#bulaq

The great Egyptian writer Sonallah Ibrahim passed away earlier this month, on August 13, 2025. Several years ago, BULAQ discussed his novel Warda – the story of a female fighter in the 1960s and 70s Dhofar rebellion in Oman, and of the Egyptian intellectual who, decades later, tries to solve the mystery of what happened to her. We discuss the vibrant and mysterious female character at the heart…

24 minutes into their podcast about her wideranging work, the folks on Bulaq consider what poet/writer/artist Etel Adnan meant when she said she "painted in Arabic." There's still a show of Adnan's works on paper on view at Galerie Lelong in NYC for two more days

Unlocking Palestine: Sara Yasin on Editing ‘The Key’ In the latest episode of the BULAQ podcast, co-hosts M Lynx Qualey and Ursula Lindsey talk with editor-writer Sara Yasin about the new publication The Key. Listen to the episode here. The Key is a new online publication dedicated to covering Palestine as “the core issue at the heart of the modern world.” We’re joined by its editor-in-chief,…

Mohamed Choukri’s Brutal Honesty In Conversation with Translator and Scholar Jonas Elbousty The Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri grew up poor and illiterate on the streets of Tangier in the waning years of colonialism. He told the story of his childhood in his autobiographical novel For Bread Alone – El Khubz El Hafi in Arabic, Le Pain Nu in French. Choukri went on to write much more, chronicling…

Looking In the Mirror: Arab Women’s Memoirs with Khaled Mansour In conversation with Ursula Lindsey and M Lynx Qualey Author, commentator and human rights advocate Khaled Mansour joins us to talk about how reading Arab women’s memoirs can help one gain a new understanding of the region’s collective history. After he worked with Egyptian psychoanalyst and feminist Afaf Mahfouz to write her…

Novelist and former journalist Omar El Akkad talks about his book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This – a blend of memoir, social criticism, and moral philosophy. The book creates and shares space for everyone who is full of grief and rage, who cannot be at home in institutions that support or ignore genocide. We discuss the linguistic obfuscations around Gaza, El Akkad’s…

In the latest episode of the BULAQ podcast, Episode 100, co-hosts Ursula Lindsey and M Lynx Qualey talk to Algerian novelist Said Khatibi about his novel The End of the Sahara, which won the 2023 Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the “young author” category. (Listen to the episode.) End of the Sahara is polyphonic literary detective novel set in southern Algeria in September and October 1988, and it…

Lit & Found: An Excerpt from Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s ‘Men Who Swallowed the Sun’

Hamdi Abu Golayyel’s Men Who Swallowed the Sun, translated by the late Humphrey Davies, is the focus of the most recent episode of the BULAQ podcast: “Stealing, Drug-dealing, and the Epic of Egyptian Migration.” The most recent BULAQ book quiz also focuses on the novel, and the first listener to answer the quiz question correctly will win a book from one of 10 participating publishers. To find…