Join us for a virtual poetry reading and conversation to close out National Poetry Month. Lena Khalaf Tuffaha will share pieces from her latest poetry collection Something about Living. Susan Muaddi Darraj, author of Behind You Is the Sea, joins the conversation.

This virtual event is a fundraiser for HEAL Palestine and attendees are asked to make a donation in lieu of ticket cost.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist, and translator. She is the author of three books of poetry, Water & Salt (Red Hen Press, 2017), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award, Kaan and Her Sisters (Trio House Press, 2023), and Something About Living, winner of the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize. (University of Akron Press, 2024). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in journals including Michigan Quarterly Review, The Nation, Poetry, and Prairie Schooner. She was the 2022 curator of the translation series "Poems from Palestine" at the Baffler magazine. She is currently curating a monthly feature on Palestinian writing at Words Without Borders entitled “Against Forgetting.”

Susan Muaddi Darraj is an award-winning writer of books for adults and children. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards, and a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a USA Artists Ford Fellow. Her books include her linked short story collection, A Curious Land, as well as the Farah Rocks children’s book series. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at Harford Community College and the Johns Hopkins University. Her new novel, Behind You Is the Sea, was published in January 2024 by HarperVia. It received praise from The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Ms Magazine, and it was named a Best Book of 2024 by The New Yorker and Apple Books.

HEAL Palestine is a nonpolitical, nonprofit humanitarian organization with leaders with more than three decades of building programs and projects in Palestine. Every contribution is critical to creating a world where Gaza’s youth have a chance at a better life. www.healpalestine.org