Writer, editor and publisher Marcia Lynx Qualey remarked that “the literature currently in the spotlight, in many languages, is Palestinian” while accepting Ottoway Award for the Promotion of International Literature in 2024. As Israel’s genocide of Palestinians continues, Marcia says that the demand for Palestinian literature has grown exponentially. Submissions to prizes and magazines have ballooned, as have requests from publishers asking Marcia’s advice on various manuscripts. These are not works necessarily written by Palestinians, but that “deal with Palestine in some way,” she adds. Historically, writers, translators and editors have struggled to get Palestinian writing published, so this should be good news; but unfortunately, Marcia says it should give us pause. While some publishers are certainly trying to engage from a solidarity perspective, many approach it with an extractive motive and to capitalize on the disaster. Luckily, Marcia explains how readers might discern between the books that might be exploiting the moment, and those that might come from a place of activism, and a desire to amplify Palestinian voices.

In this wide-ranging conversation Marcia also offers insights into this and several other problems that plague publishing about Palestine at a time when Palestinians, Palestinian culture and Palestinian history itself is being erased before our eyes. She explains how the Publishers for Palestine came about— a coalition we are proud to be part of as the Radical Books Collective. P4P’s growth is the industry’s overwhelming desire to decenter big corporate publishing. Marcia speaks about the shifts in Arabic-language publishing with the coming of new book fairs, prizes and presses located in Qatar and UAE — though she worries that they seem to be imitating Western corporate conglomerates, after all.

Finally, Marcia speaks of the ways in which ArabLit, the digital magazine and ArabLit Quarterly, the print magazine— that she was instrumental in creating— have attempted to provide material support, and foster community for writers, poets and translators trapped inside Gaza. With people in Gaza atomized, and with their lives completely fractured, putting writers, poets and translators in contact with each other remains the first priority for ArabLit. Their most recent issue on “Grief” illustrates that grief and mourning is not about being “alone and sad, but to be together and to propel ourselves forward.”

At this moment of bitter despair, Marcia insists that editors and publishers find alternative routes to create structures of doing business that might be decolonial, abolitionist and anti-capitalist. “We need these new ways for talking about Palestinian literature, not these old extractive, profit-seeking, iconizing, boiling down ways of it. I think it involves making partnerships, it involves changing the way that we do business.”

Further reading:

“The Landscape around Us”: Marcia Lynx Qualey’s Ottaway Award Acceptance Speech

https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2024-06/marcia-lynx-qualeys-ottaway-award-acceptance-speech/

Arab Lit Quarterly, the GRIEF issue: https://arablit.gumroad.com/l/glwto?layout=profile

ArabLit, the digital magazine: https://arablit.org/

Publishers for Palestine: https://publishersforpalestine.org/