L.A. Launch: Stories from the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction

Presented in partnership with The Markaz Review & City Lights, editor Jordan Elgrably and actor, Reza Sixo Safai read from Stories from the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction (City Lights, 2024), an anthology of new short stories from 25 emerging and established writers from the greater Middle East (or SWANA), a vast region that stretches from Southwest Asia, through the Middle East and Turkey, and across Northern Africa. The 25 authors included here come from a wide range of cultures and countries, including Palestine, Syria, Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, and Morocco, to name some.; a unique collection of voices and viewpoints that illuminate life in the global Arab/Muslim world.

After the readings in The Wanda Coleman Theater join us for book signings with the authors, and a reception with light refreshments in the Poets’ Garden.

Doors Open: 7:30 PM

Readings: 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Reception: 9:00 PM - 10:00 PM

Contributors to the anthology include: Salar Abdoh, Leila Aboulela, Farah Ahamed, Omar El Akkad, Sarah AlKahly-Mills, Nektaria Anastasiadou, Amany Kamal Eldin, Jordan Elgrably, Omar Foda, May Haddad, Danial Haghighi, Malu Halasa, MK Harb, Alireza Iranmehr, Karim Kattan, Hanif Kureishi, Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi, Diary Marif, Tariq Mehmood, Sahar Mustafah, Mohammed Al-Naas, Ahmed Naji, Mai Al-Nakib, Abdellah Taia, and Natasha Tynes

“Provocative and subtle, nuanced and surprising, these stories demonstrate how this complicated and rich region might best be approached–through the power of literature.”

–Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Committed

About the readers

Reza Sixo Safai co-starred in the 2011 Sundance Audience Award Winner Circumstance. His performance earned accolades including “deserves to be a frontrunner for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar." Since his short film The Mario Valdez Story took home a prize at Cannes, he has been a mainstay in the indie film sceneas actor, writer and producer. He served as both a producer and actor in the Iranian vampire film, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, now considered one of the best horror films of all time by Newsweek, Time, Rolling Stone, Rotten Tomatoes & whose fans include Cate Blanchett and Guillermo Del Toro. Safai’s post-apocalyptic samurai western, Prisoners of the Ghostland, starring Nicolas Cage and Sofia Boutella premiered at Sundance. His latest, The Bitter Tears of Zahra Zand, is an Iranian re-imagining of Fassbinder’s classic The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.

Jordan Elgrably is a Franco-American and Moroccan writer and translator, whose stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous anthologies and reviews, including Apulée, Salmagundi, and The Paris Review. He is the editor of Stories from the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction (City Lights 2024) and co-editor with Malu Halasa of Sumūd: a New Palestinian Reader (Seven Stories Press 2024). Elgrably founded and edits The Markaz Review.

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Please arrive early.