Traces of Enayat: Iman Mersal with Heba Hayek

Acclaimed Egyptian poet Iman Mersal comes to London to read from her lyrical and transporting new work, Traces of Enayat, in an evening hosted by Heba Hayek.

Traces of Enayat is a beautifully-textured inquiry into a great-yet-forgotten female writer set in the artistic and literary scene of post-revolution Cairo. Touching on subjects ranging from domestic abuse and divorce law, squats in the City of the Dead to the glamour of golden-age Egyptian cinema, this is a wide-ranging and wandering work from one of Egypt’s greatest living writers.

Poet, writer, academic and translator, Iman Mersal was born in 1966 in the northern Egyptian Delta and emigrated to Canada in 1999. First published in Arabic in 2019, Traces of Enayat won the prestigious 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award, making Mersal the first woman to win its Literature category. Her most recent poetry collection is The Threshold, shortlisted for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Award. Mersal’s work has also appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books and The Nation. She works as an Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Alberta, Canada.

This event will be hosted by Heba Hayek. Hayek is a Palestinian London-based author, whose work is rooted in de-colonial and indigenous practices. Their debut book Sambac Beneath Unlikely Skies won the 2022 Palestine Book Award and was named a 2021 Book of the Year by The White Review, Middle East Eye, and The New Arab.

Doors will open from 6:45pm.

Tickets: £8 General Admission / £16 Book and Ticket, inc. a copy of Traces of Enayat (RRP £12.99)

Venue: The Auditorium (Level 6) at Foyles, 107 Charing Cross Road*

*Please note that the Auditorium at Foyles is fully accessible from the Ground floor lifts.