Golan Haji and Hamid Sulaiman in Faber Residency
Poet and translator Golan Haji and graphic novelist and artist Hamid Sulaiman spent two weeks in Faber Residency in Catalonia before appearing in the Kosmopolis Festival of Amplified Literature 2019 as part of our project Literary Europe Live Plus, in collaboration with Faber and the Barcelona Centre for Contemporary Art (CCCB).
During his Faber residency Hamid worked on a new graphic novel with the working title Fill-IN about his journey into the world of tattoo, its history and social meaning, contemporary fascination and popularity, and about developing his own skill and knowledge of tattooing as an extension of his art.
Golan Haji worked on a creative prose essay in Arabic exploring the history of the Jewish population in Syria. The essay, dedicated to the translator Josh Calvo whose family came form Aleppo. The essay, a chapter in a future book on the subject, was published in Al Jumhuria, can be found here.
Both appeared at the Kosmopolis Festival on Saturday 23rd of March, together with a fellow Syrian author Rasha Abbas in a session discussing creating in exile moderated by the Barcelona-based author Bashkim Shehu.
The Faber residency and debate at Kosmopolis festival was part of our project Literary Europe Live Plus, supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
Photo of Hamid Sulaiman by Jérémie Lortic.