of the pavilion installed along the canal, Organ (by Rafailia Tsiridou and Emiddio Vasquez), a network of bright orange pipes which could be mistaken as part of the building’s infrastructure. As they come into contact with the vibrations created by the canal and its surrounding environment, the six PVC pipes create a feedback network of amplification and transmission. Organ is an eavesdropper or a spy, turning the sounds of the canal and the conditions of its surroundings into harvestable information. Rather than record or analyze data points, Organ simply transmits the vibrations that it encounters, feeding them into other pieces inside the space as live, unreproducible material, calling into question the purpose of the fabulated company Forever Informed. I recall the common cliché of when horror film characters first begin to suspect that a place is haunted, reassuring themselves that the strange noise they heard was “just the wind.” In this case, the wind and other natural or man-made elements create a haunting, gathering environmental elements to create an excessive force in which the tensions between information gathering and art are brought together. Yet, Organ does not gather, store, or organize any information, instead leaving us with purely sonic experiences available to us only in the present. On camera, the tour guides tell us that this particular artwork received a lot of attention and curiosity while it was being installed. 

We are led inside and after explaining the conceptual premise of the exhibition, Vazquez turns our attention to the first room which he describes as the “reception room” for Forever Informed. Among the pieces we are shown in this room, all of which engage with histories and materialities of information gathering and transmission, are Tyre Track by Lower Levant Company and Beacons and Pillars by Haig Aivazian. Sitting on the middle of the cement reception room floor is Tyre Track, a low rectangular mound of concrete with stones, gravel, seashells, and other detritus embedded within it. The indentation of a car tire track has been left diagonally across the rectangle. We learn that this trace was made by Forever Informed’s own surveillance van which has eerily similar capabilities as Tal Dilian’s infamous black van. The mesh peeking out from the edges of the object gives us the impression that this mound was not extracted from another location but cast. Upon closer inspection, the tracks appear to be a negative imprint, suggesting that the object itself may be a false or implanted trace of this covert operation. While holding the camera, Eramian adds that the dubious and archeological qualities of the piece leads one to question what other traces have been left on the island of Cyprus, especially those of a ghostly or clandestine nature. 

Nearby, hanging on a wall is Beacons and Pillars by Haig Aivazian, a Lebanese artist invited to contribute to the Cyprus Pavilion. Eramian tells us that recently Aivazian has been working on the dualities of light and darkness; light always associated with truth and enlightenment, as well as the Promethean myth where light and thus knowledge was passed on to humans, and darkness associated with criminality and unproductiveness. For Aivazian, we are told, this duality is not as clear as we may think, as the rise of modernity and neoliberal capitalism has meant that the materialities of light have been used or involved in the extraction of resources, policing and control of movement, and surveillance, while darkness could serve as a generative, fugitive space outside the watchful gaze of power. In this diptych of etched copper plates, Aivazian works with found etchings of torch bearers, which one could assume originate from representations of revolution or freedom, but are actually sourced from images of colonial expedition. As the camera approaches the etchings, Vazquez and Eramian as well as some of the other artworks in the space are reflected back. While the plate on the right consists of a small, isolated etching of a hand holding a torch surrounded by negative space, we are told that the plate on the left is a closeup of the texture of smoke from that a lit torch emits. In engaging with the analogue printing process, Aivazian invokes the mechanism of information and image circulation at the height of European colonization—where foreign lands, bodies, and ecologies were often imagined, represented, and reproduced through the medium of etching and lithography. But Aivazian edits this methodology of circulation, showing us only the matrix; the possibility of producing a large number of prints lingers as a ghostly suggestion. Copper itself, a resource in which Cyprus is rich, is an essential material in the contemporary battle over control, progress, and information, extracted for use in computing, electric conductivity, and signal transmission. The choice of cropping and zooming in creates an obfuscation. What could the texture of smoke hide? Are the torch-bearers leading the masses towards freedom or, as colonial entities, will they use their torches as a tool for mass destruction? 

As we move into the second room, we see AVRION PROIN EN NA DEIS, which translates to “TOMORROW MORNING YOU WILL SEE,” a sculptural work by Alexandros Xenophontos, member of the Endrosia collective. Sixteen tiles—three of which emit fluorescent white light that never turns off and one of which is missing—constitute a drop ceiling in the center of the space. In lieu of the missing tile, a subsea cable, usually used to transmit telecommunication signals across large stretches of ocean, descends and begins to make its way across the floor. As the phone approaches the severed end of the cable, a low, ominous, and irregular droning can be heard. We are told it is the sound of the activity of and around the canal being transmitted from the outdoor sculpture, Organ. The cable is wrapped in several tight fitting leather corsets, contrasting with the corporate office aesthetic of the ceiling and referring to the fetishistic nature of information ownership and transmission. As the phone is pointed into the opening in the ceiling, we notice a light flashing or glitching rhythmically. Perhaps this is the same flickering light one would see in the event of a haunting, or perhaps it is an infrastructural malfunction. We learn that the light is flashing the message “tomorrow morning you will see” in morse code, inspired by the message of a found telegram sent from Cyprus to Alexandria in 1955. Informed by the geopolitical history of Cyprus as a thoroughfare for telecommunications in the Mediterranean as well as a neocolonial command point within the Levant, the sculpture creates a foreboding atmosphere. In transmitting this message to us, is Forever Informed promising us enlightenment, or are they communicating a threat? 

