International Writers Series: Mona Kareem

Join the International Writers Series for an evening of poetry in translation with poet, translator, and scholar Mona Kareem. She will be joined in conversation by Safa Khatib, Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature.

In the words of her translator Sara Elkamel, Mona Kareem is “the author of an impossibly fluid cartography.” This event will focus on the trajectory of Kareem’s poetics across her three internationally acclaimed books: Mornings Washed by Thirst’s Water, Absence with Amputated Fingers and What I Sleep for Today. Moving between her poems in both their Arabic original and Elkamel’s English translations, the conversation will approach larger questions about the relationship between poetry, perception, imagination, and geopolitics.   

Free and open to all, registration requested.

Co-sponsored by University Libraries, Program in Comparative Literature, and the Center for the Literary Arts.

Mona Kareem is the author of three poetry collections. Her poetry has been translated into nine languages, and appeared (in English) in: POETRY, Poetry Northwest, Michigan Quarterly, Poetry London, Modern Poetry in Translation, among others. She is a recipient of a 2021 literary grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and works as an assistant professor of Arabic Literature at Washington University in St. Louis.  

Safa Khatib is a poet and translator. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature (Track for International Writers) at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is a Danforth Scholar. Her work has recently appeared in The Markaz Review, The Kenyon Review and the Palestine Now dossier, published by the Social Text Collective.  

The International Writers Series is a collaboration between the International Writers track of the Program in Comparative Literature and the Washington University Libraries to celebrate new publications of creative works by writers and translators in the Washington University in St. Louis community and beyond. The discussions are moderated by Matthias Goeritz, Professor of Practice of Comparative Literature.