Against Literatures: Arts Breaking Free [Radical Book Fair]

What role do the arts play in a world of genocide, climate change, rising far right politics, and increasing inequality?

How do we fight the erasures, silences and violence woven into literary culture in the west: How does the writer break free? And how does the reader?

In this event, poet George Abraham, novelist Nida Sajid, and visual artist Remi Graves, address the use, abuse, purpose and potential of the arts in causing radical change in our polarised world.

This event will be chaired by poet and novellist, Fariha Róisín.

-- Our Speakers --

George Abraham (they/هو) is a Palestinian American poet, essayist, critic, performance artist. They are the author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America (Haymarket, 2026) and Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020), which won the Arab American Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. They are the Editor-at-Large of Mizna, and co-editor of HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE US: Palestinian Poetry (Haymarket, 2025) which was long-listed for the Palestine Book Award. They are a graduate of Northwestern’s Litowitz MFA+MA program, and teach at Amherst College as a Writer-in-Residence.

Remi Graves is a poet and drummer from London. A former Barbican Young Poet, their work has been featured on BBC Radio 4, at St Paul’s Cathedral and in various anthologies. Their debut pamphlet, with your chest, was published by fourteen poems in 2022. coal won the inaugural Prototype Prize (short-form category) in 2024.

Nida Sajid is a postdisciplinary educator, organiser and writer. She holds an MA in Cultural Studies from Birkbeck, University of London, specialising in experimental literature. She is the author of COOP: A Novelette (Hajar Press, 2025).

Fariha Róisín is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Ontario, Canada. They were raised in Sydney, Australia, and are based in Los Angeles. As a Muslim queer Bangladeshi, they are interested in the margins, liminality, otherness and the mercurial nature of being. Their work has pioneered a refreshing and renewed conversation about wellness, contemporary Islam and queer identities and has been featured in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and Vogue. They are the author of poetry collections How To Cure A Ghost (2019) and Survival Takes a Wild Imagination (2023), as well as the novel Like A Bird (2020), Who Is Wellness For? (2022).