The PalFest Podcast

Edward Said needs no introductions, but what happens when writers are asked to newly introduce the works that helped define his legacy? In this episode Isabella Hammad, who writes the introduction to a new edition of Said’s “Representations of the Intellectual,” and Hisham Matar, who does the same for his memoir “Out of Place”, discuss Said’s work and their own takes on many of the questions he thought about: the category of “the intellectual,” the particular modes of thinking and being that writing fiction demands, self-making in exile, and late style.

Isabella Hammad is the award-winning author of Enter Ghost, The Parisian, and Recognizing the Stranger.

Hisham Matar is the author of multiple novels including In the Country of Men, Anatomy of a Disappearance, My Friends, and the Pulitzer prize winning memoir, The Return.

Edward Said was a professor of literature at Columbia University as well as a public writer and political advocate for Palestinian liberation. He is the author of multiple works on culture and empire including Orientalism, Covering Islam, The Question of Palestine, and Culture and Imperialism. He is considered a founding figure of post-colonial studies.

This episode was recorded in New York at Young Atlas, Harlem, on April 3rd, 2026

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Check out the latest PalFest digital publication The Key here

Subscribe to the PalFest Bookshelf here

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Insta: @palfest Bluesky: @palfest.bsky.social YouTube: @Palfest

How do different forms of writing explore ideas that come from our personal and political histories? In Episode 16 of the PalFest podcast, Tareq Baconi and Saleem Haddad discuss their new books – Haddad’s novel Floodlines and Baconi’s memoir Fire in Every Direction – with their questions of family, exile, return, and the possibilities of art.

 

This episode was recorded at Ibraaz in London on February 11th, 2026.

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Check out The Key here

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On this episode of the PalFest podcast, we mark the launch of the UK edition of Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s Something About Living, published by the 87 Press, at the London Review Bookshop.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is one of the most influential Palestinian poets working in English today. Her collections have won multiple prizes and her poems have been published across the spectrum of poetry magazines.

So Mayer is a writer, editor, bookseller, organiser and film curator. Their most recent book is Bad Language, published by Peninsula Press in 2025, a memoir and manifesto on language and power.

Thanks to the LRB Bookshop for the event and the recording.

This episode was recorded in London on March 16th, 2026.

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Check out the latest PalFest digital publication The Key here

Subscribe to the PalFest Bookshelf here

Find us on our website or our socials:

Insta: @palfest Bluesky: @palfest.bsky.social YouTube: @Palfest

We marked the publication of Ismail Khalidi’s SELECTED PLAYS with this special live event in New York recorded with the playwright and a selection of his special guests. 

Tune in to hear excerpts from three of Khalidi’s plays, performed by Khalidi himself, Hind Shoufani, John Early, Ahmed Maher, Leta Levy and an introductory talk with Isabella Hammad. 

It was a unique, one off event hosted by Giorno Poetry Systems and co-organized with the Center for Palestine Studies and we’re glad to have been able to capture it and publish it now for you here. 

Thanks to Em from Joseph Joseph Studio Brooklyn for filming.

Find the full video on our YouTube page.
 

This episode was recorded in New York on March 3rd, 2018

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To watch the show, head to our YouTube channel

For more information on the event, visit our website

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Check out the latest PalFest digital publication The Key here

Subscribe to the PalFest Bookshelf here

Find us on our website or our socials:

Insta: @palfest Bluesky: @palfest.bsky.social YouTube: @Palfest

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00:00 - 00:34 - Intro
00:34 - 01:30 - Isabella Hammad; greeting
01:30 - 02:53 - Ismail Kahlidi; introduction
02:53 - 05:05 - Dead are my People; introduction
05:05 - 11:03 - Dead are my People; Act 2, Scene 1
11:03 - 13:32 - Sabra Falling; introduction
13:32 - 26:17 - Sabra Falling; Act 1, Scene 2
26:17 - 28:14 - Final Status; introduction
28:14 - 47:30 - Final Status; Act 1, Scene 3
47:30 - 48:26 - Curtain Call
48:26 - 49:42 - Isabella Hammad; questions intro
49:42 - 82:02 - Isabella Hammad and Ismail Khalidi; questions

In 2015 Molly Crabapple attended the Palestine Festival of Literature in Palestine. When she returned home she began excavating her family’s history and her great-grandfather’s involvement with the Jewish Bund - a secular, socialist, uncompromisingly anti-Zionist revolutionary movement that reached its zenith in inter-war Europe.

Now, eleven years later, she has written HERE WHERE WE LIVE IS OUR COUNTRY, a popular history of the Jewish movement that refused Zionism’s call to colonize and subjugate, and insisted that Here Where We Live Is Our Country.

We sat down with Molly for the PalFest Podcast ahead of its publication.

This episode was recorded in New York on March 18th, 2026.

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Check out the latest PalFest digital publication The Key here

Subscribe to the PalFest Bookshelf here

Find us on our website or our socials:

Insta: @palfest Bluesky: @palfest.bsky.social YouTube: @Palfest