Just outside of the second room is an enclosed courtyard where the sound installation Crossover Frequency Spectrum by Lower Levant Company also transmits some of the vibrations from Organ. Other sounds broadcasted through the six mounted Iwata horns include local bat chirps, whistles and cracks from the ionosphere near military antennae, and field recordings taken near the UK airbase in Akrotiri, all of which constitute sounds that Vazquez says are “very loud” but usually go ignored as we are not attuned to them. Atop a bedding of black copper slag, the mouth-like horns—some functional and mounted on a truss emerging from the slag, and others ceramic replicas placed directly on the black substrate—amplify and draw viewers to attend to new frequencies, thus imploring us to develop a new sensory mode.

Unintelligible sounds leak out from the room just ahead, named SOUNDR* after a codename for a joint British/American surveillance station in Cyprus exposed as a key site for surveillance in the Middle East. Darker in tone and in lighting, this last room in On a wildflower-lined gravel track off a quiet thoroughfare… is populated by video installations by Lower Levant Company, Haig Aivazian, and some members of Endrosia and serves as a cross section of the relationship between Cyprus and Lebanon. Their sounds overlapping, the three animation-focused video works in SOUNDR* explore the ghostification of cities through gentrification and real estate speculation, haunting and ghost hunting through digital materialities, and the generative, insurgent possibilities that spaces of darkness, often inhabited by ghosts, can have. 

The tour closes with a brief explanation of the practice of invigilation which took place throughout the duration of the Biennale and the multilingual publication produced in tandem with the exhibition. 

Vazquez and Eramian thank us for watching, the live video ends. Like a ghost, I rewatch the tour a few more times, retracing its path, attempting to glean as much as I can from it. 

*** 

I am on one side of the screen. 

On the other side, the acceleration of ethnic cleansing of Palestine through the eighteen month-long live-streamed genocide in Gaza. I am on one side of the screen of my phone witnessing unimaginable atrocities. On the other side, Gaza is living it. My notification goes off on January 18, 2024 and Bisan Owda is wearing a press vest, live streaming through the night of the Israeli siege and bombardment at the Nasser Hospital. My notification goes off October 13, 2024 and Saleh Aljafrawi is unable to describe the scene as he films Shaban al-Dalou burning to death in a tent in the Al Aqsa hospital courtyard after Israel committed one of many “tent massacres.” For months, Anas Al Sharif is on camera giving us tour after tour of the ruins and conditions of life in the besieged Jabalia refugee camp, unrecognizable from its pre-war photos. On one side of the screen, the killing of hundreds of thousands of people through bombing, sniping, blockade of all food, water, and medical supplies, besieging and destroying all medical infrastructure as well as entire neighborhoods; Israel’s attempt to exterminate all life in Gaza, to make it withdraw. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forcibly turned into martyrs, into ghosts. 

Often, as a civilian or a journalist would film an instance of forced displacement, the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on a home, a car, or a group of tents, the influx of injuries or martyrs in a barely functioning hospital, someone looks into the camera and screams, “Who are you filming for?!” 

I am on the other side of the screen.

On my side of the screen, life goes on, and the genocide continues; we go to protests, we boycott, we occupy university property, we try to raise funds for mutual aid; concrete, political action is often stymied; international law is ignored. Every institution is complicit: From international human rights organizations and legal bodies, to western democracies and electoral politics, higher education, and to art institutions, we witnessed an expansion of fascism, an unwillingness to act justly in the face of extreme violence, an unwillingness to divest from systems of surveillance and arms manufacturing, an increase in policing of students, censorship of artists, and dismissal of professionals across all fields. Gaza is the ghost of the world, the persistent presence that, despite all efforts to erase it, to make it disappear, remains and resists. It is Gaza that has shown us the impossible: the horrors of settler colonialism at its most extreme and brutal, the ways in which resistance is possible in the smallest of gestures, and finally, the triumphant acts of return and reunification following the now-broken ceasefire agreement. The ghost of the world has shown us the world for what it is and what must be done, what alliances must be drawn in order to resist it. 

The ghost of the world has also exposed the hypocrisy of neoliberal institutions and their values. The 2024 Venice Biennale, unfortunately, was one of them, preferring to maintain its conventional format rather than acknowledge the genocide in Gaza in any meaningful way. It was artists and cultural workers, notably the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA), who took the initiative to “haunt” the Biennale and center the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Palestine. For much of the Biennale, the alliance staged several interventions and protests in order to disrupt business-as-usual while calling to exclude the Israeli Pavilion from participation. The group also co-hosted or brought attention to several satellite exhibitions and events featuring Palestinian art and literature.⁶ This form of haunting, which took place within the Biennale, around the city of Venice, and through various digital campaigns, aimed at recalibrating the sensory attunement of one of the largest global art institutions and events, and create an alternative experience for artists, attendees, and cultural workers in extraordinary times. 

While ANGA intervened in the Venice Biennale’s actual and ethical positionality, the artists in the Cyprus Pavilion engaged with the ghost of the world on a formal and conceptual level, critically immersing themselves in all aspects of “representing” a country actively yet covertly engaged in the genocide in Gaza and the surveillance of the surrounding region. While Gaza shows the world for what it is, the artists at the Cyprus Pavilion present us with formal and discursive interventions—ghosts—which allow us to engage with our surroundings and to imagine worlds anew.

