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Friday October 16, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

Part of Words Around the World
Sponsored by Center for the Art of Translation


Poetry has always served as a mode of resistance in Palestinian culture. In defiance of dispossession and decades of military siege, of a nakba that never ended, of historical and cultural obfuscation, of unrelenting violence and thousands of martyred people, the “power to narrate,” as Edward Said wrote, remains a necessary tool for self-determination. As Palestinian history remains haunted by exile, violence, and grief, there’s more here that’s also true: queer and feminist perspectives, eco-poetry, meditations on love and time, and lineages of protest. These poems reclaim that power to narrate, bridging borders, languages, and generations to forge new conversations around resistance and liberation. Featuring Heaven Looks Like Us anthology contributors Zeina Hashem Beck, Janine Mogannam, Deema Shehabi, Jen Siraganian, Priscilla Wathington, and Omar Zahzah. Doors at 6:30pm. 
Speakers
avatar for Zeina Hashem Beck

Zeina Hashem Beck

Zeina Hashem Beck is the author of This Was Supposed to Be About Beauty, a collection of mirror sonnets forthcoming from Penguin Books in March 2027. She’s the winner of the 2023 Arab American Book Award for Poetry for O, which was named a Best Book of the Year by Literary Hub and... Read More →
avatar for Janine Mogannam

Janine Mogannam

Janine Mogannam is a diasporic Palestinian poet, librarian, and literary curator from San Francisco/Ramaytush Ohlone land. Her work has been supported by Tin House, VONA, RAWI, Kearny Street Workshop, and The Speakeasy Project. She has performed and programmed with Still Here San... Read More →
avatar for Deema Shehabi

Deema Shehabi

Deema K. Shehabi is a Palestinian-American poet and editor. Deema is the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon and co-editor with Beau Beausoleil of Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, for which she received a Northern California Book Award. She’s also co-author of Water to Water... Read More →
avatar for Priscilla Wathington

Priscilla Wathington

Priscilla Wathington is a Palestinian American poet and the author of the chapbook, "Paper and Stick." Her poems have appeared in The Adroit Journal, Four Way Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She is currently serving as a 2026-2028 Wallace Stegner... Read More →
avatar for Omar Zahzah

Omar Zahzah

Omar Zahzah is a writer, poet, freelance journalist, and Assistant Professor of Arab, Muslim, Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies in the Department of Race and Resistance Studies (RRS) at San Francisco State University. A scholar and organizer of Lebanese Palestinian descent... Read More →
avatar for Jen Siraganian

Jen Siraganian

Jen Siraganian is an Armenian-American writer and former Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, California. Her debut collection, Everything Has Been Moved, Even the Dead, which won the 2026 Perugia Press Prize, was a finalist for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize and The Journal’s Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize, and a semi-finalist for the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, and Vassar Miller Prize. Her poems have won... Read More →
Friday October 16, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books 1501 Grant Ave, San Francisco

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