Rifqa

His poems trace Rifqa’s exile from Haifa to his family’s current dispossession in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, exposing the cyclical & relentless horror of the Nakba. El-Kurd’s debut collection definitively shows that the Palestinian struggle is a revolution, until victory.

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Mohammed El-Kurd is an internationally-touring poet & writer from Jerusalem, Palestine. His work has been featured in The Guardian, This Week In Palestine, Al-Jazeera English, The Nation, & the forthcoming Vacuuming Away Fire anthology, among others. Mohammed graduated from the Savannah College of Art & Design with a B.F.A. in Writing, where he created Radical Blankets, an award-winning multimedia poetry magazine. He is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Poetry from Brooklyn College. 

His poetry-oud album, Bellydancing On Wounds, was released in collaboration with Palestinian musical artist Clarissa Bitar. Apart from poetry & writing, el-Kurd is a visual artist, printmaker, & most recently, co-designer of a fashion collection with Serbian designer Tina Gancev. Mohammed has spent his undergraduate weekends performing poetry at campuses & cultural centers across the United States & hopes to continue in the post-COVID-19 era. 

aja monet is a Caribbean-American poet, performer, & educator from Brooklyn. She has been awarded the Andrea Klein Willison Prize for Poetry & the Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title, as well as the New York City YWCA’s “One to Watch Award.” She is the author of The Black Unicorn Sings & the co-editor, with Saul Williams, of Chorus: A Literary Mixtape.