The Homeland Dwells in Poetry

Online Poetry Readings & Gaza Fundraiser
Thursday, August 14 at 7:00 PM
On Zoom

Registration is necessary. Please register here.

Featuring:

Palestinian poets Mosab Abu Toha, George Abraham, and Sara Abou Rashed

Readings by New York activists and writers including Ella Engel-Snow, Kathy Engel, Kathryn Levy, and Farhana Islam

Recorded readings from Gaza by poet Batool Abu Akleen and writer & translator Alaa Alqaisi

Music by Long Island band DariNation

Moderated by Mara Ahmed

Mutual Aid:

This fundraiser will benefit journalist Salem Ahmed’s initiative, on the ground in Gaza, which provides food to families. Salem and his team purchase vegetables and meats from local markets and distribute them to hundreds of Palestinian families in displacement camps. The price of each basket is about $22. Learn more about Salem’s work which includes food distribution, water lines for clean water, and tents to protect displaced families. You can learn more and donate here.

More about our featured poets:

Mosab Abu Toha is the author of Forest of Noise and winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

George Abraham (they/هو) 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. They are editor at large of Mizna, and co-editor of Heaven Looks Like Us (Haymarket, 2025), longlisted for the Palestine Book Award. They teach at Amherst College as a Writer-in-Residence.

Sara Abou Rashed is a Palestinian poet, speaker, and creator of the one-woman show, A Map of Myself. A former poetry fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, her work has been commended by the UK Forward Prize and was awarded the prestigious Hopwood Award for Poetry from the University of Michigan, where she earned her MFA. Sara’s writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The LA Review of Books, Poetry Magazine, Poetry Wales, as well as in anthologies including Ask the Night for a Dream, Heaven Looks Like Us, and A Land with a People. Sara lives in Columbus, Ohio, where she’s working on her first book and will soon begin her PhD at Ohio State University.

More about our poet and writer from Gaza:

Batool Abu Akleen is a 20-year-old Palestinian poet and translator, born and raised in Gaza City. She was a student of English Literature and Translation at the Islamic University of Gaza. At the age of fifteen, Abu Akleen won the Parjeel Poetry Prize for her poem I Did Not Steal the Cloud. Her poem I Want a Grave was published in Penguin’s Letters from Gaza (2025). She was the 2024 Poet-in-Residence with Modern Poetry in Translation. Her poem Gunpowder was among the winners of The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2025. Her debut bilingual poetry collection 48Kg was published by Tenement Press in June 2025.

Alaa Alqaisi is a Palestinian translator, writer, and researcher from Gaza with an MA in Translation Studies. She is deeply passionate about literature, language, and the power of storytelling to bridge cultures and bear witness to lived realities. Her work has been featured in ArabLit, ArabLit Quarterly, the Avery Review, and Adi Magazine.

Sponsored by:

PALI Coalition, PALI Birds, Muslims for Progress, East End for Peace & Justice, and the Warp & Weft Archive

Co-sponsored by Mizna