Addie Leak at Literary Hub:
Being anything other than cisgender and heterosexual falls outside the norm in what are often very traditional societies, and while laws across the SWANA region vary—some more lenient, some quite repressive, some enforced, others not—there is a great deal of censorship, much of it self-imposed. A queer writer is less likely to tell queer stories because of a fear of backlash, the difficulty of finding a publisher, or the worries about how it might affect their relationships with others in society. A straight writer is still, sadly, not always likely to treat their gay characters with understanding and empathy.
All the upheaval of 2026 aside, I choose to believe this state of things is—slowly—changing. In 2021, Areej Gamal’s novel Mariam, It’s Arwa (recently published in my translation by AUC Press), a novel about two women falling in love, was awarded the Sawiris Cultural Prize for Emerging Writers in Egypt, a country that has made headlines for human rights abuses against the queer community for years.
More here.
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