George Abraham
(USA) is a Palestinian American poet, performance artist, and writer. They are the author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America (Haymarket Books, 2026) and Birthright (2020) which won the Arab American Book Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. They edit for Mizna, a Southwest Asian and North African diasporic literary journal, and are co-editor of HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE US: Palestinian Poetry (Haymarket Books, 2025). Their current projects also include Eve, a performance project with Fargo Tbakhi re-imagining Milton's Paradise Lost through the lens of Palestinian resistance. They currently teach in Amherst College's English department as a Writer-in-Residence.
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Archive available for: George Abraham
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Mensen Zeggen Dingen x Writers Unlimited Festival
With: Damaris, Dean Bowen, Duimalot, George Abraham, Hasan Gök, Rosabelle Illes, Sabina Lukovic
Writers Unlimited Festival and Mensen Zeggen Dingen - platform for poetry and performance - join forces and words! In GR8 Theater, we bring you a party full of poetry, poetry slam, prose and punchlines with a musical note. Besides Dutch spoken-word artists Sabina Lukovic, Duimalot, Hasan Gök and Damaris, two of the festival's international authors will let their voices be heard: George Abraham (United States) and Rosabelle Illes (Aurba). Host: Dean Bowen!
Festival tip: head to the festival opening at Theater aan het Spui on Thursday night 23 January first! From 19:30, see performances and readings by Ukraine's leading writer Andrei Kurchov, British author/stand-up comedian Viv Groskop and South African writer Resoketswe Manenzhe, among others. Afterwards, with anyone who wants to join us, we will take a 'spoken word walk' (of around 15 minutes) to GR8 to arrive in time for the start of Mensen Zeggen Dingen x Writers Unlimited Festival, On our way there we make a couple of short stops to watch performances by poet and spoken word artist Hasan Gök.
Mensen Zeggen Dingen speaks out, starts conversations, puts exclamation marks or question marks! The poetry and performance platform has been a welcome and regular guest for ten years, with club shows in venues including Paard (The Hague), Theater Bellevue (Amsterdam), Tivoli Vredenburg (Utrecht), Doornroosje (Nijmegen) and festivals such as Lowlands, Down The Rabbit Hole, Zwarte Cross and Writers Unlimited Festival.
Festival tip 2: for the full festival experience, go to the grand festival events Friday Night Unlimited (24 January) and Saturday Night Unlimited (25 January)! Both nights you choose your own route along some 20 performances, readings and conversations on five stages in Theater aan het Spui and Filmhuis Den Haag. English and Dutch spoken.Festivaltip 3: as Writers Unlimited celebrates 30 years of making festivals, we are celebrating our anniversary with a show full of music, dance and literature at Amare (Danstheater) on Sunday afternoon, 26 January. You will see and hear Spinvis, Shirma Rouse, XILLAN, Babs Gons, Joost Oomen, Zaïre Krieger, Claudia Karapanou Flamenco Trio, Royal Conservatoire Dance and Pulse led by Eli Wing, among others. Tickets 11 euros (under 29s or students), or 16 - 35 euros (depending on seat chosen).
From 23 to 26 January 2025, Writers Unlimited International Literature Festival The Hague is to be found in theatres, libraries and schools throughout the city: from Theater aan het Spui, Filmhuis Den Haag, Amare and Paard to Theater Dakota, Theater De Vaillant, the Nieuw Waldeck, Schilderswijk and Ypenburg libraries and De Haagse Hogeschool. With over 120 writers, poets and spoken-word artists and musicians from the Netherlands and abroad. With readings, prose, poetry, storytelling, spoken word, author interviews, topical talks, films and music. -
Speech, Silence
In Speech, Silence, six poets respond to the question: what is poetry's relation to silence? Their poetry readings will include new work, written especially for this purpose. You will see and hear Palestinian-American poet George Abraham, Danish writer and poet Asta Olivia Nordenhof, South African writer and poet Rešoketšwe Manenzhe and, from the Netherlands, poets Pelumi Adejumo, Yasmin Namavar and Maureen Ghazal.
This programme takes it's title from the poem Sprekers, zwijgers by the Dutch writer Lidy van Marissing, published in her latest collection De verwerping van het stilzitten (The rejection of inaction, 2024). Van Marissing's poem speaks of a "language half speaking, half silent, rocking back / and forth in between."
Palestinian-American poet Fady Joudah commented on speaking and silence in a recent interview with The New Inquiry: "We need to learn how to listen in silence to the Palestinian in their silence. So far, when a Palestinian goes silent, it means they are dead or violable, digestible, liable for further erasure or dispossession. English has not begun imagining the Palestinian speaking, let alone understanding Palestinian silence."
Fady Joudah's words make us rethink poetry and silence. Poetry, and our discourse about poetry, always run the risk of degenerating into a domestication of silence, a way of making silence available and digestible to an audience, often in a language that is also used to commit the atrocities producing so many forms of silence.
The poets recite their new work written especially for Speech, Silence in their preferred language of writing. The poems will be simultaneously projected in Dutch and/or English.
Speech, Silence has been curated for Writers Unlimited Festival 2025 by Maarten van der Graaff.
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Movies that Matter x Writers Unlimited Festival Special: 'Conflict and Identity'
American poet George Abraham feels strongly about the war in Palestine because of his Palestinian roots. They also write from a queer and feminist perspective about the right to exist, gender roles and identity.
Dutch filmmaker Beri Shalmashi has roots in Iranian Kurdistan. Among other things, she has made films about the devastating effects of war in her homeland and a host of other themes. Her most recent film Casting Call is about an actor who feels forced to play a role he does not want to play.
Both will read and show excerpts from their work and engage in conversation with Movies That Matter director Margje de Koning. What is their working method and what are the differences in approach between a writer and a filmmaker? What do they hope to trigger in the reader or viewer with their texts or film? Do they see their work as an indictment or as medicine?
A crossover programme with film and literature, and on art and human rights, organised by Writers Unlimited and Movies that Matter.
George Abraham is a Palestinian American poet, performance artist, and writer. They are the author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America (Haymarket Books, 2026) and Birthright (2020) which won the Arab American Book Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. They edit for Mizna, a Southwest Asian and North African diasporic literary journal, and are co-editor of HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE US: Palestinian Poetry (Haymarket Books, 2025). Their current projects also include Eve, a performance project with Fargo Tbakhi re-imagining Milton's Paradise Lost through the lens of Palestinian resistance. They currently teach in Amherst College's English department as a Writer-in-Residence.
Beri Shalmashi is a screenwriter, film director and director of Avanti in Almere, which organises talks, debates and symposiums on topical issues. She graduated from the Dutch Film Academy with the documentary Wie niet weg is, is gezien. In 2010, her One Night Stand documentary Mama premieres, with a nomination for the Golden Calf for best television film, which she writes and directs together with Sanne Vogel. From 2012 to 2015, Beri lived in Iraqi Kurdistan, where she taught at the film academy and made the short film Heart on Fire. Beri writes occasionally for de Volkskrant and de Filmkrant, made a cookbook of refugee stories at Rose Stories and realised her interactive documentary BigVillage.
Margje de Koning is a filmmaker and director of Movies That Matter. After finshing her Theatre and Film Studies, she made many documentaries for various broadcasters in The Netherlands and abroad. At Dutch national broadcaster IKON, she was responsible for the Television Department from 2005 and, from 2012, Head of TV, Radio and New Media. When IKON merged into national broadcaster EO in 2016, she was Commisioning Editor Documentaries there. In 2019, she became artistic director of Movies That Matter in The Hague, which screens human rights related films during the annual festival and many other events year-round.
Festival tip: the upcoming Movies That Matter festival edition will take place from 21 up to and including 29 March 2025 at Theater aan het Spui and Filmhuis Den Haag.
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Book of My Life: George Abraham in conversation with Ellen Deckwitz
Writers tell us about their favourite book: the book that inspires or touches them, that set their artistic, moral or intellectual compass. In short, the book they would recommend to everyone. Interview: Ellen Deckwitz.
George Abraham speaks about Gate of the Sun (2000), one of the best-known books by Lebanese writer, advocate of the Palestinian cause and university lecturer Elias Khoury, who died in 2024. In an emergency hospital of the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut, fate has brought two men together. Joenis, a freedom fighter who made his mark in the 1948 war, lies in a coma. His protégé Khaliel, a 40-year-old Palestinian nurse who was born in the camp and never saw his homeland, refuses to accept that his hero is doomed.
