2019 Festival Report
2019 Festival Report
PalFest:
PalFest returned in 2019 after a one
year break, delivering a re-energized
festival to audiences throughout
historic Palestine.
Phase
At its beginning, in 2008, PalFest
had at its centre the idea of the
Writer as Witness.
PalFest ran for 10 years, during
which we worked with over 200
international and Palestinian writers.
Two
After the festival, back in their
home context, the international
authors wrote and spoke about their
experience. A solid body of work was
born of this.
From 2008 to 2017 the world
changed. The rise of social media
means that everybody can become
a witness with a few clicks. PalFest’s
act of mass-witnessing had
contributed to the marked shift in
international public opinion, but
nothing tempered Israel’s violence.
So we return now, after a one-
year break, with PalFest 2019 and
a sharpened focus on how to foster
new writing that clarifies and
frames the connections between the
colonization of Palestine and the
accelerating systems of control and
dispossession around the world.
www.palfest.org
For the first time, PalFest will be
organised around themes. The
theme for PalFest 2019 was: Urban
Futures: Colonial Space Today.
Together with architect and editor,
Mahdi Sabbagh, we assembled a
cutting-edge line-up of writers,
urbanists, architects and academics
whose work uniquely positions
them to consider the strategies and
techniques employed by Israel in the
control and conquest of Palestinian
space.
We are now offering writers a two-
year invitation; for those whose
experience in Palestine catalyses
new work or new collaborations that
can then be presented at subsequent
festivals.
Palestine is not just a unique
injustice – Palestine is a
battleground at the centre of the
global struggle between the forces
of control and those of liberation,
a struggle whose parallels,
connections and ramifications
are global; from police training to
algorithm design to drone warfare,
Israel’s technology of dispossession
has buyers and imitators around the
world.
palfest
 2019 Festival Report

Urban
As with all previous editions of the festival, the
international guests traveled through Palestine
the way that most West Bank ID holders would
have to: through checkpoints and roads kept
separate, traversing the geography of Israeli
apartheid while simultaneously transcending its
militarized attempts to isolate Palestine from
The 2019 group visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem,
al-Khalil Hebron, Ramallah, and Lydd. Smaller
groups of authors did events in Haifa and
Nablus. Educational activities were organised
in partnership with five Palestinian institutions
of higher education. In total PalFest 2019 was
delivered in partnerhsip with 17 Palestinian

Futures:
the rest of the world. organisations.

PalFest was life-changing for me as an Indigenous

Colonial
writer and scholar from North America. Each
experience—whether listening to poetry in a
basement theater in East Jerusalem, walking the
apartheid streets of Hebron with a local historian,

Space
or hearing the grounded histories of place in the
olive-grove terraced hills of Ramallah—was
authentic, sincere, and heartfelt. The connections
made with fellow Palestinian writers are lifelong.

Today
We may have left Palestine, but after PalFest,
Palestine and its stories travel with you in your
heart and pen.

Nick Estes

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

The
Saturday
6th April
2019
Opening Event, Jerusalem:

Program:
Gaza - Enforced Absence
The ongoing Israeli and Egyptian blockade of
Gaza, now in its 11th year, continues to prevent
PalFest from taking international authors to all
of Palestine. So the opening night of PalFest
2019 was dedicated to Gaza, live in Jerusalem
and wired in from the diaspora.
We opened with words and poetry from Ibtisam
Barakat and Jehan Bseiso, followed by the world
premiere of Tuesday by the Sea, a short film by
Ain Media Gaza, Josh Begley and Shourideh
Molavi.
Saturday 6th April was the first anniversary
of the Israeli killing of the journalist, Yasser
Murtaja – one of the founders of Ain Media
Gaza. We closed the event with a powerful
short film about his life.
Organised in partnership with, and hosted by,
Yabous Cultural Centre, Jerusalem.

