An evening of poetry and conversation to launch Lena Khalaf Tuffaha's National Book Award winning collection, Something About Living.

English & Creative Writing and the Culture, Communication, and Creative Practice Research Group at Strathclyde, with the87press are honoured to introduce Something About Living to the UK. Join us for an evening of conversation and poetry with poet, essayist, and translator Lena Khalaf Tuffaha and Dr Jessica Widner, lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Strathclyde.

Tuesday 10th March 6:30-7:30 PM, at the Library Lecture Theatre, Andersonian Library.

The Library has 2 accessible entrances, one is at the front entrance of the Curran and the other is at 101 St James Road. A more detailed venue guide can be found here.

This event is generously supported by the Keith Wright Fund and is free and open to all. Mount Florida Books will be offering 10% off this title for pre-orders for those attending this event. If you would like to pick up the book before that date email them via their contact page and we will arrange it, otherwise all pre-orders can be picked up on the night. Books will also be available to purchase at the event.

About Lena:

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist and translator. She is author of three books of poetry: Something About Living (University of Akron Press, 2024; the87press, 2025), winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry and the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize; Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award and honourable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award; and Water & Salt (Red Hen), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honourable mention of the 2018 Arab American Book Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Arab in Newsland, winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Prize, and Letters from the Interior (Diode, 2019), finalist for the 2020 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. For more about her work, visit www.lenakhalaftuffaha.com.

About the collection:__

Shortlisted for the PEN Heaney Prize 2025

Poetry Book Society Recommendation

Something about Living is the brilliant third collection from acclaimed poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha.

It explores Palestinian life through the lens of language, revealing a legacy of obfuscation and erasure. What happens when language only permits ongoing disasters to be packaged neatly for consumption and subsequent disposal? Searing with insights from the perspective of a Palestinian in diaspora, Something about Living refuses to cede ground to nihilism and apathy, taking the reader through the difficult landscape of hope and futurity in the midst of an interminable, uncertain, and often devastating present.

Something about Living opens with a single bird and ends in a dazzling meteor shower, and in between lies something of a marvel—an electric and sobering song crackling with possibilities for a homeland fractured and besieged by Empire. Lena Khalaf Tuffaha writes, “Love is paying attention,” and this impressive collection serves as a powerful exemplar of devotion—brilliantly rendered in surprising forms—and profoundly teaches us “a million ways to love.” —National Book Award Judges Citation 2024

About Jessica:

Dr Jessica Widner is a fiction writer, literary scholar, and lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde. She is the Director of the MLitt in Creative Writing and co-director of the new MFA programme in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, Interiors, was published by the87press in 2022 and her short fiction has appeared in Extra Teeth, Gutter Magazine, and Ludd Gang.