1. Thomas Brewster, “A Multimillionaire Surveillance Dealer Steps out of the Shadows . . . and His $9 Million WhatsApp Hacking Van.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 9 March 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/08/05/a-multimillionaire-surveillance-dealer-steps-out-of-the-shadows-and-his-9-million-whatsapp-hacking-van/. ︎
2. David Kenner, “Notorious ‘predator’ Spyware Firm Intellexa Hit with New US Sanctions – ICIJ.” International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, 24 Sept. 2024, www.icij.org/investigations/cyprus-confidential/notorious-predator-spyware-firm-intellexa-hit-with-new-us-sanctions/.  ︎
3. “Beirut Explosion: What We Know So Far.” BBC News, BBC, 11 Aug. 2020, www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53668493. ︎
4. Paul Raymond, “Hezbollah’s Threat Caught Cyprus off Guard, What Are the Issues at Stake?” Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera, 25 June 2024, aje.io/hrf0tx.  ︎
5. Oscar Rickett, “New Report Lays out Full Extent of UK-Israel Military Partnership in Gaza.” Middle East Eye, 28 Jan. 2025, www.middleeasteye.net/news/new-report-lays-out-full-extent-uk-israel-military-partnership-gaza. ︎
6.  A list of which can be found here: https://anga.live/venice.html ︎

Lamia Abukhadra is a Palestinian American artist currently based in Beirut and Chicago.

Her practice studies how disasters can resurrect and generate new forms of perception, collectivity, and resistance, often using the Palestinian context as an urgent microcosm. Within her drawings, prints, sculptures, texts, and installations, she embeds speculative frameworks which bring to light intimate and historical connections, poetic occurrences, and generative possibilities of survival, mutation, and self-determination.

Lamia graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BFA in interdisciplinary studio art in 2018. She is a 2019-2020 Home Workspace Program Fellow at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut as well as a 2021–2022 Jan van Eyck Academie Resident in Maastricht. Her work has been exhibited in Minneapolis, Chicago, Beirut, and Berlin. Lamia is a 2018–2019 Jerome Emerging Printmaking Resident at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, a 2019 resident at ACRE and the University of Michigan’s Daring Dances initiative, and a recipient of a 2017 Soap Factory Rethinking Public Spaces grant. She is currently an MFA candidate in the Department of Art, Theory and Practice at Northwestern University.

Abukhadra is also a cultural worker and currently holds the position of Art and Communications Director at Mizna (St. Paul, MN).

The post On Which Side of the Screen Lies the Ghost?  appeared first on Mizna.

The 2025 AWP Conference & Bookfair takes place March 26–29, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Join Mizna for a long weekend of SWANA lit! At this year’s conference, Mizna will present an AWP Featured Event with Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and Mosaab Abu Toha, an AWP offsite event, and panels. Learn more about how to attend the AWP 2025 here.

Mizna + RAWI Booth

Catastrophe + Futurities: A Mizna AWP Offsite Event

Featured Event: Mizna Gathers Lena Khalaf Tuffaha & Mosab Abu Toha in Conversation

Mizna AWP Panel: Arab Time—Hybridizing Form, Language & Temporality

SWANA Panels

SWANA Caucus

Find Mizna + RAWI at Booth #355

Find Mizna journals and merch for the duration of AWP 2025 at booth #355. We’ll be sharing the booth with our friends at RAWI!

AWP SALE: Subscribe to Mizna and get a FREE back issue + a specially printed poem by Randa Jarrar from our forthcoming Futurities Issue!

Catastrophe + Futurities: A Mizna AWP Offsite Event

To kick off AWP 2025, join us in celebrating Mizna’s dual launch of the Catastrophe and forthcoming Futurities issues of our literary journal.

Featured readers include Randa Jarrar, Nancy Kricorian, Yahya Ashour, Sarah Aziza, Summer Farah, Gina Srmabekian, Umniya Najaer, Alia Taqieddine, and Pınar Banu Yaşar.

This event takes place on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 at 7pm at The River, 2929 Knox Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90039.

Doors will open at 6:30 and space is limited. We strongly encourage RSVPing, but walk-ins will be welcome if space is available.

TICKETS + MORE INFO

Featured Event: March 29, 2025 at 10:35am
Our People Shall Live: Mizna Gathers Lena Khalaf Tuffaha & Mosab Abu Toha in Conversation

As we mourn Gaza’s destruction by the recent campaign of Zionist genocide and watch a tenuous ceasefire evolve under an appalling new threat of American imperialism, we seek voices from Palestine to render, deconstruct, and reimagine these realities and our relationships to them. Toward that, Mizna is thrilled to host a critical conversation and reading with two major Palestinian poets: National Book Award winner Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and acclaimed Gazan poet Mosab Abu Toha. The two will share work responding to the ongoing catastrophe and engage in dialogue about Palestinian sumud, literature’s role in resisting genocide, and our collective futures in and beyond the world of poetry.

This event will take place in person in the Los Angeles Convention Center and will be livestreamed for virtual audiences. All livestreamed events include open captions.

Location: Petree Hall C, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center

Mizna AWP Panel

Thursday, Mar 27, 2025 12:10pm PDT
Mizna Presents: Arab Time—Hybridizing Form, Language & Temporality

To write in relation to Arabic in the US is to confront problematic “East meets West” discourse through contrapuntal processes that unlock entire canons, forms, and genres. Intergenerational Mizna contributors from diverse backgrounds explore how hybrid language generates formal possibility that embraces orality and interrogates homogeneity. Panelists discuss how vast Arabophone traditions provide innovative techniques for attending to narrative structure, time, language, voice, and more.

Speaker(s): George Abraham, Sarah Aziza, Jameelah Lang

Location: Room 511AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

SWANA Panels at AWP 2025

March 27, 2025 at 9am PDT
The Velvet Air of Gaza: Protest & Beauty 

This multigenre reading by mostly Palestinian writers focuses on what it means to write in the face of genocide and the global student protests against it. How do our words transcend mere empathy and reach beyond it to achieve active solidarity? What is the relationship between beauty and protest? Between protest and language? How do these relationships inform love in the tradition of Black radical love? Our readings will illuminate some possible answers to these urgent questions of our time.

