A Story of Resilience with Comma Press
in collaboration with PSC High Wycombe
Price: 5.50
Oxmoor Farm
Oxmoor Farm, Great Hampden, Buckinghamshire
England HP16 9RD
About the event
Join Comma Press and High Wycombe PSC for the launch of Voices of Resistance, a collection of diaries written by four Gazan women during the ongoing genocide. In the diaries, Batool Abu Akleen, Sondos Sabra, Nahil Mohana and Ala'a Obaid offer first-hand accounts of Israeli airstrikes, forced displacement and engineered famine. All proceeds from the sale of the diaries go to the writers still in Gaza.
Max Porter has referred to the collection as: ‘The most important book in the world’
This event will feature extracts of the diaries read by Sama Rantisi and Leila Harandi interspersed with video content, followed by a Q+A with the actors along with translator and Palestinian Basma Ghalayini, hosted by editor James Harker.
The venue opens from 5pm for food and drink. The event will start at 7pm.
Meet the Speakers
Basma Ghalayini is an editor and translator, born in Khan Younis and raised in Gaza City. She is the editor of Palestine +100: Stories from a Century After the Nakba and Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide. Her translations have been published by Commonwealth Writers, Deep Vellum Press and Comma Press in books including Banthology, The Book of Ramallah and The Book of Cairo. As a journalist, she has written for the New York Times and Wasafari.
Sama Rantisi is a London-based bilingual Palestinian actress using theatre as a force for justice and representation and celebrating identity, resistance, and the lived experience of Palestinian women. Sama's recent credits include Application 39 (PalArt Festival), Welcome to Gaza (Hands Up Project) and Voices of Resilience (Belgrade, Coventry). As a writer and co-creator, her work includes QUA (BÉZNĂ Theatre, 2024), which explored the complexities of resistance in an increasingly-policed state.
Leila Herandi is a British-Iraqi actor, theatre-maker and workshop facilitator. Her creative focus is to shine a light on the things that matter the most to her; one of them being the liberation of Palestine.
