The Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Woodberry Poetry Room welcome you to a reading and discussion with poet Mosab Abu Toha. A previous Harvard Scholar-at-Risk (2019-2020), Abu Toha has been a crucial voice in documenting the conflict in Gaza, both through his award-winning poetry and his poignant and visceral essays in The New Yorker and beyond. 

Abu Toha will share poems from his new collection, Forest of Noise (Penguin, 2024), which has been hailed by Ocean Vuong as "powerful, capacious, and profound." The reading will be introduced by Assistant Prof. Lorenzo Bondioli and will be followed by a Q&A session moderated by Prof. Annette Damayanti Lienau.

Books are available for advanced purchase at the Harvard Coop. Some copies are also available at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop and the Harvard Bookstore.
 

In-Person Attendance:  Science Center, Hall D, Harvard University
Cambridge, Mass. Free and open to the public.
 

Online Attendance: Livestreaming of the poetry reading is available via the WPR YouTube Channel. Please note: the live-stream will only feature the reading; the Q&A discussion will not be live-streamed.

 

MOSAB ABU TOHA is a Palestinian poet, short-story writer, and essayist from Gaza. His first collection of poetry, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear (City Lights, 2022), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and won the Palestine Book Award, the American Book Award, and the Walcott Poetry Prize. Abu Toha is also the founder of the Edward Said Library in Gaza, which he hopes to rebuild. He recently won an Overseas Press Club Award for his “Letter from Gaza” columns for The New Yorker. For more information on Mosab Abu Toha, please visit prhspeakers.com. 
 

SPONSORS: The CMES Reframing Conflict: Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan and Syria in Context series and the Woodberry Poetry Room, with additional support from the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard.
 

Image: Mohamed Mahdy.