Speaker(s): Samah Fadil, Samina Najmi, Lena Mubsutina, Deema Shehabi

Location: Room 411, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 27, 2025 at 12:10pm PDT
Poetry in Translation: Satisfactions & Discontents 

This panel brings together writers/translators from Iranian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Armenian backgrounds, all living in the American diaspora, and writing in their native tongues and in English. As poets, novelists, and literary scholars, the panelists tackle a wide array of issues, including linguistic transgressions, gains and losses, dual identities, and politics of translation at times of calamity.

Speaker(s): Fatemeh Shams, Ahmad Almallah, Armen Davoudian, Huda Fakhreddine 

Location: Room 513, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 27, 2025 at 3:20pm PDT
Theories of Vastness: On Capaciousness in Poetry 

What does it mean for a poetic work to be “capacious”? This term implies an expansiveness of scope and experience—the possibility for the primordial and the vatic to converge, the promise of poem as sprawling event. This panel explores the mysteries of the capacious poem, while demystifying capaciousness from a craft perspective. It asks what craft tools can be brought to bear to enact cultural, linguistic, and spiritual vastness in poetic space.

Speaker(s): Issam Zineh , Kazim Ali, Brenda Hillman, Roger Reeves

Location: Concourse Hall 151, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 10:35am PDT
Sumud Motifs: Woven Inheritances in Arab Visual & Literary Storytelling 

Award-winning Arab, Black, and Indigenous creators are weaving literary and visual elements, rendering multicultural multimedia modalities grounded in sumud/steadfastness and decolonial resistance to oppression. Award-winning Womanist/Queer/Trans creatives will share cutting-edge storytelling structures through graphic novels, installation art, poetry based on Palestinian Tatreez, dance/movement, graphic art, multilingual printmaking, and text within painting/audio/video/visual poetics.

Speaker(s): Doris Bittar, Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán,  Marguerite Dabaie,  Samah Fadil,  Micaela Kaibni Raen 

Location: Room 409AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 12:10pm
Beyond a Homeland: Celebrating Iranian American Women Writers 

How do writers make sense of the Iranian diasporic experience? This reading highlights Iranian American women fiction authors, all with incredibly varied connections to Iran. How do their relationships with a homeland that has been taken from them help shape the stories they tell? This is Iran beyond the news headlines. Discussion will follow the reading.

Speaker(s): Shideh Etaat, Jasmin Darznik, Sahar Delijani, Marjan Kamali, Porochista Khakpour 

Location: Room 405, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 1:45pm
We Are Still Here: A Reading for Palestinian & Armenian Solidarity 

IALA (International Armenian Literary Alliance) presents a reading of multigenre writers of Palestinian and Armenian descent. Their works in prose, poetry, and nonfiction examine culture and heritage in the diaspora despite ongoing campaigns of silencing by colonialist and fascist governments. In the face of exile and violence, our coalition fights for the recognition of our peoples’ safety and autonomy while celebrating writing as a continued form of resistance and survival.

Speaker(s): Gina Srmabekian,  Nancy Agabian, Mai Serhan, Raffi Wartanian, Priscilla Wathington 

Location: Room 501ABC, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 28, 2025 at 3:20pm
The Politics of Imagining: Poetry as Social Practice 

The political dimension penetrates every intimate aspect of human life—who is allowed to love whom and on what terms, who lives, who dies. Yet, “the political” is often relegated to a subgenre rather than being seen as the primary field of experience out of which the poetic imagination arises. This panel considers poetry within “a web of other social practices historically weighted with enormous imbalances of power” (Rich) and argues for a liberatory poetics that centers political consciousness.

Speaker(s): Issam Zineh, Courtney Faye Taylor, Cindy Juyoung Ok, Solmaz Sharif, George Abraham

Location: Room 406AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025 at 9am PDT
Behind the Acronym: Empowering Ethnic Voices – Launching a Literary Nonprofit 

What does it mean to be a literary nonprofit dedicated to a specific ethnic group? What are the benefits of highlighting diverse voices within a community that others see as defined by their cultural background? Hear from founders and arts administrators of the International Armenian Literary Alliance, Mizna, and the Radius of Arab American Writers on the importance of visibility, diversity, and practicalities in launching and maintaining a successful nonprofit.

Speaker(s): Arthur Kayzakian,  Shahe Mankerian,  Zeyn Joukhadar, Ellina Kevorkian

Location: Room 515A, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025 at 1:45pm
Fighting the Muzzle: Literary Organizing for Palestine During Genocide 

The invasion and genocide of Gaza has cost the lives of almost forty thousand Palestinians. In the United States, even acknowledging this unconscionable atrocity has been labeled as “complicated.” The leaders of three prominent Arab/SWANA literary organizations (Mizna, RAWI, and Palestine Writes) discuss the ways they have been silenced trying to promote Palestinian, Arab, and Southwest Asian and North African literature, and the methods they’ve used to break through this silence.

Speaker(s): Glenn Shaheen, Susan Abulhawa, Lana Barkawi, Sarah Aziza,  Tarik Dobbs

Location: Room 408B, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025 at 3:20pm
Innovations in Arab American Fiction 

A panel of groundbreaking Arab American fiction writers will read their work and discuss the trajectory of their artistic journeys. What is the responsibility of a writer to represent their culture in a society where their people are often maligned and misrepresented? How does the experience of Arab American writers working in fiction differ from other communities in this current cultural moment? 

