THE NARRATIVE OF TOMORROW, PALESTINE AFTER LIBERATION.
What does Palestine look like after liberation? What stories will we tell, and what futures will we imagine?
At this year’s PalArt x Shubbak Festival, we extended the vision of Ahmed Masoud’s play Application 39 into a special event that brought together writers, poets and historians from across the Arab world. Together, they shared powerful stories, critical reflections, and collective dreams of a liberated Palestine.
Listen back
You can now listen back to the full recording of The Narrative of Tomorrow: Palestine After Liberation, including story readings, a panel discussion chaired by Sami Hermez, and a live audience Q&A.
We extend our gratitude to our chair, Sami Hermez, and to our distinguished panellists — Ahmed Masoud, Nur Turkmani, Nadim Bawalsa, and Mai Serhan — for their words, imagination, and insight. Their full biographies are included below.
Featured Panellists
Ahmed Masoud is the author of the acclaimed novels Vanished – The Mysterious Disappearance of Mustafa Ouda and Come What May. Ahmed is a writer, poet and director who grew up in Palestine and moved to the UK in 2002. Ahmed’s theatre and radio drama credits include: Application 39 (for the Gaza 2048 Olympics), The Florist of Rafah (2024), Passports, Jinn, Mo Salah and Other Complicated Things (2023), Application 39 (WDR Radio, Germany 2018), Camouflage (London 2017), The Shroud Maker (London 2015 – still touring), Walaa, Loyalty (London 2014, funded by Arts Council England), Escape from Gaza (BBC Radio 4, 2011). Ahmed is the founder of Al Zaytouna Dance Theatre (2005–2013), where he wrote and directed many productions touring across the UK and Europe, including Unto the Breach (London and Vienna 2012), Between the Fleeting Words (2010–2012), Ila Haif (2008–2010), and Hassad (2007–2008). After completing his PhD, Ahmed published numerous articles, including a chapter in Britain and Muslim World: A Historical Perspective (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011). Most recently, he launched the PalArt Collective.
Nur Turkmani is a writer from Beirut. She studied creative writing at Oxford University, and politics at the London School of Economics and the American University of Beirut. Her research focuses on agriculture, social movements, and displacement. Her fiction and poetry appear in The Missouri Review, Copper Nickel, The Rumpus, Poetry London, Columbia Journal, The Adroit Journal, and others. Her essays are published in Evergreen Review, Al-Jumhuriya, Jadaliyya, and Rusted Radishes. October, her forthcoming poetry collection (Purple Ink), was selected by Chen Chen for Purple Ink’s Poetry Contest.
Nadim Bawalsa is a writer and historian of modern Palestine. He is the author of Transnational Palestine: Migration and the Right of Return before 1948 (Stanford University Press, 2022), winner of the 2023 Nikki Keddie Book Award (Middle East Studies Association) and the 2023 Palestine Book Award (Middle East Monitor). His writings have appeared in Jerusalem Quarterly, NACLA Report on the Americas, Journal of Palestine Studies, al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, and edited volumes by Routledge. Nadim earned his PhD in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from New York University in 2017 and an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University in 2010. He currently serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Palestine Studies and resides in Amman, Jordan.
Mai Serhan is a writer, editor and translator. She holds a BA in English & Comparative Literature and an MA in Arabic Literature from the American University in Cairo, as well as a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford. She is the author of the poetry collection Cairo: the undelivered letters (Diwan Publishing, 2025), the memoir I Can Imagine it For Us (AUC Press, 2025), and the translator of This is What Has Come to Be (Sayyed Darwish’s 1919 song lyrics, AUC Press, 2018). Her writing has appeared in The London Magazine, The Adroit Journal, Oxford Magazine, Anomaly, Jadaliyya, Journal of Palestine Studies, ArabLit Quarterly, Magma Poetry, and more. She is the recipient of multiple prizes, including the 2022 Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Prize, and has received fellowships from Winter Tangerine, Millay Arts, and Vermont Studio Center.
Sami Hermez, PhD is Director of the Liberal Arts Program and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University in Qatar. He is the author of War is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon (UPenn, 2017), which examines the everyday life of political violence in Lebanon, and My Brother, My Land: A Story from Palestine (Stanford, 2024), an award-winning book on Palestinian family resistance. He is currently developing a project on imagining the future of the Levant.
