I Will Always Be Looking For You – A Queer Anthology on Arab Art

When conventional language does not equip us with the tools to speak about ourselves, we create our own. Slang expresses words and feelings that break down boundaries. It is a form of protest and fills in the gaps.

The Queer Arab Glossary is the first published collection of Arabic LGBTQ+ slang. This bold guide captures the lexicon of the queer Arab community in all its differences, quirks and felicities. Featuring fascinating facts and anecdotes, it contains more than 300 terms in both English and Arabic, ranging from the humorous to the harrowing, serious to tongue-in-cheek, pejorative to endearing. Here, leading queer Arab artists, academics, activists and writers offer insightful essays situating this groundbreaking glossary in a modern social and political context.

With beautiful, witty illustrations, The Queer Arab Glossary is a powerful response to pervasive myths and stereotypes around sexuality and an invitation to take a journey into queerness throughout the Arab world.

Contributors include Saqer Almarri, Nisrine Chaer, Sophie Chamas, Rana Issa, Adam HajYahia, Suneela Mubayi, Mejdulene Bernard Shomali, Hamed Sinno and Abdellah Taïa.

The Queer Arab Glossary was made possible with the generous support of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture – AFAC, Mophradat, Bashar Assaf and Mohammed Fakhro.

Foreword by Rabih Alameddine

Sarahland est un ouvrage de fiction américain contemporain qui se découpe en dix nouvelles, toutes reliées par les personnages de Sarahs et leurs parcours initiatiques à la fin de l’adolescence. Sam Cohen, autrice queer et juive, déploie un univers drôle et piquant autour des notions d’identité, de transition, de transformation, d’émancipation et d’apprentissage. Au fil d’histoires inventives, l’autrice explore la manière dont les narratifs qui nous sont assignés, les récits traditionnels, les identités qui nous pré-existent, sont dépassables. Elle construit alors avec ses personnages — presque toutes prénommées Sarah — de nouvelles histoires pour leurs passés ou leurs futurs, de nouvelles façon d’aimer la terre et ceux qui la peuplent, de nouvelles possibilités de vie en soi. Dans le refus pour chaque Sarah d’adhérer à un récit unique et uniformisant, l’autrice propose un lieu potentiellement meilleur pour nous toustes, un espace narratif qui n’exige aucune fixation de soi, aucune injonction consumériste, aucun compromis corporel: un lieu appelé Sarahland.

Née à Detroit aux États-unis, Sam Cohen vit et travaille actuellement à Los Angeles. Elle est une autrice de fiction dont les romans explorent des thèmes à l’intersection du féminisme, des études queers, et des pensées juives. Après avoir publié dans différentes anthologies et revues littéraires (Queer Flora, Fauna, and Funga, Weird Sister Collection, etc.), elle publie en 2021 Sarahland, un recueil de nouvelles. Elle enseigne l’écriture à l’université en tant que professeur d’écriture créative. Elle a été nommée et à gagné à de nombreux prix littéraires, notamment le ALMA Award (Best Jewish Story Collection of 2021), le Jewish Women’s Archive Book List, le Golden Poppy Award in Fiction (finaliste) ou encore le Chautauqua Janus Prize. Elle est en cours d’écriture de son prochain livre.

Joan of Arkansas is an election-season closet drama about climate catastrophe, divine gender expression, the instructions of angels, and heavenly revelation relayed via viral video. Fifteen-year-old Joan has been tasked by God (They/Them) to ensure that Charles VII (R–Arkansas) adopts radical climate policy and wins his bid as the Lord’s candidate to become the president of the United States. Arkansas is flooding, the West is burning, and borders are closed: “Heaven or / internet—it’s / hard to be / good.”

Winner of the 2023 Whiting Award for Drama.

If Aurora Mattia is a switchboard operator, then Unsex Me Here is her call log. Please hold. There’s someone on the other line. A spider, a sibyl, an angel, a mermaid, a goddess, or an ex-girlfriend.

Unsex Me Here is a prayer book tied together by the strings of a corset. Glamorous ramblers, haunted by the sense of another world drawing near, wander in and out of its inexplicable twilight. From a West Texas town with a supernatural past to a stalactite cavern in the birthplace of Aphrodite, from hotel rooms to gardens to the far horizon of a thought, they seek the source of the disturbance in their minds. Heartbreak is not so far from rapture; holy babble is another kind of gossip. Every pilgrimage is as dense with symbolism as it is refined by desire.

Susan Stryker is a foundational figure in trans studies. When Monsters Speak showcases the development of Stryker’s writing from the 1990s to the present. It combines canonical pieces, such as “My Words to Victor Frankenstein,” with her hard to find earlier work published in zines and newsletters. Brought together, they ground Stryker’s thought in 1990s San Francisco and its innovative queer, trans, and S/M cultures. The volume includes an introduction by editor McKenzie Wark, who highlights Stryker’s connections to developments in queer theory, media studies, and autotheory while foregrounding Stryker’s innovative writing style and scholarly methods. When Monsters Speak is an authoritative and essential collection by one of the most important and influential intellectuals of our time.

A bootleg of the first edition of Country Lesbians, published by WomanShare Books in 1976. It was printed in the context of a 2024 exhibition at Shmorévaz, a Paris-based independent art space, dedicated to the WomanShare collective, taking the book as its starting point, and borrowing its title.

WomanShare Collective is Sue Deevy, Billie Miracle, Nelly Kaufer, Carol Newhouse and Dian Wagner.

Co-published by Ness Books and Shmooks

Graphic design: Espace Ness