Wahrheiten, die Niemand sucht

Truths No One Seeks
Readings & Conversation

I do not write as a detached observer or a distant intellectual. I write as someone whose hands have sifted through broken glass for signs of life. As someone who has memorized the names of children who will never grow up. As someone who still dreams, foolishly, that words can matter — even here.
— Alaa Alqaisi, We Knocked Until Our Hands Broke

How does living through genocide shape a writer just finding their voice? Alaa Alqaisi is an essayist and poet from Gaza who began writing during the most recent Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip. Yasmeen Daher speaks to Alaa about learning her craft under unimaginably brutal conditions, and being forced to write about ‘truths no one seeks.’

A conversation in English with readings from Alaa’s recent work.

Alaa Alqaisi’s work appears or is forthcoming in The Nation, Worms, Literary Hub, PalFest, Adi Magazine, ArabLit and elsewhere. She holds an MA in Translation Studies and is currently a PhD candidate in comparative literature at Trinity College Dublin. Her writing and scholarship explore how literature and storytelling bear witness to the harshest lived realities and journey across cultures. This winter she is in residence at the Literary Colloquium Berlin (LCB) with the support of the Goethe-Institut in Exile.

Yasmeen Daher is a Palestinian writer and researcher. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Montreal. She taught previously at Birzeit University and Simone de Beavour institute in Canada. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Potsdam.

An evening of readings and conversation addressing potential futures between the river and the sea, curated by Abdalrahman Alqalaq, Katharine Halls and Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus