Write the World 2023: The Power of Literary Awards to Expand Readership, sponsored by SZBA

The Power of Literary Awards to Expand Readership, sponsored by SZBA

Literary awards have long been successful in celebrating and promoting authors, but is that true when it comes to works in translation?

In 2006, the Sheikh Zayed Book Award was established to bring recognition to outstanding Arabic writing and promote the translation and reading of Arabic literature around the world. In this panel discussion, the US publicist for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award and one of this year’s Literature category finalists, writer and editor Reem Bassiouney, and representatives from the National Book Critics Circle and National Book Foundation will discuss the creation and impact of these awards on global and personal levels. The discussion will be moderated by journalist Olivia Snaije.

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Moderator

Olivia Snaije is a journalist and editor based in Paris who writes about translation, literature, graphic novels, the Middle East, and multiculturalism. She is the author of three books and is a contributor to Publishing Perspectives and New Lines magazine.

Panelists

Reem Bassiouney is an Egyptian author living in Cairo. Reem is a finalist for the Literature category in this year’s Sheikh Zayed Book Award. She has won the Naguib Mahfouz Award for best Egyptian novel for Sons of the People: The Mamluk Trilogy. She also won the 2009 Sawiris Foundation Literary Prize for Young Writers and the 2009 King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies Translation of Arabic Literature Award. Erin L. Cox handles the US publicity for the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. Erin was a publicist at Scribner and HarperCollins, book publishing director at The New Yorker, and Business Development Director at Publishing Perspectives. Adam Dalva’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, and The New York Review of Books. He is the Senior Fiction Editor of Guernica Magazine. Adam serves on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, is the Books Editor of Words Without Borders, and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Rutgers University. Anna Dobben is the Literary Director of the San Antonio Book Festival and an event consultant. She was the Associate Director, Awards, at the National Book Foundation, and worked in the publicity departments of Alfred A. Knopf, Basic Books, and Grove Atlantic. Anna is a graduate of Emory University and an eight-time NCAA All-America swimmer. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.