Book launch

Meet the Author: Samah Sabawi in conversation with Lucia Sorbera, Jaseena Al-Helo, Rand Khatib, and Michael McDonnell

Cactus Pear For My Beloved | Dr Samah Sabawi

Monday, 21 October | 4pm-5:30pm

From award-winning author, playwright and poet Samah Sabawi comes this open-hearted memoir of a family over the past 100 years starting in Gaza, Palestine under British rule and ending in Queensland’s Redland Bay. Follow the journey of Samah’s parents, who were born as their parents were being forced to leave their homeland in Gaza. How her father, born at the height of the displacements to a disabled father and illiterate mother, was a believer in peaceful resistance and became a leading Palestinian poet and writer before being forced, with his own young family in tow, to flee and start a new life in Australia.

About the author:

Samah Sabawi is an author, playwright and poet, and recipient of multiple awards both nationally and internationally. Her theatre credits include the critically acclaimed plays Tales of a City by the Sea and THEM. In 2020 Samah received the prestigious Green Room Award for Best Writing in the independent theatre category, and was shortlisted for both the NSW and Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Samah co-edited the winner of the Patrick O'Neill Award,the anthology Double Exposure: Plays of the Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas. She also she co-authored I Remember My Name: Poetry by Samah Sabawi, Ramzy Baroud and Jehan Bseiso, winner of the Palestine Book Award. Samah received her Doctor of Philosophy from Victoria University for her thesis titled 'Inheriting Exposure: transgenerational trauma and the Palestinian Australian Identity'.

This book launch is co-sponsored by Arabic Languages and Cultures, History, and the Powerful Stories Network.

Location: Vere Gordon Childe Centre

Images courtesy of Dr Samah Sabawi