Life Stories
Greetings, dear friends. In this most horrific of times as we continue to watch a livestreamed genocide in Gaza, I’m sending you a quick note about two upcoming events. Both are benefits for organizations providing medical care and psychosocial support to Palestinian children.
On Saturday, November 9th from 3-5 p.m. on Zoom, I will be offering a workshop entitled Life Stories that is part of Workshops for Gaza, which organizes online classes and workshops on a variety of topics to raise money for Palestinians who are trying to survive the ongoing genocide of their people and the destruction of their homeland.
LIFE STORIES: In this workshop with novelist Nancy Kricorian, participants will use family stories and oral history as a point of departure for writing fiction and narrative nonfiction. Participants will read short prose pieces by authors such as Grace Paley, Jayne Anne Phillips, and William Saroyan, then work on a series of in-class writing exercises to be shared and discussed.
I have selected the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund as the recipient of monies from my workshop. In 2017 when I was on a research trip to Beirut, I met Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon who is a close friend of a friend. As I listened to his stories at a café in Hamrah, I was impressed by the work he did with children who had been injured in war zones. When the genocide started in Gaza I was amazed and awed to see him in news reports from the besieged hospitals in the Strip.
You can sign up for the workshop here. You may donate to the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund here.
Also on November 9th, I will be participating in a reading entitled Translators Against Genocide from 6-8 p.m. at The People’s Forum in Manhattan. I’m a bit of a cuckoo’s egg as a novelist in this lineup of literary translators, including my friends Susan Bernofsky, Nick Glastonbury, and Kira Joseffson. The event is part of the Writers for Palestine series and will be a benefit for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
I’ll write a longer message soon. In the meantime, please read Arundhati Roy’s brilliant PEN Pinter Prize acceptance speech. And as poet Eileen Myles tells us, do everything you can to stop the U.S.-sponsored genocide in Gaza and mass murder in Lebanon.
Yours in struggle,
Nancy K
October 15, 2024