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

Sunday
Sunday
8.45am
Tour of Jerusalem Old City

7th April
April
with Ruba Imam from the Centre for Jerusalem

7th Studies

11:30am
Discussion at the Community Action Centre in
Jerusalem Old City

2.30pm
Briefing & tour from Ray Dolphin, Barrier
Specialist
at UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs

7.30pm
Public Event, Jerusalem:
Colonial Space Today
Simone Browne, Natalie Diaz, Alia Malek & Nadera
Shalhoub-Kevorkian

Control of resources, control of bodies, control of

history. Colonial techniques continue to dominate
global power systems. Is a post-colonial world
possible? Or will racialised elitism always re-
create itself? Writers whose work ranges from
the continued assault on Mojave culture, to the
systematised surveillance of black Americans to
the

international scramble for dominance in Syria,

came together in conversation with one of
Palestine’s foremost theorists of power and
violence.

Organised in partnership with, and hosted by,

Yabous Cultural Centre, Jerusalem (UNOCHA)

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 2019 Festival Report

Monday
Monday
8am
Visit to the Noble Sanctuary

8th April
April
(al-Aqsa Mosque & the Dome of the Rock)

8th 11am
Al-Khalil Hebron Old City tour with Walid Abu al-
Halaweh of the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee
(HRC)

6.30pm
Welcome from Emily Jacir to Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir
Centre for Art & Research, Bethlehem

7pm
Public Event
Keller Easterling, Mabel Wilson, Mahdi Sabbagh

For our Bethlehem event two of the most

exciting contemporary thinkers on space,
history and power made short presentations,
before opening up to discussion. Mabel Wilson
discussed citizenship, whiteness, and privilege
in relationship to dispossession and land in the
American context, while Keller Easterling offered
remarks on the disposition or temperament
immanent in spatial arrangements—the
undeclared violence or relief from violence that
they embody.

Hosted by, Dar Yusuf Nasri Jacir Centre for Art &
Research, Bethlehem

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

Tuesday
Tuesday
9.30am
Meeting with Dr Abdelfattah Abusrour

9th April
April
Director of al-Rowwad cultural centre, Aida camp,

9th Bethlehem

10.30am
Walk alongside the Wall until Bethlehem Checkpoint

11.45am
Cross Bethlehem checkpoint on foot

2pm
Meeting with Omar Barghouti
Co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions
movement (BDS)

4pm
Walk in the Ramallah hills with Raja Shehadeh
The acclaimed author and renowned human rights
lawyer took the authors on his annual PalFest walk
through the hills around Ramallah

5.30pm
Public Event, Ramallah:
Governing Insecurities
Felicity Scott
Professor Felicity Scott discussed her new book
Outlaw Territories: Environments of Insecurity/
Architectures of Counter-insurgency. She dealt
specifically with the 1976 UN Conference on Human
Settlements and the visibility of the Palestinian
liberation struggle within it.

Organised in co-operation with Columbia GSAPP &

the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre, Ramallah

www.palfest.org palfest

Wednesday
Wednesday Education Day
10th April
April
10th This year we organized our most extensive
educational activities ever, designing an individual
itinerary for each author and splitting into small
groups shuttling across Palestine.
Public events were organised at al-Khalil Hebron
and an-Najah Universities, while Ibtisam Barakat
and Victoria Adukwei Bulley spoke to students at
Bethlehem University and Jay Ying ran a poetry
workshop at Birzeit University.
Madiha Tahir and Simone Browne conducted
a seminar with graduate students at Birzeit
University while an interactive workshop on the
art of bookmaking was organized with Dar al
Kalima in Bethlehem.
Alongside these workshops, meetings were
organized for other authors with the directors of
Riwaq, the Centre for Architectural Conservation,
with the culture editor at The New Arab media
organisation, and with organizers at the African
Community Centre.
www.palfest.org
2019 Festival Report
Public events within Education Day:
10am
Public Event, Hebron University: Language &
Memory Through Crisis
Natalie Diaz & Alia Malek
Reflections on migration, identity and
displacement; on the retrieval of language under
attack by colonial power; and the work of the
memoir in moments of political rupture.
12pm
Public Event, An-Najah University: The
Funambulist presents: the Weaponized Space
of Colonialism in Algeria, Turtle Island &
Palestine
Nick Estes, Samia Henni & Léopold Lambert
The Funambulist Magazine has always held a
strong editorial line on Palestine, with articles
on the Palestinian struggle featuring in 19 of its
22 editions so far. This event, organised at the
university in Nablus, featured a presentation from
Editor-in-Chief Léopold Lambert, an introduction
from Nick Estes to his guest-edited edition and
its focus on US settlers’ historic encroachments
on Indigenous reservations, and a presentation
from Samia Henni on her research for Architecture
of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern
Algeria (2017).
2pm
(Semi-) Public Event: Safe Spaces in Unsafe
Places
Christina Hanhardt, Shamus Khan, Haneen Maikey,
Andrea Cassatella
Together with al-Qaws for Sexual and Gender
Diversity we organised a seminar discussion with
two of our visiting authors, the highly regarded
sociologists Christina Hanhardt and Shamus Khan,
with Haneen Maikey and Andrea Cassatella. We
received information that the event, which was
initially intended to be public, might encounter
palfest
 2019 Festival Report

Wednesday
Wednesday
some interference. It was re-located to a private
location and held successfully.

10th April
10th April 6pm
Public Event, Birzeit, The Palestinian Museum:
Colonial & Contemporary Landscapes of
Violence
Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Nick Estes, Samia Henni,
Madiha Tahir, Rema Hammami
From drone warfare in the skies above Pakistan,
to redlining of American cities, to the anti-
insurgency architecture of French colonialism in
Algeria: what are the through lines of racialized
policing of space? How do they evolve and what
dynamics do they reproduce? And what are their
parallels in Palestine?

This event was held at the Palestinian Museum in

Birzeit as part of Intimate Terrains.

8pm
Public Event, Haifa: Against Colonial Language
Jehan Bseiso & Natalie Diaz
The battle over language – its expansion
and erasure, restriction and reclamation
– is central to anti-colonial struggles. A
conversation between two celebrated poets
about contemporary struggles over language:
the pressures placed on indigenous speech by
colonialism and globalisation – and how authors
and audiences resist them.

Organised in partnership with the Arab Culture

Association and hosted by Kabareet

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 2019 Festival Report

Thursday
Thursday
10am
Meeting with historian Umar al-Ghobari and tour

11th April
April
of al-Lydd

11th 5pm
Roundtable discussion: Not Within Sight
Jamil Hilal, Senan Abdelqader, Pelin Tan, Faiq Mari,
Omar Yousef, Khaldun Bishara
A session with some of Palestine’s leading
architects to consider Palestinian architecture
within the context of the current state-building
project; underlying discourses of powerlessness;
the invasive surge of investment reshaping urban
space; and the possibilities for people to claim
their rights and leave their imprints on their
cities.

Organised in partnership with the A.M. Qattan

Foundation, Ramallah.

7pm
Public event, Ramallah:
Lines of Control: Messages to & from Palestine
An open format event, curated by our 2019
authors, during which they shared their thoughts
and reactions accumulated over the festival week.

Hosted by the A M Qattan Centre, Ramallah

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 2019 Festival Report

Friday
Friday
6pm
Public Event, Haifa:

12th April
April
The Ubiquity of Spatial Inequality / the Case of

12th Wadi Salib

Mahdi Sabbagh, Bashar Murkus

PalFest 2019 co-curator, Mahdi Sabbagh,

discussed his recent work in Perspecta 50: Urban
Divides, in which authors studied global case
studies for how communities perpetuate, cope
with and resist Urban Divides. Examples such as
Johannesburg, Detroit, Belfast, and Jerusalem
show the ubiquity of urban divides. Together
with influential playwright Bashar Murkus, the
discussion turned to Haifa and links between
global patterns of inequality and local spatial-
political dynamics.

Organised in partnership with, and hosted by,

the Arab Culture Association, Haifa

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

Saturday
Saturday
5pm
Public Event, Ramallah:

13th April
April
Book Launch - Permanent Temporariness

13th Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti

Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti discussed their

new book, organised around multiple concepts
animating their architectural practice: built
architectural structures, the shaping of critical
learning environments, interventions that
challenge dominant collective narratives, the Even for those who
production of new political imaginations, the
re-definition of words, and the formation of civic
spaces. think they know the
region, PalFest is a
profound encounter
with stories and
landscapes.
Keller Easterling

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

A new initiative for PalFest 2019 was to

invite a visual artist to Palestine. Together
with our long-term partners, al-Rowwad
Cultural and Arts Society in Aida Camp, we
brought Spanish muralist Ricardo Cavolo to
Palestine. Ricardo spent four days shuttling
between PalFest tours and meetings and his
wall inside Aida Camp.

Artist in
Temporary
Residence
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 2019 Festival Report

PalFest
Visting
Visiting Experts &
Authors Hosts in
Palestine

2019
Josh Begley Senan Abdelqader
Ibtisam Barakat Omar Barghouti
Victoria Adukwei Bulley Khaldun Bishara
Ricardo Cavolo Andrea Cassatella
Natalie Diaz Rema Hammami
Keller Easterling Sandi Hilal

Authors
Nick Estes Jamil Hilal
Ashish George Alessandro Petti
Christina B. Hanhardt Adila Laïdi-Hanieh
Samia Henni Haneen Maikey
Shamus Khan Faiq Mari
Léopold Lambert Bashar Murkus
Alia Malek Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
Felicity D. Scott Raja Shehadeh
Madiha Tahir Pelin Tan
Jacques Testard Omar Yousef
Mabel O. Wilson
Jay G Ying

I have only wonderful things to say. It was a

transformative experience for me. The organizers
were truly exceptional, going far beyond my
expectations. And the trip was expertly planned
and executed. In short, all I can say is thanks

Shamus Khan
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 2019 Festival Report

Our Supporters
RIAD
KAMAL

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

One of
the most
the most
transformative
experiences
experiences
of my life
Josh Begley

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

Beyond
European
European ‘This is
‘This Is Not
Not AA
Cultural
Cultural Border’ First
Border’ First
Prize
Prize Print Run
Print Run SOLD
OUT!

the
Ahdaf Soueif, founding chair of PalFest,
was awarded the 2019 European Cultural
Foundation’s Princess Margriet Award for
Culture. Among other achievements, the award
recognizes her for imagining and founding
PalFest, and for a broader career in which
she has “courageously merged literature
This Is Not a Border, the anthology of writing
from PalFest’s first decade, edited by Ahdaf
Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton and
published in 2017 by Bloomsbury, has gone into
its second printing in the UK.

Festival
and activism, building a body of fiction and
committed journalism that responds to the
legacies of European intervention.”
(ECF website announcement, 2019)

This book is not only an exhibition of writings from

a festival; it is a work of art in its own right

Tom Sperlinger - Electronic Intifada

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

PalFest in
PalFest in Faber Social
Faber Social
London
London
2018
2018
In cooperation with Artists for Palestine UK, For the second year in a row the Faber Social
PalFest organized a one day festival in London - a key London literary event - threw a
in the summer of 2018. Speakers were invited fundraiser event for PalFest.
to think about linkages between Palestine and
London. We were honoured to have Richard Scott,
Sabrina Mahfouz, Teju Cole and Edna O’Brien
Speakers included authors Kamila Shamsie, each stand up and perform at the event - with
Ma’an Abu Taleb, Ahmed Masoud, Rachel Omar Robert Hamilton as the MC.
Holmes, Willliam Sutcliffe and William
Dalrymple, as well as lawyer Diana Buttu and
Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign,
Ben Jamal. Each responded to the question of I can hardly imagine a
how London and the occupation of Palestine
interconnect. better experience for
We were also thrilled to put on a new, satirical acquainting people with
sketch from playwright Hannah Khalil, to offer
food from Proud Kitchen - a social enterprise the injustice and resistance
that provides UK refugee women who enjoy
cooking with a platform to promote their in a part of the world the
homemade food - and to dance to musical sets
from Kareem Samara and Stormtrap. American media so rarely
And even though our event landed on the same gives due representation.
day as England’s World Cup quarter final match
we managed to sustain a good crowd through The organizers were
the whole day!
unfailingly informative,
This was PalFest’s first official collaboration
with Artists for Palestine UK. kind, and helpful.

Ashish George
www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

The
300 authors came to Kamila
Shamsie’s defense after the city
of Dortmund rescinded a literary
award for her support of BDS. We
were pleased to be among the
organisers of what was a major

Right
intervention in the London Review
of Books. Unfortunately, the prize
was not re-instated. 

