Current Projects
Other Paths for Shahrazad: An Arabic/English Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Arab Women
Book Launch: May 9th, 2026 - 2pm-4pm @ Boston Public Library
You must register for this event - please register HERE.
A bilingual anthology of contemporary poetry by forty women poets from eleven Arab nations.
A project of the Her Story Is (HSI) collective, led by Iraqi and American women writers and artists, Other Paths for Shahrazad features poems curated by the Iraqi contingent of HSI. Each poem was cotranslated by HSI members and collaborators from Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Canada, and the United States.
The anthology is arranged so that the poems are in dialogue with each other, rather than separated into stark sections according to theme, region, or author, so that the reader experiences it as they experience a standard collection of poetry: as a potent journey, as poems speaking to poems.
Masthead:
Edited by Jennifer Jean
Managing Editor/Co-Translator: Abeer Abdulkareem
Associate Editors/Co-Translators: Amir Al-Azraki, Julia Gettle, Mohamed Hassan, Mahmoud Nowara
Poetry Curators: Hanaa Ahmad Jabr, Elham Nasser Al-Zabedy, Rasha Fahdil, Jackleen Hanna Salam
Arabic Text Editor: Miled Faiza
Contributing Co-Translators: Dima Al-Basha, Yafa al-Shayeb, Francesca Bell, Martha Collins, Dzivinia Orlowsky, Danielle Pieratti, Susan Rich, Cindy Veach
Black Ocean Press presents groundbreaking English translations of contemporary women poets from Iraq and the broader Arab world whose work emerges from landscapes of conflict and renewal. By amplifying voices that challenge dominant narratives about Arab women's lives and art, this series creates vital pathways for cultural exchange and solidarity across borders. These collections not only center intimate experiences of memory, identity, and transformation, but also invite readers into vivid poetic worlds where personal and collective histories interweave, where language itself becomes a site of reclamation and reimagining. Our mission is to publish poetry that crosses linguistic boundaries and reshapes how we understand translation as an act of witness, connection, and shared imagination.
The first book in the series is I Drag My Sorrow by His Collar by Hanaa Ahmad Jabr, co-translated by Jennifer Jean and Wadaq Qais.
A note about Fairuz: Nouhad Wadie Haddad, known as Fairuz, is a Lebanese singer. She is widely considered an iconic vocalist and one of the most celebrated singers in the history of the Arab world. According to Egyptian Streets, "Her timeless melodies intertwine with Arab literature, drawing upon the works of countless writers and poets who came before her." In her song "What Remains of the Story?" she sings: What remains of the sea, of the summer, of what has passed? Of sadness, of contentment? What remains… what remains… what remains, my love? Tiny stories scattered by the wind. This series honors Fairuz and the women inspired by her legacy.
More details: Songs for Fairuz Series
WHERE DO YOU LIVE?أين تعيش؟
by Jennifer Jean and Hanaa Ahmad Jabr
Book Launch: May 10th, 2025
A profound gesture toward peace and healing by women who believe in the enduring power of open-hearted dialogue
with JENNIFER JEAN, Dr. HANAA AHMAD JABR, WADAQ QAIS
hosted by Arrowsmith Press
About the book
Where do you live? أين تعيش؟ is a bilingual, collaborative collection of “poem responses” in Arabic and English, written and co-translated by Iraqi poet Dr. Hanaa Ahmad Jabr and American poet Jennifer Jean—with the aid of Iraqi translators Tamara Al- Attiya and Wadaq Qais. In this intensely intimate book, poet talks to poet, and poem talks to poem. The process of the book's creation is a profound gesture towards peace and healing by women who believe in the enduring power of open-hearted dialogue. And, the “where” in question isn’t limited to a physical space but to the places minds and souls linger or reside.
Where do you live? أين تعيش؟ is both the title and the driving question at the heart of this lovely epistolary poetic dialogue between two poets scarred by the fire of war. Poem by poem, these two poets find themselves reaching each other—touching across tongues—in this sisterhood of poems, despite the vast geographical and cultural distances between Mosul and Massachusetts, Iraq and America, states formerly at war. But in Jean’s words, “like love, music is perfectly untranslatable—/it gathers us together.” And in Jabr’s words, since poetry “introduced me to myself,” in these poems we can be gathered and introduced to our widest selves.
—Philip Metres, author of Fugitive/Refuge
From the left: Jennifer Jean, Hanaa Ahmad Jabr, and Wadaq Qais