On Wednesday 14 February 2024, seventeen UK independent bookshops will hold events to raise money for the PEN Emergency Fund which will be ringfenced to provide support to writers at risk who are in and from Palestine. For every £1000 we raise, the PEN Emergency Fund will support one emergency grant to a Palestinian writer at risk.

Across the UK, indie bookstores will hold their own special events, including readings, with door prizes donated by publisher partners. All proceeds will go through a central page donating to English PEN (a registered UK charity), who will transfer all funds raised to the PEN Emergency Fund, based in Amsterdam.

As part of the Bristol Valentines for Palestine fundraiser event, we are honoured to be hosting Mira Mattar, Sabrin Hasbun, Nikesh Shukla and Zakiya McKenzie for a night of artistic solidarity and resistance in support of Palestine. Our four participating artists will deliver a selection of readings from published and upcoming poetry and prose work.

We are also going to be hosting a hybrid auction to raise funds, which will take place both in-house and online with phenomenal items up for grabs, from original art works from Bristol and international artists, exclusive theatre tickets and signed book bundles, to 1:1 mentoring sessions with acclaimed writers Daisy Johnson, Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Zakiya McKenzie, Caleb Parkin, Jessica Andrews, Polly Barton and more, alongside literary agent advice sessions and 1:1 yoga sessions, with more items to be announced in the coming days. There will also be a raffle for event attendees only!

If you wish to make a donation please visit this Gofundme page https://www.gofundme.com/f/valentines4palestine-donate-for-writers-at-risk

Bios:

Dr Sabrin Hasbun is an Italian-Palestinian transnational writer. Sabrin believes in the extremely generative power of collective creation and action and her research focuses on collaborative practices to explore histories of marginalised groups. She has recently worked as writer, editor, translator, and trainer for several institutions around the world and published articles, both individual and collaborative, about collective creation in communities. She now works as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Cardiff Met university, specialising in writing for and by marginalised groups. Wait for Her, Sabrin’s family memoir about displacement told through the love shared between her Italian Mother and Palestinian father, has recently been shortlisted for the prestigious Footnote Press Writing Prize (https://www.thebookseller.com/news/dariia-lysiuk-and-sabrin-hasbun-shortlisted-for-the-15k-footnote-x-counterpoints-writing-prize) Twitter: @HasbunSabrin



Mira Mattar writes fiction and poetry. She wrote Yes, I Am A Destroyer (2020), Affiliation (2021) and The Bow (2021). A new chapbook, And most of all I would miss the shadows of the tree’s own leaves cast upon its trunk by the orange streetlight in the sweet blue darks of spring, is forthcoming from Veer2. She has had work published in Granta, The Chicago Review, Berfrois and elsewhere. She regularly reads her work in the UK and abroad. Mira lives and works in London.



Dr. Zakiya McKenzie is a writer and researcher based in Bristol, UK. In 2019 she was writer-in-residence for Forestry England and in 2021 she was artist-in-residence at Studio Voltaire in London. Her 2021 Rough Trade Books historical fiction pamphlet Testimonies on the History of Jamaica Vol. 1 explores the natural and social history of Jamaica in 1655 – the year Britain took the colony of Jamaica from Spain. Dr. McKenzie finished a PhD in English from the University of Exeter on the history of Black British newsprint in December 2023.

Zakiya’s essays have appeared in a number of anthologies including, Haunting Ashton Court: A Creative Handbook for Collective History-Making (2023), Radical Landscapes: Art, Identity and Activism (Tate, 2022), Reading the Forest: A Forest of Dean Anthology (Douglas McLean Publishing, 2022), Women on Nature: An Anthology of Women’s Writing about the Natural World in the East Atlantic Archipelago (Unbound, 2021), Gifts of Gravity and Light: A Nature Almanac for the 21st Century (Hodder & Stoughton, 2021) and The Wild Isles: An Anthology of the Best of British & Irish Nature Writing (Head of Zeus, 2021).



Nikesh Shukla is an author, screenwriter and one of the most prominent UK voices on diversity and inclusion in the arts. He is the editor of bestselling essay collection The Good Immigrant, which won the Reader’s Choice at the Books Are My Bag Awards, and was shortlisted for Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. He is the author of a number of novels for both adults and young adults including Coconut Unlimited (shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize), Meatspace, Run Riot, The Boxer, Brown Baby and co-editor of The Good Immigrant USA. Nikesh is the co-founder of the literary journal, The Good Journal and The Good Literary Agency and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from Roehampton University and the University of Bath. He hosts the ‘Brown Baby’ podcast which explores how we raise our kids with joy and wonder in uncertain and bleak times.

Entry requirements: no age restrictions — Read more — Read less