Khalid Abdalla Joel Beinin J.M. Coetzee

Alaa Abd el-Fattah Linda Benedikt Teju Cole
Sharif Abdel Kouddous Phyllis Bennis Michael Collier

to
Sohaila Abdulali Susan Bernofsky Irene Cooper
Nadia Abu el-Haj Omar Berrada Cindy Corrie
Diana Abu-Jaber Dwayne Betts Craig Corrie
Susan Abulhawa Akeel Bilgrami Molly Crabapple
Lila Abu-Lughod Nicholas Blincoe Michael Cunningham
Maan Abu Taleb Leah Borromeo Selma Dabbagh
Ammiel Alcalay Brian Boyd William Dalrymple
Kazim Ali Victoria Brittain Najwan Darwish
Monica Ali Virginia Brown Angela Davis
Nir Alon Simone Browne Natalie Zemon Davis
Hanan Al-Shaykh Jehan Bseiso Katy Derbyshire
Carlos Manuel Álvarez Victoria Adukwei Bulley Kiran Desai
Suad Amiry John Burnside Natalie Diaz
Tahmima Anam Margaret Busby Laurence Dreyfus
Sinan Antoon Diana Buttu Marlene Dumas
Lisa Appignanesi Carmen Callil Hilda Dunn

Boycott
Nicole Aragi Juan Cárdenas Geoff Dyer
Arnold Aronson Zeynep Celik Barbara Ehrenreich
Elsa Auerbach Hayan Charara Ben Ehrenreich
Zeina Azzam Amit Chaudhuri Deborah Eisenberg
Kafah Bachari Anne Chisholm (Vice President, Inua Ellams
Annie Baker Royal Society of Literature) Annie Ernaux
Sunandini Banerjee Noam Chomsky Brian Eno
Frank Barat Susannah Clapp Nick Estes
Mourid Barghouti Jennifer Clement (President, PEN Richard Falk
Josh Begley International) Rose Fenton