Speaker(s): Zeyn Joukhadar,  Betty Shamieh, Ghassan Zeineddine, Sarah Cypher

Location: Concourse Hall 150 ABC, Level One, Los Angeles Convention Center

March 29, 2025, at 5pm
SWANA Writers Caucus

This will be a town hall–style meeting, creating a much-needed space for SWANA writers to build and connect within AWP. We invite established and emerging writers, editors, students, scholars, and organizers, and aim for the caucus to facilitate networking and exchange on literary endeavors, craft, publishing, poetics, and praxis. Our caucus seeks to empower and center the voices of underrepresented Americans with roots in SWANA cultures and communities.

Speaker(s): Aliah Lavonne Tigh, Rabha Ashry, Tariq Luthun, Pinar Banu Yasar, Sophia Babai

Location: Room 501ABC, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center

The post Mizna at AWP 2025 appeared first on Mizna.

English below

دعوةٌ لِلمشاركةِ فِي عددٍ مِن مجلَّةِ مزنة خاصٍّ بِغزَّة: إصدارٌ خاصٌّ مِن وإلى الكُتّابِ والكاتباتِ الغزِّيِّينَ/اتَ معَ المُحَرِّرِ الضَّيفِ يَحيى عاشور

قد انتهتْ فترة تسليم النصوص

في ظِلِّ هُدنةٍ غيْرِ وثيقةٍ بعدَ خمسةَ عشرَ شهراً مِن إبادةٍ جماعيَّةٍ وحصارٍ صهيونيٍّ على الفلسطينيّينَ/اتِ في غزَّة، تسعى مجلَّةُ مزنة في أمريكا، والتي تختصُّ بِأدبِ مَنْ لهم جذورٌ عربيَّة وجنوب غرب آسيويَّة، إلى تعزيزِ واحتضانِ أصواتٍ غزِّيَّة في إصدارٍ خاصّ. يُرحِّبُ المشروع، رِفقةَ المُحَرِّرِ الضيف، الشَّاعرِ الغزِّي يَحيى عاشور، بِمشاركاتٍ أدبيَّةٍ مِن كُتّابٍ وكاتباتٍ في غزَّة وكذلكَ كُتّابٍ وكاتباتٍ فلسطينيّينَ/اتٍ في الشَّتاتِ مِمَّن لهم جذورٌ غزِّيَّة 

محتوى المشاركاتِ مفتوح، سواءٌ أكانَ ذا صلةٍ بِالحصارِ والإبادةِ الجماعيَّةِ بِشكلٍ مباشرٍ أو غيرِ مباشرٍ، أو لمْ يكنْ له صلةٌ بذلكَ بِالمُطلق، فكُلُّ تجربةٍ تـ/يمرُّ بها الغزِّيّ/ة جديرةٌ بِالاهتمام

سيحصلُ الكُتّابُ والكاتباتُ على مكافأةٍ ماليّةٍ لا تقل عن ٢٠٠ دولار في حالِ تمَّ اختيارُ مُشاركاتِهمِ/هُنَّ

شروطُ التَّقديم

١. يجبُ ألّا يكونَ النصُّ الأدبيُّ منشوراً مُسبقاً بأيِّ شكل

٢. يمكنُ تقديمُ النَّصِّ الأدبيِّ بِاللُّغةِ العربيَّة أو الإنجليزيَّة

٣. كلُّ أجناسِ النُّصوصِ الأدبيَّةِ مقبولة

٤. يجبُ ألّا تتجاوزَ النُّصوصُ الأدبيَّة ٣ آلافِ كلمة؛ يُسمحُ بِتقديم ٣ قصائدَ كحدٍّ أقصى، أو نصٍّ أدبيِّ واحد

٥. يُرجى إرفاقُ نبذة مُختصرة عن الكاتبِ/ة مِن ٥٠ كلمة كحدٍّ أقصى، تتضمَّنُ المنطقةَ أو الحيّ الذي ترعرعَ/تْ فيهِ الكاتبُ/ ة أو أهله/ا في غزَّة، وعددِ مرَّاتِ النزوحِ. يمكنُ أيضاً إرفاقُ صورةٍ شخصيَّةٍ للكاتبِ/ة

٦. تُرسلُ النصوصُ الأدبيَّةُ إلى واحدةٍ من هاتينِ الوسيلتينِ وليسَ كِلتاهُما

عبرَ البريدِ الإلكترونيّ
gazafolio@mizna.org
أو، مِن بابِ التَّسهيلِ عبرَ رقمِ الواتساب: 0006 946 612 1

آخرُ موعدٍ لاستقبالِ المشاركاتِ هو ٣ آذار/مارس، ٢٠٢٥م، السَّاعةُ ١١:٥٩ مساءً بِتوقيتِ غزَّة

تعرَّف أكثر على يَحيى عاشور

تعرَّف أكثر على مجلَّةِ مزنة

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Mizna Gaza Folio: A special publication by and for Gazan writers guest-edited by Yahya Ashour

SUBMISSIONS ARE CURRENTLY CLOSED

At the juncture of a tenuous ceasefire after the fifteen-month-long Zionist genocide and siege of Palestinians in Gaza, the US-based Arab/SWANA literary journal Mizna seeks to amplify and embrace voices from Gaza with a special publication. Guest-edited by Gazan poet Yahya Ashour, the project welcomes submissions from writers in Gaza as well as Palestinian writers in diaspora who have roots in Gaza. 

