literary Archives - Metonymy Press https://metonymypress.com/fr/tag/literary/ Thu, 05 Sep 2024 16:44:11 +0000 fr-CA hourly 1 CHICAGO LAUNCH: EL GHOURABAA https://metonymypress.com/fr/event/chicago-launch-el-ghourabaa/ Tue, 30 Jul 2024 19:00:00 +0000 https://metonymypress.com/?post_type=tribe_events&p=29564 Joint us for our Chicago launch of El Ghourabaa: A queer and trans collection of oddities, featuring readings from Eman Abdelhadi, George Abraham, and Bazeed. Event starts at 7pm CDT.

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]]> “Joy among the fury and grief:” a Q&A with El Ghourabaa editors https://metonymypress.com/fr/joy-among-fury-and-grief-qa-el-ghourabaa-editors/ Wed, 10 Jul 2024 17:47:51 +0000 https://metonymypress.com/?p=29442 Metonymy Press’s latest release, El Ghourabaa: A Queer and Trans Collection of Oddities, had its Montreal launch on Saturday, June 15th at Brique par brique’s offices in Park-Ex. This anthology was edited by Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, author of award-winning books The Good Arabs and Knot Body, and Samia Marshy, who has been editing for years but for whom this is her first publishing experience.  The two talked to me about how they navigated putting El Ghourabaa together in the midst of “Israel’s” latest genocidal campaign while they and several contributors were grieving, what it means for them to be able to include the late Etel Adnan in their anthology, and the highs and lows of the publishing process. Answers have been edited for clarity. Sophie Dufresne: In the introduction to El Ghourabaa: A Queer and Trans Collection of Oddities, you state how the anthology “started as a project to celebrate the fullness of queer Arab and Arabophone identity. As we endure months of dehumanization and violence by the media and the colonial nation-states, it feels more important than ever to assert ourselves, even if we are not in a celebratory mood. Our existence is resistance.” What is your hope for El Ghourabaa’s impact on the literary community and beyond? Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch: I wanted to do this project for a long time; since, I would say, 2016. So it’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I always thought,  “Eventually I will do this.”  I did a Jeunes volontaires project and began working on this anthology, and Ashley [Fortier, Metonymy co-publisher] was my mentor. I worked on the project alone for about a year and a half before I decided that I wanted to bring in another editor, so I asked Samia.  There was this original idea of what I wanted that kind of changed as we collaborated, because that always happens when there’s more than one person involved. It didn’t change drastically, but you know, it was nice to have another person’s perspective.  Then October 7 happened while we were still working on [El Ghourabaa]. And obviously, that shifted things and slowed the process down. We wanted to be working on this project, but also we wanted to make a lot of space for people to be in anger and grief, including us, and not rush the project. So the project was definitely delayed, which was a good thing, ultimately. Samia Marshy: With everything going on, I think it would have been a mistake, and just really hard emotionally to try and put the book out in the fall, which was the original plan. [We wanted] to make space and respect the terrible thing that was happening. El Bechelany-Lynch: Yeah, and we felt weird, sending emails being like, “Please send us your bio!” when people were grieving, and in shock, and organizing, and upset, and all these things. But then, it felt nice to have this project to work on once things continued, and we were in a different place than that initial shock and grief. We’re not necessarily in a celebratory mood, but also, [we’re] in a space where queer people, and especially queer Arabs are being utilized by “Israel” to— Marshy: promote a genocidal agenda. El Bechelany-Lynch: Yeah, it feels important to be like “No, fuck that.” Marshy: We make our own space. El Bechelany-Lynch: Yeah, and that’s not being asked. Queer Arabs and queer Palestinians aren’t [saying], “Yes, please do this on my behalf.” We can be like, “Fuck you, this is for us.” You know? We also donated our advances to an organization in Montreal, Mubaadarat, who’s been doing a lot of stuff with queer Arabs, and to a queer organization, alQaws, in Palestine because we wanted what little money we made from this project to be able to be helpful. We didn’t want to profit from this genocide, from this weird moment where people really want to read Arab work. I mean, anthologies don’t make money, so it’s not like we were like, “We’re gonna rack in the money from this.” But I think we want it to be explicitly anti-colonial and anti-genocidal, which, you know, shockingly, is somehow not the baseline. A book that was in opposition to a lot of harmful things, and also celebrating the beauty of queer and trans Arabness and queer and trans Arabophones too. Marshy: I think one of the things that we talked about a lot when we were envisioning what kind of pieces we wanted and what we wanted the book to look like was that we didn’t want necessarily an anthology that was [asking,] “What does it mean to be queer and Arab?” Because I think there’s a lot of think pieces around [those identities] for people from all kinds of diaspora. And that’s kind of the stereotype: that it’s hard to hold both of those identities. But no, it’s a given that there [are] queer Arabs, and we want to know what you’re thinking about, what you want to write about, and [we want to] see your art. [We wanted to hear from] people who are coming from that positionality but [who] aren’t necessarily conflicted about that positionality. El Bechelany-Lynch: Yeah, and how do you incorporate your queer or trans Arabness into your work without having it have to be a think piece, which is such a white hetero demand of racialized people and queer people to be like, “Tell us about yourself!” Marshy: It’s a request for legibility while simultaneously othering. What if we [say], “Actually, we are the standard.” It’s a given that these identities coexist, so then what? El Bechelany-Lynch: We’re both interested in work that pushes the bounds and is explicitly weird, and tries to fuck with genre and fuck with language and is really playful. And we got so much good stuff. “It’s a given that these identities coexist, so then what?” -Samia Marshy Dufresne: Yeah, I’m excited to read it again! El GhourabaaLire la suite »“Joy among the fury and grief:” a Q&A with El Ghourabaa editors

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