With Salha Obaid
Ages 16+
In Arabic
Explore narrative journaling as a form of reflection, memory and expression. Preserve fragments of personal history within a wider narrative of place and society.
Beginning from an intriguing idea or memory, work through guided prompts. Discuss examples of local and international literature with other participants, considering how thoughts, emotions and everyday experiences can be transformed into focused creative narratives.
Informed by the individual writing exercises and collective sharing, develop short narrative texts. Envision where your writing might lead and how one person’s life stories can exist in dialogue within a broader social and cultural context.
About the instructor
Salha Obaid is an Emirati writer and novelist who published her first short story collection, Alzheimer, in 2010. The Messenger of Happiness and The iPad’s Life on the Zorba Way followed in 2012 and 2014, respectively. Her fourth collection, A White Strand Implicitly (2015), won the Al Owais Prize for Creativity, as did her novel Except Your Grandmother Was Singing (2025). She has also published the novels Perhaps a Joke (2018) and The Spice Circle (2022); the latter was longlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2023. Her works have been translated into English, Italian and German.