The content is open—related to the siege and genocide directly or indirectly or not at all—every experience you have as a Gazan is relevant for consideration. 

Accepted writers will receive a minimum $200 USD honorarium.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

1. 1. Unpublished work
2. 2. English or Arabic only
3. 3. All literary forms accepted
4. 4. Under 3,000 words; maximum three poems, or one prose piece
5. 5. Fifty word author bio that includes where you originate from in Gaza. Optionally, you may include an author photo and how many times you have been forced to evacuate. 
6. 6. Submit writing to gazafolio@mizna.org, or, if needed, to Whatsapp number +1 612 946 0006.

DEADLINE: March 3, 2025, 11:59pm Gaza time

Learn more about Yahya Ashour

Learn more about Mizna

The post Call for Submissions | دعوةٌ لِلمشاركات appeared first on Mizna.

Mizna welcomes Moheb Soliman, who will begin as Executive Editor and Literary Programs, taking over from George Abraham’s distinguished period at the helm of the Mizna journal. Abraham will continue on in a new role as Editor at Large and Editor of Mizna Online, as they settle into their new faculty position as Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College’s English Department. “Over the past year, Mizna has played the critical role of providing space for our communities to gather in collective grief, rage, and solidarity. This staffing expansion comes as Mizna continues to meet an urgent moment for our communities in and from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan and beyond; publishing, screening, promoting, and preserving Arab & SWANA voices through new and existing programs,” says Mizna’s Deputy Director Ellina Kevorkian.

Soliman first joined the staff of Mizna more than ten years ago as a transplant from Montreal, moving to Minnesota, where Mizna is rooted, to work as Community Liaison and eventually becoming Program Director, working closely with director Lana Salah Barkawi. For five years, he became familiar with local and national contemporary Arab/SWANA creative spheres, and led Mizna into new interdisciplinary art and literary territories. During this time, Soliman developed his own practice as a poet and performance artist, creating work at the intersection of identity, modernity, nature, and otherness. “I am thrilled to be back with the organization, colleagues, and community that so deeply shaped me. I can’t wait to continue the work of amplifying and expanding the boundaries of our creative expression and critical consciousness,” says Soliman.

In 2018, Soliman left Minneapolis for the multi-year Tulsa Artist Fellowship and eventually returned for a BIPOC-centric fellowship with Milkweed Editions. There, he focused on development and acquisition for the Seedbank series, which holds books from across the globe and across time that deal with human relationships to environment, place, and the non-human living world. He was also part of the Milkweed editorial team, guiding diverse poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction manuscripts through the publication process to books. Both of these recent immersions, in addition to years of project management and programming work with an array of Twin Cities arts organizations and national literary institutions, make his return to Mizna in this new capacity a fitting, exciting, and happy one. 

Moheb Soliman attended Eugene Lang at the New School for Social Research and the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. His debut poetry book HOMES was published by Coffee House Press. He lives in Northeast Minneapolis with his partner, writer Kathryn Savage. 

George Abraham is a Palestinian American poet, essayist, critic, and performance artist. They are the author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America (Haymarket, 2026) and Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020), which won the Arab American Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.  As Executive Editor of Mizna, Abraham has spearheaded the production process of three print journals, Myth and Memory, Cinema, and Catastrophe, and has helped launch and edit our new digital publication, Mizna Online. On their new position, Abraham commented, “I am excited to continue visioning and producing an online publication which complements our biannual print publication with regular content reflecting on the urgent and current realities of the SWANA region and beyond. In a moment where so many authors and artists are being censored for expressing their solidarity with Palestine, Mizna Online has become a vital space. As we continue to stand against the genocide in Gaza, we have focused much of our efforts this past year on publishing work in solidarity with Palestine. Forthcoming work will continue to critically engage with Palestine and Sudan as well as recent developments in Syria and beyond. We also look forward to expanding our work in literary and cultural criticism, with projects such as Hazem Fahmy’s Uncrafted column, and other urgent projects addressing gaps in the literary landscape.”

The post Moheb Soliman Rejoins Mizna Staff as Executive Editor and Literary Programs Director appeared first on Mizna.

The 2025 Mizna Film Series presents some of our favorite archival classics from the past 60 years of Iran’s cinema history. Beginning with a beloved film from Abbas Kiarostami and ending with a tribute to Dariush Mehrjui, we’re proud to present these films in collaboration with the Twin Cities Iranian Culture Collective, Archives on Screen, and the Trylon Cinema.

Learn more about the Mizna Film Series here.

Tickets

In-person Trylon tickets: $10
Virtual Tickets: Pay what you can, $5 suggested donation

JAN 19: CELLULOID UNDERGROUND BY EHSAN KHOSHBAKHT

(2023, DCP, 80 m, English and Farsi with English subtitles) dir Ehsan Khoshbakht
After the Iranian Revolution, a movie collector in Tehran hid thousands of films
to prevent their destruction by the new Islamic regime. Despite arrest and
torture, he refused to give up his secret. His story of resistance and obsession is
told by the boy who became his partner in crime, recalled years later from exile
in London.

This screening is presented in collaboration with the Iranian Film Festival at the Main Cinema.

Watch in-person only on January 19, 2025, 1pm at the Main Cinema.

JAN 22: WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE? BY ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

(1987, DCP, 83m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Abbas Kiarostami
The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing trilogy of films set in the northern Iranian village of Koker takes a premise of fable-like simplicity—a boy searches for the home of his classmate whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous, child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Shot through with all the wonder, beauty, tension, and mystery one day can contain, Where Is the Friend’s House? established Kiarostami’s reputation as one of cinema’s most sensitive and profound humanists.