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 2019 Festival Report

Sylvia Finzi Jennifer Ruth Hosek Ruth Luschnat Eileen Myles Jacqueline Rose Linda Spalding
Erica Fischer Jean Howard Sabrina Mahfouz Karma Nabulsi Andrew Ross Gloria Steinem
Richard Ford Aamer Hussein Jamal Mahjoub Karthika Naïr Alice Rothchild Amy Kepple Strawser
Adam Foulds Kim Jensen Laurie Marhoefer Mary Jane Nealon Pru Rowlandson William Sutcliffe
Maureen Freely (Chair, English Ruth-Ellen B. Joeres Javier Marías (Nelly Sachs Award Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark Bee Rowlatt Billie Swift
PEN) Lucy Jones Laureate) Marcy Newman Arundhati Roy Janne Teller
Duranya Freeman Fady Joudah Jen Marlowe Donna Nevel Joe Sacco Kate Tempest
John Freeman Louis Kampf Lori Marso Viet Thanh Nguyen Nayantara Sahgal Jacques Testard
Ru Freeman Remi Kanazi Yann Martel Lulu Norman Mariam C. Said Madeleine Thien
Bella Freud Ghada Karmi Dave Mason Naomi Shihab Nye Rebecca Saletan Colm Tóibín
Esther Freud Brigid Keenan Ahmed Masoud John Oakes Mohamed Salmawi T.C. Tolbert
Ruth Fruchtman A.L. Kennedy Zeinab Masud Andrew O’Hagan Preeta Samarasan Carles Torner (Executive Director,
Tess Gallagher Omar el Khairy Diana Matar Richard Ohmann Sapphire PEN International)
Cristina Garcia Mona Khalidi Hisham Matar Ben Okri Shuchi Saraswat Salil Tripathi, (Chair of the
Tomer Gardi Rashid Khalidi Khaled Mattawa Michael Ondaatje (Nelly Sachs George Saunders Writers in Prison Committee for
Suzanne Gardinier Hannah Khalil Farid Matuk Award Laureate) James Schamus PEN International)
Apoorva Gautam Shamus Khan Nyla Matuk Susie Orbach Sarah Schulman Monique Truong
Ashish George Elias Khoury Colum McCann Ursula Owen Felicity Scott Jennifer Tseng
Ralph Ghoche Naveen Kishore John McCarthy David Palumbo-Liu Stephen Sedley Chika Unigwe
Noelle Ghoussaini Naomi Klein Tom McCarthy Nii Ayikwei Parkes Karen Seeley Tanya Ury
Eileen Gillooly Alexander Kluge Fiona McCrae William Parry Gamini Seneviratne Karen Van Dyck
Georgina Godwin Nancy Kricorian Sarah McNally Shailja Patel Rebecca Servadio Juan Gabriel Vásquez
David Gorin Hari Kunzru Askold Melnyczuk Ian Patterson Rachel Shabi Lawrence Venuti
Oscar Guardiola-Rivera Rachel Kushner Helaine Meisler Ed Pavlic Elhum Shakerifar Margo Viscusi
Abdulrazak Gurnah Olivia Laing Maaza Mengiste Jeremy Pikser Anton Shammas Gauri Viswanathan
Subhi Hadidi Nick Laird Ritu Menon Shahina Piyarali Solmaz Sharif Ocean Vinh Vuong
Rawi Hage Laila Lalami Christopher Merrill Sheldon Pollock Adam Shatz Dirk Wanrooij
Omar Robert Hamilton Léopold Lambert Lina Meruane Vijay Prashad Raja Shehadeh Roger Waters
Yasmeen Hanoosh Patrick Langley Brinkley Messick Paul B. Preciado Farhana Sheikh Marina Warner
Jeremy Harding Rickey Laurentiis Claire Messud Alexandra Pringle Jack Shenker Terry Weber
Githa Hariharan Paul Lauter China Miéville Philip Pullman Adania Shibli Eliot Weinberger
Joseph Harris Paul Laverty Gail Miller Pary El-Qalqili Ahmad Shirazi Irvine Welsh
Rodrigo Hasbún Kiese Laymon Pankaj Mishra Omar al-Qattan Ann Shirazi Ben White
Iris Hefets Mason Leaver-Yap W.J.T. Mitchell Rania Qawasmah Avi Shlaim Mabel Wilson
Jehan Helou Marie Myung-Ok Lee Nadifa Mohamed Shazea Quraishi Marc Siegel Jeanette Winterson
Mischa Hiller Ben Lerner Aja Monet Charles Rice-Gonzalez Rick Simonson Jacqueline Woodson
Marianne Hirsch Alan Levine Jenny Morgan Cynthia Rimsky Tom Sleigh Jay G. Ying
Jane Hirschmann Richard A. Levy Benjamin Moser Bruce Robbins Gillian Slovo Mona Younis
Elizabeth Hodges Ken Loach Michel Moushabek Howard A. Rodman Ali Smith Dorothy M. Zellner
Rachel Holmes Zachary Lockman David Mura Sally Rooney Nirit Sommerfeld Alia Trabucco Zerán
Amy Horowitz Claudia Castro Luna Nancy Murray Constancia Dinky Romilly Ahdaf Soueif

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

Social
/Media

Watch

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

Going
On
On PalFest
PalFest
Themes
Themes 2020
2020

Forward
In its second decade, PalFest will organize each
edition around a theme, working with co-
curators who are experts in relevant fields.
Our relationship with all media has changed
since the festival started in 2008; now more
than ever it is vital that Palestine be brought
into the production of new knowledge and
discourse, and not be treated as an isolated or
remote injustice.
Writers are now offered a two-year invitation,
for those whose first visit spurs the production
of new work about Palestine that they can
present on their return to a future festival.
PalFest 2020 will be organised under the title
SOUTH SOUTH PALESTINE .
We will be looking forwards and backwards,
focused on the question of the relationship
of Palestine with the Global South. How has
it changed since the end of the Cold War and
the end of nominal colonization? How do
global neoliberal and Israeli policies align, and
where do they diverge? How are theories and
methods of solidarity transforming to fit our
hyper-connected world and its accelerating
challenges? To what extent does the Global
South exist as a differentiable geography?
Should the very idea of the Global South be
updated and expanded in 2020?

PalFest was amazing, an incredibly

rich and rewarding experience,
and eye-opening too.

