WASAFIRI'S UAE ISSUE COMES HOME

Join us at the launch of Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue in its home country on Sunday, 14 September, at Bayt AlMamzar in Dubai — for an afternoon of conversation, readings, film, and a community meal.

Guest co-edited by Laure Assaf and Deepak Unnikrishnan, this special issue comprises contributors who are makers – of books, arts, texts, and community – with ties to the United Arab Emirates and/or the Gulf. They are brought into conversation across generations and disciplines, reflecting on what this place is for them, and what it does to them.

Marking the issue’s launch in the UAE, this afternoon will invite community members into a guided, yet open conversation on how we can build and nourish a local literary ecosystem and arts activations and platforms within the UAE. What avenues exist – and can be imagined – for both emerging and established creatives to make, share, and bring their work together? Speakers include visual artist Sree, author and bookmaker Ahmad Makia, issue guest editor and novelist Deepak Unnikrishnan, and Wasafiri Deputy Editor and writer Vamika Sinha as moderator. There will be space for audience members to be part of expanding this conversation by harnessing the intimate, grassroots, and discursive nature of Bayt AlMamzar, which is one of the few community-run art spaces offering writing residences in the UAE.

The conversation will be followed with readings and performances – by issue contributors and those belonging to the wider UAE arts and literary scene – including Ziad Abdullah, Shayma AlHarthi, Fatima AlJarman, Nada Almosa, Farah Fawzi Ali, and Noora Jabir.Chai and snacks will be available; please join us for a community meal at the event’s close.

Copies of Wasafiri 122: The UAE Issue will be on sale at the event. You can also purchase a print copy via our website.

When: Sunday, 14 September, 5-7pm

Where: Bayt AlMamzar, House 2, 26 Street, Al Mamzar, Dubai, UAE

Tickets: Free, but registration required

Access: Wheelchair accessible

This event is supported by the NYU Abu Dhabi Arts and Humanities Research Kitchen Al-Mashhad and NYU Abu Dhabi Literature & Creative Writing and Arab Crossroads Studies Programs.

Ziad Abdullah is a Syrian novelist, short story writer, and poet. He is the author of several novels, including Bur Dubai (2008), Dynamite (2012), Dogs of Liberated Zones (2017), and The Biography of Buhaira al Inkeshari (2019). His short story collections include The Strange Chronicles of Half Named Man (2016) and Syria, My Love (2021). He has also published poetry collections such as Slightly Before Ink (2000) and Highway Angels (2005).

Shayma AlHarthi is a 21-year-old from Sharjah and a curator of words and stories that traverse through the Arabian Peninsula and coasts. She has pursued a BA in Social Research and Public Policy with a minor in Creative Writing at NYU Abu Dhabi. Her interests include interrogating ways through which art, culture, and new media intersect with the political.

Fatima AlJarman is a writer, researcher, and cultural practitioner based between the UAE and New York City. She is the founding editor-in-chief of Unootha and a writing residency co-director + public programs co-ordinator at Bayt AlMamzar. A summer 2025 resident at MiZa, Fatima is currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she researches exophonic and experimental writing practices in the Emirates.

Nada Almosa is a Palestinian artist and writer. Her practice navigates nostalgia, identity-making, and play through mixed media, photography, and creative writing. Her works draw inspiration from her Palestinian heritage as well as the desire to preserve memory and chronicle stories of diaspora. She is a graduate of Literature & Creative Writing from NYU Abu Dhabi (2021). She has published works in Corniche Comic Anthology, Mizna, Strange Horizons, Sekka Magazine, and Postscript Magazine.

Farah Fawzi Ali is an Egyptian-Filipina researcher, curator, and writer. Her written work can be found in Postscript Magazine, Global Art Daily, Sampaguita Press, Art Dubai, Ward Magazine, and Unootha Magazine. She is currently pursuing an MA in Museum and Critical Heritage Studies at Global Studies University, with a focus on the African continent. As a resident of the Bayt Al Mamzar 'Excess' Summer Writing Residency, Farah is currently creating a body of work focused on Filipino diaspora in the Gulf through magical realism, speculative fiction, poetry, and prose.

Noora Jabir is a postgraduate researcher at NYU Abu Dhabi with a degree in Arab Crossroad Studies. Her research largely focuses on the Indian Ocean world, exploring the construction, preservation, and expression of heritage in the region. She also helped create the MENASA (Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia) region’s first family business history database as a research assistant for the Family Business Histories Project.

Ahmad Makia is a geographer, author, and bookmaker. His work spans the fields of spatial studies and human geography, gender and identity, Arab and Islamic history and material philosophy. He is founder and creative director of HYPERHOUSE, a boutique publisher and editorial practice; Head of Publications at Sharjah Art Foundation, a contemporary arts organisation; and Architecture and Design Editor at Kaph Books. He has published essays in academic journals, magazines, artist books, zines, and online.

Sree (b.1998) is a third-generation Malayalee immigrant of the UAE who experiments with sound, film, sculpture, and installations that activate as performance. Their work predominantly engages with humans, archives, extra-terrestrials, and urban ecologies in order to inspect migrant modalities in the Gulf that challenge traditional and ‘global’ notions of majoritarianism, codedness, self-organisation, and indigeneity.

Vamika Sinha is an independent arts and culture critic and Deputy Editor at Wasafiri. She holds an MA in Comparative Literature from SOAS, University of London and a BA from NYU Abu Dhabi. Born in India and raised in Botswana, she lives in London, and considers the UAE another home. Her research and critical interests include postcoloniality, migration, cosmopolitanism, the novel, and forms of dissident publishing. She is one of the founders of Postscript Magazine.

Deepak Unnikrishnan is a writer from Abu Dhabi. His award-winning Temporary People, a work of fiction about Gulf narratives steeped in Malayalee and South Asian lingo, set the base for his latest project, ‘Pettee’, a dance piece co-written and co-directed with the writer Karthika Naïr, composer Sarathy Korwar, and other movement-makers. He is an Associate Arts Professor at NYU Abu Dhabi, and he has two more books in him, no more.