Elias Jahshan – This Queer Arab Family

Uncategorized

Tuesday, the 10th of February, from 7 pm to 8:30 pm

This Queer Arab Family celebrates the beauty of chosen kin and the everyday acts of care and survival that bind Queer Arabs to each other. Ten LGBTQ+ writers from across the Arab world and diaspora redefine what family looks like, from raising children with mum and mum, to becoming an OnlyFans star and building a non-binary belly dancing robot. These writers illuminate, through their own lived experiences, how queer joy and community can be found in the most unexpected places.

This Queer Arab Family honours the spirit of those who, despite challenges, build community and family on their own terms.

Elias Jahshan is a Palestinian-Lebanese journalist and writer, and editor of This Arab is Queer: An Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers (Saqi Books; 2022) - which was a finalist in the 2023 Lambda Literary Awards in the USA and shortlisted for the 2023 Bread & Roses Award in the UK.

His short memoir Coming Out Palestinian was anthologised in Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity (ed. Randa Abdel-Fattah & Sara Saleh; Picador, 2019), while Bittersweet Memories of a Palestinian Knight was anthologised in Ask the Night for a Dream: Palestinian Writing From the Diaspora (ed. Susan Muaddi Darraj; Palestine Writes Press, 2024). Elias is also a former editor of Star Observer, Australia’s longest-running LGBTQ+ media outlet, and has been published in The Guardian, Gay Times, The New Arab, Raseef22, Shado Mag, My Kali.

Born and raised in Sydney, he now lives in London.

Go to Eventbrite for more information and to book a place. Admission is free (and booking is optional, but helps with planning.)

If you can't attend in person, this event will be live-streamed from the Carnegie Library Facebook page and this will be available for viewing for a limited time thereafter.

Organised by the Friends, in co-operation with the Lambeth Library Service.

Jack Fairweather – The Prosecutor (cancelled)

Author Event

Tuesday evening, 13 January - 7pm (6:30 for tea and biscuits)

(This talk was regretfully cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances, on short notice.)

The true story of a Jewish lawyer who returned to Germany after WWII to prosecute war crimes, only to find himself pitted against a nation determined to bury the past.

Costa Book Award winner - Jack Fairweather

The Allies were ready to overlook their pasts as the Cold War began, and the horrors of the Holocaust were in danger of being forgotten.

Fritz Bauer, a gay German Jew who survived the Nazis, made it his mission to force his countrymen to confront their complicity in the genocide. In this deeply researched book, Fairweather draws on unpublished family papers, newly declassified German records, and exclusive interviews to immerse readers in the dark, unfamiliar world of postwar West Germany where those who implemented genocide run the country, the CIA is funding Hitler’s former spy-ring in the east, and Nazi-era anti-gay laws are strictly enforced.  Once on the trail of Adolf Eichmann, Bauer won’t be intimidated and his journey takes him deep into the rotten heart of West Germany, where his fight for justice will set him against his own government and a network of former Nazis and spies determined to silence him.

In a time when the history of the Holocaust is taken for granted, The Prosecutor reveals the courtroom battles that were fought to establish its legacy and the personal cost of speaking out. The result is a searing portrait of a nation emerging from the ruins of fascism and one man’s courage in forcing his people––and the world––to face the truth.

Jack Fairweather is the bestselling author of The Volunteer, the Costa Prize winning account of a Polish underground officer who volunteered to report on Nazi crimes in Auschwitz. The book has been translated into 25 languages and forms the basis of a major exhibition in Berlin. He has served as the Daily Telegraph’s Baghdad bureau chief, and as a video journalist for the Washington Post in Afghanistan. His war coverage has won a British Press Award and an Overseas Press Club award citation. He divides his time between Wales and Vermont.

Organised by the Friends, commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day.

Go to Eventbrite for more information and to book a place. Admission is free (and booking is optional, but helps with planning.)

Please attend in person at the Carnegie Library, but if you can't do so, the event will be live-streamed from the Carnegie Library Facebook page (no registration required) and the recording will be available there for a limited time afterwards (about a month).

Never again.

Lullaby

Events

Featuring contributions from Amena, Eno, Celeste, Smith, Shards’ Kieran Brunt, Lana Lubany, Leigh-Anne, London Community Gospel Choir, Mabel, Nadine Shah, Nai Barghouti, Neneh Cherry, Sura Abdo, TYSON, Yasmeen Ayyashi and Ysee.

Arranged and recomposed by Kieran Brunt and Nai Barghouti, with English lyrics written by Peter Gabriel. Artwork by Gazan painter Malak Mattar, inspired by her piece ‘Shelter’.

Adapted from ‘Yamma Mweel El Hawa’, a Palestinian song of love and resilience , ‘Mama, Sing To The Wind’.

Released on December 12, this song is titled ‘Lullaby’. All profits go to Choose Love’s ‘Together For Palestine Fund’, which supports three Palestinian-led organisations: Taawon, Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and Palestine Medical Relief Service.

Download Lullaby to take it to Christmas Number One and to raise more funds for the three charities. All downloads count.

A New Library in Gaza

News

You can help build the first public library in Gaza since the genocide began.

JAMES FOLTA DECEMBER 8, 2025

Two Palestinians are gathering donations to create a public library in Gaza, after Israel’s war and genocide destroyed nearly all existing libraries, schools, and universities. The two men, Omar Hamad and Ibrahim, are avid readers who have spent years trying to save books as they struggled to survive in Gaza.

On their donation page, Omar wrote about his early love of books, and how as a child he saved, “coin by coin, until at the end of each month I could buy two or three books.”

When he received an evacuation order on October 8th, 2023, Omar packed up what books he could and fled. But each time he was forced to evacuate, his collection dwindled. He nearly lost his entire salvaged library when the hospital he was sheltering in was attacked:

When the soldiers stormed the building, they dragged us out with insults, blows, and humiliation. I said goodbye to my books and left a note among them:

“Whoever finds these books, please take care of them.”

I deliberately left it unsigned — I wanted the books to remain free, without an owner.

Miraculously, the books survived.

Omar kept trying to rescue books as he was repeatedly displaced. Books felt essential to him, and as he wrote in Lit Hub back in June, “My library was like paradise—I would travel and sail through its books to seize wisdom and the self I had forgotten since the first day I was forced to abandon reading.”

Salvaging books from wrecked libraries and schools has led to some agonizing choices, Omar told The Jordan Times, and he’s found it “very difficult to preserve the cultural spirit amidst this destruction.” Omar has been documenting his library on Instagram, in particular his favorite Russian writers like Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Svetlana Alexievich, and Mikhail Bulgakov.

The other librarian behind this effort is Ibrahim, who fell in love with books in university, particularly Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the poetry of Mahmoud Darwish and Tamim Al-Barghouti, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Ibrahim’s house was completely destroyed by Israeli forces, but miraculously, his bookshelf survived: “And then I saw it — my small book cabinet, perched at the top of the rubble, its pages breathing through the stones as if refusing to die. In that moment, something inside me returned to life.”

With their new library in Gaza, the two are hoping to preserve as many books as they can, but also build a space for rebuilding collective memory and fostering expression, creativity, and play. Their tenacious defense of books amidst brutality and genocide is not only an attempt to preserve objects, or institutions, or even a culture under assault:

“With your support, you are not rebuilding a place —
you are rebuilding a life that can continue.”

You can donate to help Omar and Ibrahim’s library here.

Originally posted by Literary Hub