Jacques Testard
www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

Fundraising
Fundraising

2019 saw us hold our first ever US fundraiser.

We were moved by the show of support we
received from the community that has grown
around the festival. PalFest authors Molly
Crabapple and Teju Cole both donated artworks
for us to auction - and were generously joined
We have always been
by Laila Shawa (who gave us two pieces) and
a UK-registered charity,
Delphine Diallo.
but we are happy to announce
We are a small outfit, mostly staffed by that we can now accept
volunteers, and our budget is low so we rely charitable donations in
heavily on a small number of consistent the US through a
patrons. We’re pleased to have added a few new fiscal sponsor.
people to that group this year and hope that we
will be working together for many festivals to
come.

TO DISCUSS BECOMING
AASUPPORTER
SUPPORTEROFOFTHE
THE
FESTIVAL PLEASE DROP
OMARAALINE
OMAR LINEAT
AT
omar@palfest.org

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

£21,786 £19,600 £8,927

Transport Hotels Food

£4,846 £3,003 £3,870

Staff Event Translation
Production

£2,654 £2,200 £703

Fundraiser Insurance Communications

2019 £429
Marketing
£332
Bank

Accounts
Total Cost

£67,388 $87,281
£67,388 $87,281
£44,159 $57,198 66% Spend in
Palestine

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

Palfest was
Palfest was aa really
really incredible
incredible and
and transformative
transformative experience.
experience.
The programme
The programme had had great
great depth
depth and
and covered
covered so so much
much
ground -
ground - particularly
particularly given
given that
that we
we only
only had
had aa week.
week.
I’m very
I’m very much
much in in awe
awe ofof the
the team
team and
and what
what they
they were
were able
able to
to
do for
do for each
each of
of the
the authors
authors - - coordinating
coordinating ourour education
education days,
days,
especially. II can
especially. can only
only imagine
imagine how
how big
big of
of aa feat
feat that
that was.
was.
It was
It was aa massive
massive pleasure
pleasure toto meet
meet the
the other
other authors
authors and
and I’m
I’m
glad to
glad to be
be able
able toto be
be in
in contact
contact with
with them
them beyond
beyond Palfest.
Palfest.
The trip
The trip has
has enriched
enriched my my sense
sense of
of purpose
purpose and and responsibility
responsibility
both in
both in and
and outside
outside of of my
my work.
work.
Victoria Adukwei Bulley

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

PalFest
Production Team Our thanks to
Sharif Abdel Kouddous Walid Abu al-Halaweh
Jehan Bseiso Amir Abu Quwaider
Omar Robert Hamilton Anthony Arnove
Maath Musleh Omar Barghouti
Yasmin El-Rifae Bloomsbury Publishing
Mahdi Sabbagh Lee Brackstone

Team
Charles Buchan
Poster by Martin Daltry
Salma Shamel Ray Dolphin
Rania Elias
Web by Umar al-Ghubari
Ahmed Ayman Yasmin Hamidi
Paola Handal
Live translation by Emily Jacir
Nadine Nashef Rania Jawwad
Remi Kanazi
Text translations by Caroline Khalaf
Salma Said Mona Khalidi
Yazan Khalili
Photographer Rula Khoury
Nadia Bsieso Mira Koussa
Johnny Kort
Report Design Safwan al-Masri
Muiz MMAG Foundation
Muiz
PalFest Logo Tania Nasir
Jeff Fisher Munir Nuseibeh
Alexandra Pringle
Board of Trustees Beesan Ramadan
Omar Robert Hamilton Mariam Said
Nathalie Handal Abed Shehadeh
John Horner (Treasurer) Raja Shehadeh
Ahdaf Soueif (Founding Chair) Belal Shobaki
Faber Social
Lisa Taraki
Zahra Zawawi

www.palfest.org palfest
 2019 Festival Report

Thanks and
congratulations on the
successes of PalFest 2019:
the admirable dedication
and commitment of the
organizers, the perfect
coordination of seven
days and nights, and the
generous hospitality and
esteemed cordiality!
It’s been a very enriching
week both intellectually
and psychologically!
Samia Henni
www.palfest.org palfest
2019 Festival Report