Writer Ghassan Kanafani (1936-1972) is widely regarded as one of
Palestine's greatest novelists, writing some of the most admired
stories in modern Arabic literature. He was also an intellectual
and political activist. His novellas and short stories, which have
been translated into dozens of languages, are considered today to
have been ahead of their time, both in form and content.
Kanafani wrote the novella Returning to Haifa in 1968, and
published it in 1969, a testament not only to his principled
commitment to the politics of liberation, but also to his deep
empathy for the 'other' as well as his modern approach to
storytelling. Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated by a car bomb in
Beirut in 1972 at the age of 36.
His young niece Lamis was with him in the car and was killed by the
same bomb. Kanafani's obituary in Lebanon's The Daily Star wrote
that: 'He was a commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a
ball-point pen, and his arena the newspaper pages.'
Ismail Khalidi was born in Beirut and raised in the United States.
His plays include Truth Serum Blues and Sabra Falling (Pangea World
Theater, Minneapolis), Tennis in Nablus (Alliance Theatre, Atlanta)
and Foot (Teatro Amal, Chile). His writing has appeared in numerous
anthologies as well as in The Nation, Guernica, American Theatre,
Mizna and Remezcla. Ismail co-edited (with Naomi Wallace)
Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora. He is
currently under commission from Noor Theatre and Actors Theatre of
Louisville and is a visiting artist with Teatro Amal in Chile.
Naomi Wallace's Finborough Theatre productions include And I And
Silence, which subsequently transferred to Signature Theater, New
York City. Theatre includes In the Heart of America (Bush Theatre),
Slaughter City (Royal Shakespeare Company), One Flea Spare (Public
Theater, New York City), The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek and Things
of Dry Hours (New York Theatre Workshop), The Fever Chart: Three
Visions of the Middle East (Public Theater, New York City), and
Night is a Room (Signature Theater, New York City). Naomi has been
awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize twice, the Fellowship of
Southern Writers Drama Award, the Obie Award and the Horton Foote
Award. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a
National Endowment for the Arts development grant. In 2013, Naomi
received the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama, and in
2015 an Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Her play One Flea
Spare was recently incorporated into the permanent repertoire of
the French National Theatre, La Comédie-Française. Only two
American playwrights have been added to La Comédie's repertoire in
two hundred years, the other being Tennessee Williams.
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