Songs for Fairuz Series
Songs for Fairuz: New Arab Women's Poetry
Songs for Fairuz is a 10 book series presented by Black Ocean Press bringing groundbreaking English translations of contemporary female poets and translators from the Middle East, North Africa, and their diasporas. Emerging from landscapes of conflict, renewal, and resilience, these voices challenge dominant narratives about the lives and art of MENA communities. By amplifying perspectives too often marginalized or misunderstood, the series will create vital pathways for cultural exchange and solidarity across borders, where translation becomes an act of witness, connection, and shared imagination.
Note about the logo artist: Sara Elbashir is a Sudanese Egyptian interdisciplinary calligraphy artist based in Concord, Massachusetts. Born in the U.A.E, A mother of 3 children. Sara has a BA in Chemical Engineering from Khartoum University in Sudan and a Post Baccalaureate Certificate in Studio Art from SMFA at Tufts University.
Sara has exhibited at The Wurks Gallery in Providence (2024), Hind’s House in NYC (2024), The School of Museum of Fine Arts (2023-2024), SMFA Art Sale (2023), CAC Annual Festival and Bookfair (2023) & (2025), and Concord Center for the Visual Arts (2022).
I Drag My Sorrow by His Collar
by Hanaa Ahmad Jabr
co-translated by Jennifer Jean and Wadaq Qais
Book Launch: September 16th @6pm
at the Boston Public LIbrary
About the book:
“Hands, tea, refusals, betrayals, loneliness, and the scent of jasmine: these themes, and more, are revisited, teased out, plumbed, and spun around by a singular, penetrating personality in starkly evocative "prose poems" often addressed to the city of Mosul which too often betrays its “lovers” with a lust for war.”
- From the Translator’s Note by Jennifer Jean
More details coming soon!
Coming Spring 2027
In & Out of Time
by Lamia Makaddam
translated by Miled Faiza and Karen McNeill
Lamia Makaddam is a Tunisian poet, journalist, and translator living in The Hague. She is the author of four poetry collections including With the Taste of Winter Fruit. As well, she has translated two books from Dutch to Arabic including You Said It by Connie Palmen which is about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. She was awarded the Al-Hijara Literary Prize and the Dutch Migration Literary Prize. Makaddam’s latest poetry collection is titled Qasa’ed Al’amah, The Blindness Poems (Baraat Almutawassit 2023). She works with Radio Holland Worldwide and as a criminal translator for the Dutch courts.
More info coming soon