Talk

An evening with Hala Alyan

Poetry and conversation

Date and Time:: Wednesday 27 May, 6–8pm
Location:: Minassa

Join us for an evening of poetry and conversation celebrating the work of Pulitzer Prize–nominated Palestinian novelist, memoirist and poet Hala Alyan.

To welcome Hala to London, contemporary lyric poets So Mayer, Haia Mohammed and Oluwaseun Olayiwola will share readings that explore the intimate intersections of the personal and the political.

The evening will culminate in a reading from Hala’s own work, followed by an in-conversation with Anthony Anaxagorou.

Doors open at 5.30pm; event starts at 6pm and ends at 8pm.

Hala Alyan is the Palestinian American author of the novels Salt Houses—winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize— and The Arsonists’ City, a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of five highly acclaimed collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year and The Moon That Turns You Back, both published by Ecco. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Guernica. Her latest book is the memoir I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, which was longlisted for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award and a TIME magazine Book of the Year. She lives in Brooklyn with her family, where she works as a clinical psychologist and professor at New York University.

So Mayer is a writer, editor, bookseller and organiser. Truth & Dare, their first collection of speculative fiction, was longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness and Edge Hill Short Story prizes. With Sarah Shin, they co-edited Ursula K. Le Guin, Space Crone, winner of the 2024 Locus Award for non-fiction. Bad Language is their second book for Peninsula, after A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing.

Haia Mohammed is a Palestinian poet and artist from Gaza. Her work explores memory, land, and the intimate textures of survival, often weaving personal witness with collective history. Through poetry and visual art, she documents the fragile and resilient moments that shape Palestinian life. The Age of Olive Trees (Out-Spoken Press, 2025) is her debut pamphlet, written across years marked by displacement, longing, and the insistence on voice. Haia’s creative practice continues to expand across genres and borders.

Oluwaseun (Seun) Olayiwola is a poet, critic, choreographer and performer based in London. His creative and critical work has been published in The Poetry Review, PN Review, The Telegraph, the TLS and elsewhere. His choreographic work has been presented at the V&A, The Place, The Central School of Ballet, and Studio Voltaire. He’s been commissioned by RSL, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Southwark Council, and Studio 3 Arts. Seun has an MFA in Choreography from the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, where he was a Fulbright Scholar in 2018-2019. His debut collection was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and Soft Skull Press (US). Since publication, Strange Beach has won an Eric Gregory Award and was Poetry Book Society Winter 2025 Special Commendation. Seun is an inaugural member of the Rose Choreographic School at Sadlers Wells East. He is a lecturer in dance in the Kingston School of Art and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Anthony Anaxagarou FRSL is a poet, essayist and publisher. His third collection, Heritage Aesthetics published with Granta Poetry in 2022, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2023 and was shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award. His forthcoming collection Speech Acts will be published with Fitzcarraldo Editions in Spring 2027.