Watch in-person only on January 22, 2025 at 7pm at Trylon Cinema

FEB 16 AT IL CINEMA RITROVATO ON TOUR

THE SEALED SOIL + MARJAN AT IL CINEMA RITROVATO ON TOUR

THE SEALED SOIL

(1977, 90 m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Marva Nabil

Writer-director Marva Nabili made history in 1977 with The Sealed Soil, the first feature film directed by an Iranian woman to be preserved in its entirety to this day. In pre-revolutionary Iran, a young woman refuses to follow the path imposed on her after reaching marriageable age. Meanwhile, we observe the day-to-day life of her family and an entire village forced to move by government order. The young protagonist’s persistent need for independence causes her family to question whether this is a case of demonic possession, and they turn to an exorcist to free her from these undue thoughts and desires. The Sealed Soil is a powerful story of female empowerment, proving that revolutions can also be internal and silent.

MARJAN

(1956, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Marva Nabil

Marjan (1956) is the first Persian feature film directed and produced by a woman in Iran. Filmmaker Shahla Riahi (Ghodrat-ol-Zaman Vafadoost) plays the lead role of Marjan, a Roma woman whose doomed romance with a young school teacher has multiple endings, according to key sources. Shot on 35mm black-and-white film with a runtime of 105 minutes, Marjan was the inaugural production of Arya Film Studio, founded by Riahi herself in 1956. Unfortunately, only two reels of the film can be viewed today, preserved by the Iranian film collector Ahmad Jorghanian, while further surviving reels in the Iranian National Film Center remain completely inaccessible. Film scholar Farzaneh Ebrahimzadeh Holasu will present the surviving fragments in person.

This screening is presented in collaboration with the Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour at the Main Cinema.

Watch in-person only on February 16, 2025 at 1pm.

APRIL 23: BRICK AND MIRROR + THE HOUSE IS BLACK

BRICK AND MIRROR

(1965, DCP, 131m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Ebrahim Golestan 

With this landmark debut feature, director Ebrahim Golestan delivers a jolt of modernism to pre-revolution Iranian cinema, laying the groundwork for the first new wave. When a mysterious woman (feminist literary icon Forugh Farrokhzād, and director of The House Is Black) abandons a baby in the backseat of his cab one night, Tehran taxi driver Hashem (Zakaria Hashemi) begins a journey through the city’s unfeeling bureaucracy as he attempts to find a home for the infant—a situation that soon puts him in conflict with his nurturing girlfriend Taji (Taji Ahmadi). Melding the influences of Persian poetry, 1960s European art cinema, and Wellesian expressionism, Brick and Mirror offers a portrait of a crumbling relationship that reflects on many contemporary social and political dynamics. 

THE HOUSE IS BLACK

(1964, DCP, 22m, Farsi with English subtitles) dir Forugh Farrokhzād 

The only film directed by trailblazing feminist Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzād finds unexpected grace where few would think to look: a leper colony where inhabitants live, worship, learn, play, and celebrate in a self-contained community cut off from the rest of the world. Through ruminative voiceover narration drawn from the Old Testament, the Qur’an, and the filmmaker’s own poetry as well as unflinching images that refuse to look away from physical difference, Farrokhzād creates a profoundly empathetic portrait of those cast off by society—an indelible face-to-face encounter with the humanity behind the disease. A key forerunner of the Iranian New Wave, The House Is Black is a triumph of transcendent lyricism from a visionary artist whose influence is only beginning to be fully appreciated.

Watch IN-PERSON ONLY April 23, 2024 at 7pm at Trylon Cinema

JULY 23: GILANEH BY RAKHSHAN BANIETEMAD& MOHSEN ABDOLVAHAB

On New Year’s Eve during the Iran-Iraq war, while Tehran endures relentless missile attacks, a middle-aged villager named Gilaneh must help her children navigate the war’s impacts. Fifteen years later, on another New Year’s Eve, the echoes of war linger in each of their lives. Directed by one of Iran’s most prolific female filmmakers, Gilaneh offers an intimate, emotionally gripping portrait of a mother whose life is shattered by war’s relentless toll, a reality that the film links to two critical, historical moments: the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Gilaneh reflects on the enduring human cost of war, transcending time and politics, and Fatemeh Motamed Arya’s powerful performance brings humor, resilience, and profound humanity to the screen.

Programmed by Mizna friend and frequent collaborator, Professor Sima Shakhsari, who will introduce the film screening. 

Watch IN-PERSON ONLY July 23, 2025 at 7pm Trylon Cinema

JULY 26: TALES (GHESHA) BY RAKHSHAN BANIETEMAD

Composed of seven interconnected stories, each delving into the struggles and complexities of working-class life and labor, Tales reflects on myriad social, political, and personal crises facing modern Iranians. Blending documentary and narrative forms, the film subverts expectations and examines the relationship between reality and storytelling, blurring these lines to examine the impacts of drug addiction, domestic violence, and union crackdowns, all bound up in a critique of an overly bureaucratic state. Selected to compete and screen at many renowned events, like the Venice International Film Festival and TIFF, Banietemad’s film is as relevant today as it was upon its release.

Watch IN-PERSON ONLY July 26, 2025 at 1pm Trylon Cinema

OCT 11: THE APPLE BY SAMIRA MAKHMALBAF

1997, Iran, 35mm, in Persian and Azerbaijani with English subtitles, 83 min.

