Arab-Australian Authors Unite for Lebanon - Saturday Session

On 4 August 2020, a horrifying blast devastated Lebanon's capital, Beirut. To raise funds for the victims of the explosion, some of Australia’s most celebrated authors, poets and academics of Lebanese and Arab backgrounds will come together for two nights of online discussions about the literature of the Arab diaspora, and the vital role that Australia can play in supporting struggling communities from the Arab world.

This Saturday session, moderated by Dr Jumana Bayeh, features: Ghassan Hage, Amani Haydar, Omar Sakr, Sarah Ayoub, Ruby Hamad, and M M Morsi. 

100% of the ticket proceeds will be donated to Impact Lebanon, an NGO that provides disaster relief as well as activism resources for the Lebanese diaspora. You can read about the work of Impact Lebanon here: https://www.impactlebanon.org/about

This event is an initiative of Better Read Than Dead Bookshop and Sweatshop Writers Collective. 

Please note: the Friday and Saturday sessions have different Zoom meeting details and require separate registrations.

More about the Explosion

The Beirut explosion, blamed on 2,700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored at the port, sent a shockwave across the city that shattered windows and collapsed roofs. The death toll has now surpassed 200 victims, with over 5,000 people injured. The disaster has hit a nation already struggling with an economy on the brink of collapse, rising food prices and the global pandemic.

More about the Incredible Saturday Author Lineup

Jumana Bayeh is Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University, Australia. She has held research fellowships in Toronto, Edinburgh, and Beirut. She is the author of The Literature of the Lebanese Diaspora (I.B. Tauris 2015), has co-edited a journal special issue on Arabs in Australia and published on Arab diaspora fiction. Most recently, she co-edited a volume on the underexamined link between diaspora and democracy. She is currently working on two projects – a literary history of the nation in the Arab diaspora novel and an Australia Research Council-funded project called ‘Rioting and the Literary Archive’.

Ghassan Hage is professor of anthropology and social theory at the University of Melbourne. He has worked for many years on racism and white nationalism from a comparative perspective. His publications include his early work White Nation (1998) that deals with white supremacist fantasies in Australia, and his later work Is Racism an Environmental Threat? (2017) that deals with the commonalities between the colonial practices of racialisation and exploitation of people and the species