Event

Featured Speakers

Hilal Chouman is a Lebanese novelist and writer born in Beirut. He has written five novels in Arabic: Stories of Sleep (Dar Malamih, 2008); Napolitana (Dar Al Adab, 2010); Limbo Beirut (Dar Al Tanweer, 2012); Once Upon a Time, Tomorrow (Dar Al Saqi, 2016), and Sadness in My Heart (Khan AlJanub, 2022). In 2017, Limbo Beirut, translated into English by Anna Ziajka Stanton and published by University of Texas Press, was nominated for the PEN Translation Prize and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize. Currently, Hilal is in the early stages of writing his next novel, tentatively entitled Safe Space. He is also working on a graphic novel, with the working title Not Here, Not There, with artist Emma Harake. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Radwa El Barouni is currently the director and coordinator of the Arabic Language Program at the University of Pennsylvania in the MELC department. Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania, she previously taught Arabic literature, language and translation at Williams College, Durham University (U.K) and at UT Austin. She also taught and was the main curricula developer in the Flagship Capstone Year Abroad program (Egypt, Morrocco) and the Middlebury C.V Starr program (Egypt) in among other study abroad programs. She was a consultant for the Flagship Culture Initiative 2018-2019, and trained faculty for Arabic as a Foreign Language in the Flagship program in Morocco with the American Councils for International Education in 2019. She has contributed to and designed material for the culture website Khallina.

This event is co-sponsored by MELC, MEC, and Comparative Literature and Literary Theory.