In Tehran, an elderly father lives with his 12-year-old twin daughters, Massoumeh and Zahra, and his blind wife—who all play themselves in this re-creation of a news story. The strict father has imprisoned his daughters in the family’s home for years. When a social worker locks the father inside, the daughters become free to explore the world outside as their father reflects on his actions. With her hybrid documentary blending reality and fiction with drama, the then-17-year-old Samira Makhmalbaf became the world’s youngest director to participate in the official section of the 1998 Cannes Film Festival with the film’s release.

Mizna Film Series presents this screening in collaboration with the Walker Art Center as part of their series, Cinema Revived: Timeless Selections from the Vault, an ongoing presentation of notable feature-length films from the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection.

Watch IN-PERSON ONLY October 11, 2025 at 2pm at the Walker Art Center

OCT 22: THE PEAR TREE BY DARUISH MEHRJUI

1998, 96m, Iran, Farsi with English subtitles

Directed by Dariush Mehrjui, most well known for his influential Iranian New Wave film The Cow (1969), The Pear Tree examines nostalgia, love, and memory through the autumnal scenes of cinematographer Mahmoud Kalari. When author Mahmoud (Homayoun Ershadi) struggles with writer’s block, he retreats to the country house of his childhood. There, he finds a prized pear tree that refuses to bear fruit, which serves as a visual metaphor for his inability to produce work and a reminder of a lost love from his youth. Starring Golshifteh Farahani in her feature film debut, Mehrjui’s masterpiece saturates middle-aged doubt and regret in golden hues and idyllic landscapes.

Watch October 22, 2025 at 7pm at the Trylon Cinema

The post Mizna Film Series 2025: Iranian Classics appeared first on Mizna.

Mizna is pleased to announce our 2025 Pushcart Prize Nominations. The Pushcart Prize is an annual award and publication that honors the best poetry and prose published by small presses. Read the nominated pieces in our literary journal or on our digital literary platform, Mizna Online, today.

This Rubble is Mine by Noor Hindi, published in Mizna 25.1, Catastrophe

Gaza 2 Khartoum by Mohammed Zenia, published on Mizna Online

The Senses by Mona Kareem, featured in our forthcoming issue Mizna 25.2, Futurities

Flashbang by Leila Mansouri, published in Mizna 25.1, Catastrophe and Mizna Online

On Execution by Abdelrahman ElGendy, published on Mizna Online

Autobiography of Gaza by Diaa Wadi, published on Mizna Online

The post 2025 Pushcart Prize Nominations appeared first on Mizna.

PLEASE READ THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES CAREFULLY, UNSOLICITED SUBMISSIONS SENT TO OUR EMAIL AND SUBMISSIONS THAT DO NOT ADHERE TO THE GUIDELINES WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED.

SUBMISSIONS ARE CURRENTLY CLOSED

We are opening submissions for our unthemed Summer 2025 Issue, Mizna 26.1, December 6, 2024-January 6, 2025. We write this call as the ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza has passed its one year mark. In the midst of catastrophe and on the brink of new waves of fascism, we look towards cultural work— art, writing, music, film, and criticism— as the generative space in which our communities can come together in grief, rage, and solidarity as we redefine and upend our current world order. For this unthemed issue, we continue to encourage work that affirms the necessity of resistance and steadfastness against imposed structures of catastrophe; work that imagines new collectivities, new forms of struggle, new worlds. We welcome writing which centers Palestine, Armenia, Afghanistan, Sudan, Morocco, Libya, and beyond, places directly affected by the worst of recent imperial devastations. As solidarity with Palestine continues to be met with harsher forms of censorship, doxxing, cancellation of awards and events, expulsion from universities, and firing from professional positions, we also encourage writing from our anti-Zionist comrades as well as those who have been subjected to the aforementioned silencing. While we welcome submissions from former contributors seeking a space for their work in this urgent moment, we also especially encourage submissions from writers who have never been published by us before. 

Mizna has long been a home for literature with innovative, experimental forms, as well as visual art that is published with high quality print production practices. As such, we especially encourage ongoing submissions of visual poetry work, or hybrid works that cross the arbitrary boundaries of genre. In general, literary works of poetry, visual poetry, fiction, flash fiction, nonfiction, creative nonfiction, comics, collage, invented forms, and any forms of mixed print or hybrid work will all be considered. 

Submitters do not need to be SWANA or Arab identified, but work submitted should be considerate of Mizna’s ethos and the social realities of our audiences, as well as aim to contribute to ongoing conversations in and beyond our communities. We encourage submitters to read back issues of Mizna before submitting work for consideration. 

There are no submission fees. Selected contributors receive a $200 honorarium, a 1-year subscription to Mizna, and 5 copies of the issue.

The post Call for Submissions: Mizna Summer Issue 26.1 appeared first on Mizna.

Mizna is thrilled to announce that we have been awarded the Anan Ameri Lifetime Achievement Award from the Arab American National Musuem. This news comes as our organization marks twenty-five years of nurturing an unburdened space for artists, filmmakers, and writers to create and share their critical work with our communities.

The Anan Ameri Lifetime Achievement Award was established in 2022 to recognize exceptional body of work by an individual or organization and contributions towards advancing the field of Arab American writing and letters and spans the length of the awardee’s career.

The award will be celebrated at the annual Arab American Book Award ceremony November 9, 2024 at the AANM in Dearborn, Michigan.

The post Mizna Wins Arab American Book Award: Anan Ameri Lifetime Achievement Award appeared first on Mizna.

Take a look at what Mizna achieved in 2023.

The post 2023 Annual Report appeared first on Mizna.