January 21: Read for Refaat
January 21, Sunday(VIRTUAL)
1pm New York | 6pm London | 8pm Ramallah
We continue to seek the reserves necessary to keep engaging with the fight for Palestinian freedom even as the violence continues unabated. Nowhere can we find more powerful expressions of resistance and the will to endure than among Palestinian writers themselves. We will join the Read for Refaat week of action and events that honor the life, work, and resistance of Dr. Refaat Alareer (1979-2023). We will gather to commemorate Refaat's rich, urgent and inspiring contributions to Palestinian resistance. We will provide a selection of short prose pieces and poems by Dr. Alareer for us to read and discuss. We will also hold space for the Palestinian writers, poets, artists and journalists who have been targeted and killed by Israel.
About "Read For Refaat" Global Day of Action January 15
On January 15, 2024, forty days after Palestinian poet, editor, and educator Refaat al-Areer was killed under Israeli bombardment, Publishers for Palestine are calling for a Global Day of Action, followed by a week of events, in which we read his poetry in public and refuse business as usual, demanding an end to the genocide and the occupation.
On January 15, forty days after Refaat’s death, people around the world will be reciting one of his poems in public. The reading can be in your workplace, at your school, in the mall, on the bus, or out on the street. Read in a group or as a demo. Disrupt business as usual. Record and share your reading on social media. Amplify Palestinian voices as we work to end the genocide, end the occupation, and free Palestine. Refuse to be silenced.
Read more about how you can support the action here.
About Dr. Refaat Alareer
Refaat Alareer (23 September 1979 – 6 December 2023) was a Palestinian writer, poet, educator, scholar and activist. He was born in Gaza City in 1979 and earned a BA in English in 2001 from the Islamic University of Gaza, an MA from University College London in 2007 and a PhD in English Literature at the Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2017. Dr. Alareer taught literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza and co-founded the organization We Are Not Numbers, which matched experienced authors with young writers in Gaza, and promoted the power of storytelling as a means of Palestinian resistance. His published works include Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (2014) and Gaza Unsilenced (co-edited with Laila El-Haddad, 2015) as well as numerous essays and poems. Dr. Alareer was a beloved teacher and his work is kept alive by his many students worldwide.