Emirates Airline Festival Of Literature At Jameel Arts Centre

The Emirates LitFest opened at Jameel Arts Centre this afternoon for the first of three festival weekends. Children and adults alike visited the event to enjoy art, literary conversations and workshops, and to browse the books on sale by Festival authors.

Highlights included:

• Popular workshops on poetry, and mindfulness, storytelling and creativity.
• Jameel Arts Centre Exhibition tours in English and Arabic
• A special Walking Talk of the new exhibit Age of You with curator Shumon Basar
• A Walking Talk through the Comics Display with distinguished librarian and avid collector, David Hirsch
• A fully booked free session with Dubai-based Booker Prize-nominee Avni Doshi in the beautiful open-air amphitheatre
• The evening ended with a session with avid collector and archivist Camil Karam delving into his practice of collecting rare publications, posters and prints from across the Arab world

The Festival continues at Jameel Arts Centre tomorrow with more exhibition tours, walking talks, author sessions and workshops. Highlights include:

• Annabel Kantaria’s sold out Novel Writing Trouble-shooting workshop
• Maitha Al Khayat’s Naqshun drawing workshop (age 6-8)
• Hafsa Lodi’s masterclass on how to give new life to your book online (in English)
• Simar Halwany’s silent book workshop (in Arabic)
• An evening of poetry starting with Dannabelle Gutierez will offer her take on Poetry in a Constantly Changing Landscape in a free session in the amphitheatre (in English), and followed by the JARA Collective’s interactive Beyond Poetry session, featuring poets and artists Shamma Al Bastaki and Sarah Almehairi, and their very first chapbook author, Arthur de Oliveira