In her first solo presentation in the UK, Fattal leads us on a journey of transformation. Imagining the large, brick-lined gallery to be a giant kiln, Fattal fills the space with a procession of five characteristic ceramic figures who are embarking on a spiritual and physical metamorphosis, and a series of black and white etchings, drawn from Fattal's memories of Damascus, as a garden paradise, appear as maps or windows for the voyagers. This accompanying publication documents her new work with brand new photography, and an essay by Canadian poet Lisa Robertson.

This superbly produced publication gathers over 100 watercolors made between 1972 and 2016 by Paris- and California-based Lebanese artist and publisher Simone Fattal (born 1942). Combining painting and collage, these works range from abstractions to near-abstract depictions of gardens and biomorphic forms. Fattal studied philosophy at the Ecole des Lettres, Beirut, and began painting in the late 1960s, eventually fleeing Beirut in 1980 with the outbreak of the civil war. Having moved to California, Fattal founded the Post-Apollo Press, a publishing house dedicated to innovative literature. In 1988, she returned to art after enrolling at the Art Institute of San Francisco. Here, reproductions of works are preceded by a discussion with Hans Ulrich Obrist in which Fattal ruminates on her childhood in Damascus, her earliest encounters with modernist and postwar art in Europe, her sculptural work and thethemes that inspire her affinity with for watercolor.

As skilled a philosopher as she is a poet, Adnan weaves multiple sonic, theoretical, syntactic pleasures at once.

Winner of the ALA Stonewall Book Award—Barbara Gittings Literature Award Named Best Book of the Year by Bustle Named Most Anticipated Book of the Year by The Millions, Electric Literature, and HuffPost ​The author of the “vivid and urgent…important and timely” (The New York Times Book Review) debut The Map of Salt and Stars returns with this remarkably moving and lyrical novel following three generations of Syrian Americans who are linked by a mysterious species of bird and the truths they carry close to their hearts. Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother’s ghost has begun to visit him each evening. As his grandmother’s sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria. One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting the birds of North America. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z’s past is intimately tied to his mother’s—and his grandmother’s—in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z’s story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn’t and has never been alone, he has the courage to officially claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare. As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother’s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along. Featuring Zeyn Joukhadar’s signature “magical and heart-wrenching” (The Christian Science Monitor) storytelling, The Thirty Names of Night is a timely exploration of how we all search for and ultimately embrace who we are.

In English for the first time, a wild and darkly funny book that combines Surrealist painter Leonora Carringon's fantastical writing and illustrations for children The maverick surrealist Leonora Carrington was an extraordinary painter and storyteller who loved to make up stories and draw pictures for her children. She lived much of her life in Mexico, and her sons remember sitting in a big room whose walls were covered with images of wondrous creatures, towering mountains, and ferocious vegetation while she told fabulous and funny tales. That room was later whitewashed, but some of its wonders were preserved in the little notebook that Carrington called The Milk of Dreams. John, who has wings for ears, Humbert the Beautiful, an insufferable kid who befriends a crocodile and grows more insufferable yet, and the awesome Janzamajoria are all to be encountered in The Milk of Dreams, a book that is as unlikely, outrageous, and dreamy as dreams themselves.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, the Artistic Director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, brings his curating expertise to the Instagram feeds of 380,000 followers, in an endeavour to revive the art of handwriting from within an ever-advancing digital age. The result is one of the most comprehensive looks at the art world from the inside; inclusive of artists, writers, designers, musicians, actors, architects and public figures. In his open-ended project, otherwise known as Post-it notes, Obrist collects an abundance of thoughts for the day, dreams, drawings, musings, jokes, quotations, questions, answers, poems, and puns from some of the world’s greatest contemporary artists, handwritten on everyday Post-it notes. From the reassuringly philosophical to the inspiringly straightforward, the ingeniously funny to the tenderly post-humous, Remember to Dream! (a note from American artist Carrie Mae Weems) paints a picture of the art world direct from many of the most celebrated artists of the twenty-first century. The book features an introduction by Hans Ulrich Obrist and is designed by Amsterdam-based award-winning book designer Irma Boom.

A masterpiece of Arabic love poetry in a new and complete English translation The Translator of Desires, a collection of sixty-one love poems, is the lyric masterwork of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi (1165–1240 CE), one of the most influential writers of classical Arabic and Islamic civilization. In this authoritative volume, Michael Sells presents the first complete English translation of this work in more than a century, complete with an introduction, commentary, and a new facing-page critical text of the original Arabic. While grounded in an expert command of the Arabic, this verse translation renders the poems into a natural, contemporary English that captures the stunning beauty and power of Ibn ‘Arabi’s poems in such lines as “A veiled gazelle’s / an amazing sight, / her henna hinting, / eyelids signalling // A pasture between / breastbone and spine / Marvel, a garden / among the flames!” The introduction puts the poems in the context of the Arabic love poetry tradition, Ibn ‘Arabi’s life and times, his mystical thought, and his “romance” with Niẓām, the young woman whom he presents as the inspiration for the volume—a relationship that has long fascinated readers. Other features, following the main text, include detailed notes and commentaries on each poem, translations of Ibn ‘Arabi’s important prefaces to the poems, a discussion of the sources used for the Arabic text, and a glossary. Bringing The Translator of Desires to life for contemporary English readers as never before, this promises to be the definitive volume of these fascinating and compelling poems for years to come.

Poetry. Literary Criticism. Middle Eastern Studies. LGBT Studies. Edited by Lindsey Boldt, Steve Dickison, and Samantha Giles. Compiled on the occasion of Arab American poet and painter, Etel Adnan's receipt of Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, HOMAGE TO ETEL is a collection of original writings written in tribute by friends, colleagues and admireres of Etel Adnan and her work. Contributors are Ammiel Alcalay, Jen Benka, David Buuck, Norma Cole, Steve Dickison, Thom Donovan, Sharon Doubiago, Simone Fattal, Robert Grenier, Benjamin Hollander, Joanne Kyger, Michael McClure, Stephen Motika, Nancy J. Peters, Csaba Polony, Megan Pruiett, Brandon Shimoda, Roger Snell, Cole Swensen, Stacy Szymaszek, Lynne Tillman, Fawwaz Traboulsi, and Anne Waldman.

Translated from the French and with drawings by the author.

Poetry. "With this book of poems Etel Adnan establishes herself as a major poet who belongs beside internationally acclaimed poets like Transtromer, Bly, Neruda, Vallejo, and Pessoa." Eric Sellin"