In Celebration of The Land is Holy

Join AAWW in-person and online for a celebration of noam keim’s The Land is Holy. noam will be joined by Palestinian American writer Sarah Aziza, and Syrian American playwright Michael Zalta.

This event is in collaboration with our friends at Radix Media, a worker owned printer and publisher based in Brooklyn, NY.

Arriving May 28, 2024, The Land is Holy is a debut collection of anti-zionist, abolitionist, queer essays exploring the inhabitants of the natural world through threads of trauma, colonialism, and healing. Home has meant many different things to noam keim: born a Queer Arab Jew in a settler family in Occupied Palestine, raised in the cobblestone streets of Mulhouse, France; a lifetime of escape across Europe, the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal, Bangkok, and then the makings of a chosen family on Occupied Lenape Land, known as Philadelphia. Through it all, the memory of one’s homes, the persistence of kin persecuted across timelines, their complicity in settler colonialism, and a dogged disavowal of inherited trauma. In this staunchly anti-zionist and abolitionist project, the author considers the wounds of diaspora ache by turning to the fierce primal inhabitants of their lineage for answers.

This event is part of the Poetry Coalition’s slate of programs in the spring and summer that reflect the transformative impact poetry has on individual readers and communities across the nation, and is made possible in part by the Academy of American Poets with support from the Mellon Foundation.
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noam keim (they/them) is a trauma worker, medicine maker and flâneur freak. After graduating from their masters in American Visual Culture, noam moved to Ann Arbor Michigan for a fellowship. Many tribulations with immigration later, they now live on stolen Lenni-Lenape land (known as Philadelphia) where they build webs of support for individuals impacted by carceral systems. They believe that their childhood antizionist beliefs is what brought them to their abolitionist practices. Their non-fiction writing weaves themes close to their heart: reverence to the land, healing, queerness, colonialism, plants, abolition.

They are a Lambda Literary ’22 Emerging LGBTQ Voices Fellow, a Roots.Wounds.Words ‘23 fellow, a Tin House Winter Workshop ‘23 participant and a Sewanee ’23 contributor. They are a Periplus ‘23 Fellow mentored by Grace Talusan and their writing as been published or is forthcoming in ALOCASIA, Foglifter, The Massachusetts Review, The Kenyon Review and others. Connect on Twitter and IG: thelandisholy or thelandisholy.com.

Sarah Aziza is a Palestinian American writer who splits her time between Brooklyn and the Middle East. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Baffler, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, Lux Magazine, the Intercept, the Rumpus, and the Nation, among others. Previously a Fulbright fellow in Jordan, she was a 2022 resident at Tin House Writer’s Workshop, and a 2023 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers Workshop. She is currently working on her first book, a hybrid work of memoir, lyricism, and oral history exploring the intertwined legacies of diaspora, colonialism, and the American dream.

Michael Zalta is a queer Syrian American playwright, producer, editor, and scholar who was raised in the orthodox Syrian Jewish community of Brooklyn, New York. His dramatic writing has been developed and presented at the Lark, the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, NYU’s Jerry H. Labowitz Theater, amongst other places. His critical writing has been published by Zaman Collective and Protocols. As a producer, he has worked on several experimental films like Amanda Kramer’s, “Give Me Pity!” and Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn’s “Dream Team.” As an editor, he works closely with scholars, leftist advocacy organizations, and artists, including Ariella Aisha Azoulay and Diaspora Alliance. He is presently working toward his PhD at USC’s department of Comparative Literature and Culture, where he focuses on the aesthetics of 20th century Marxist movements in the Arab world, Palestinian cinema, and the modern history of Levantine Jewry.

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Founded in 1991, Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) is devoted to creating, publishing, developing and disseminating creative writing by Asian Americans, and to providing an alternative literary arts space at the intersection of migration, race, and social justice.