AUB Professor Robert Myers was among a group who were awarded a $50,000 grant by the MacArthur Foundation to translate to English and produce a play by late Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous in Beirut and Chicago.

The PEN Pinter Prize was established in 2009 in memory of the Nobel-winning playwright Harold Pinter. The Prize is awarded annually to a British writer or a writer resident in Britain of outstanding literary merit who, in the words of Harold Pinter’s Nobel speech, casts an ‘unflinching, unswerving’ gaze upon the world, and shows a ‘fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies’.

Khaled Khalifa’s In praise of hatred is now out in English!

The rumor this afternoon, May 26th, was that Khaled Khalifa was arrested in the morning while attending the funeral of a friend in Damascus. He was released with a broken arm and contusions to the head. On the phone, Khaled Khalifa said he was now alright. The LA Times gives the following details.

‘The king of Galilee’, a very-well written epic tale, goes over the story of Zaher Al Omar, a figure of Arab history, who, in the 18th century, fought the Ottoman Empire for independance.

On Monday evening, the American University of Beirut’s West hall auditorium featured an impressive pannel of Arab authors, come from countries who have known, and are still knowing, uprisings: Tunisia, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, and Lebanon. Among the panelists were authors Khaled Khalifa and Kamal Al Riahi, from RAYA’s list.