Literature has long been a powerful way of exploring identity, belonging, and the experience of displacement. Three award-winning authors discuss the fiction and poetry of the Palestinian diaspora and its role in evoking empathy, building solidarity and effecting change, with writer and human rights lawyer Sara M Saleh.
Winner of NSW Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry 2025 and the Mary Gilmore Award 2025, Hasib Hourani’s book-length poem rock flight is a moving testament to the dispossession of the Palestinian people.
Winner 2025 SMH Best Young Australian Novelist and shortlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize, NSW Premier's Literary Awards and MUD Literary Prize, Jumaana Abdu’s Translations sees its protagonist and her daughter move to rural New South Wales to make a new life, securing a run-down property where she hires a farmhand, Shep, an extremely private Palestinian man and the region’s imām.
Set in Sydney, and with a focus on two of today’s most contested fields, academia and the media, Randa Abdel-Fattah’s latest novel Discipline tallies the price we all pay when those with privilege choose to remain silent.
These three award-winning authors discuss the fiction and poetry of the Palestinian diaspora and its role in building solidarity and effecting change, with writer and human rights lawyer Sara M Saleh.
Sara M Saleh is the daughter of migrants from Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon, living on Bidjigal land. Sara’s first novel Songs for the Dead and the Living was shortlisted for the 2024 NSW Premier's Awards, and she made history as the first poet to win both the 2021 Peter Porter Poetry Prize and the 2020 Judith Wright Poetry Prize. Her first poetry collection The Flirtation of Girls/Ghazal el-Banat won the Anne Elder Poetry prize, and was shortlisted for the Mary Gilmore Award and the ALS Gold Medal in 2024.
Hasib Hourani is a Lebanese-Palestinian writer, editor, arts worker and educator living on unceded Gadigal Country. His debut book, rock flight, was released with Giramondo in 2024, and went on to win the NSW Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry 2025 and the Mary Gilmore Award 2025. Rock flights was also shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for Poetry 2025 and the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize 2025.
Jumaana Abdu is the author of Translations which was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, the MUD Literary Prize, and a NSW Premier's Literary Award. She was named Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist in 2025 and her widely published fiction and essays have won the Dal Stivens Award, the Patricia Hackett Prize and the Phoebe Journal fiction prize. During the day, she is a medical doctor.
Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah is an ARC Future Fellow at Macquarie University. She is also a former lawyer and the award-winning author of 12 books for children and young adults, which have been translated into over 13 languages. She has won and been shortlisted and longlisted for awards including the Australian Book Industry Award, the Australian Book of The Year Award, the Victorian and NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, the Stella Prize, the Children’s Book Council Award, Middle East Outreach Council USA and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Randa’s bilingual English and Arabic picture story book 11 Words for Love, illustrated by Maxine Beneba Clarke, was shortlisted for the 2023 Prime Minister's Literary Award. Her new novel is Discipline.
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This event is part of the Main Program and included as part of Platinum, Gold, Silver and Saturday Bronze Passes.
Subject to availability, a limited number of single tickets may become available 9 September.
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This venue is wheelchair accessible. Please visit our Accessibility page or email hello@bluemountainswritersfestival.com.au if you have any other accessibility requirements.