What the World’s Silence Says: A Reading with Poet Yahya Ashour Ibda’a (Creative Practices)

Poetry and Storytelling with Gazan poet, Yahya Ashour.

Join us for poetry ready and conversation with Yahya Ashour, a poet from Gaza.

Yahya Ashour was born in Gaza, Palestine. He published two books in Arabic, “That’s Why Ryan Walks This way” (a children’s book) and “You’re a Window, They’re Clouds” (a poetry collection). His children’s book won the Arab Children’s Books Publishers Forum Award in 2022. Ashour will be a resident of the International City of Arts in Paris, France, from March to May 2024. He is an honorary fellow at the University of Iowa and a 2022 fall resident of the International Writing Program there. He was the youngest poet to be featured in the anthology of Palestinian Poetry Today, which featured poets born between the 1970s and the 1990s, edited and translated by the renowned French-Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laabi. He worked as a mentor for children and youth in creative writing and critical thinking at some of the most prominent organizations in Gaza, like Tamer, Qattan, Nawa and Amideast. He earned a BA in sociology/psychology in 2020. He has survived six Israeli military aggressions in Gaza. During this war, his family’s house of five floors and his family’s business were destroyed, and he lost one cousin and seven friends. His family of 19 was forced to flee to the south of Gaza and has been surviving under severe circumstances since the beginning of the war.

This event is co-sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities, the UIC Classics and Mediterranean Studies Department, the Social Justice Institute, the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, and Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.

The space is wheelchair accessible. For questions and accessibility, please email us at arabamcc@uic.edu