Second annual Watermelon Seeds Festival of Literature. Internationally acclaimed and award-winning novelists, poets, playwrights, and journalists read in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The reading features:
- Lucy Alford (Forms of Poetic Attention)
- Duha Alshaqaqi (We Are Not Numbers),
- Danielle Janess (The Milk of Amnesia)
- El Jones (Abolitionist Intimacies)
- Sonnet L’Abbé (Sonnet’s Shakespeare),
- Leila Marshy (My Thievery of the People)
- Nyla Matuk (Stranger)
- Philip Kevin Paul (Little Hunger)
- Ziyad Saadi (Three Parties)
- Neil Surkan (Unbecoming)
- Craig Taylor (New Yorkers)
- Saeed Teebi (Her First Palestinian)
- Paul Watkins (Soundin’ Canaan).
A hybrid event with readings on site and by video. Free and open to the public.
Following the success of the inaugural Watermelon Seeds Festival of Literature, the second annual Festival will take place in the Gustafson Theatre at Vancouver Island University on 11 October 2025. The mandate of the second Festival is to foster connections between literatures from Palestine and Turtle Island, and to promote intercultural understanding. The Watermelon Seeds Festival of Literature is sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Gather Grant), VIU’s Department of Creative Writing and Journalism, VIU’s Muslim Women’s Club, and Windowseat Books.