On April 17^th, An-Najah University hosted a number of cultural meetings as part of the 2011 Palestine Festival of Literature (Palfest); this festival is an annual event that aims to bring a cultural festival of international standards to audiences in Palestine to assert the power of culture over the culture of power. It was an initiative by Ahdaf Soueif, Founder and Chair of Engaged Events, as well as the Founding Board which consists of Victoria Britain, Alison Elliot, Brigid Keenan, John Horner (Treasurer) and Sheila Whitaker.

Palfest aims to invite international authors and writers to Palestine to have a close look at the situation in the country and meet with local writers, as well as present and share their writings with the Palestinians.

Patrons of the Festival include Chinua Achebe, John Berger, Mahmoud Darwish, Seamus Heaney, Harold Pinter, Philip Pullman and Emma Thompson. It is supported by the British Council, the Open Society, the A M Qattan Foundation and Riwaq among others.

The Festival includes a number of literary evenings, poetry readings, musical performances and workshop at the different Palestinian universities in cooperation with participating artists and writers.

Participants in the 2011 Festival included the Pakistani Novelist and Journalist, Mohammed Hanif, and Gary Younge, a British Journalist, who presented a lecture titled “To be a Journalist in the World of Today” which was organized at the Faculty of Media, New Campus which was attended by a number of journalists and journalism students.

Also, Dr. Basem Ra’ed gave a lecture titled “Writing National Novel-Do Palestinians have a National Novel!” which was organized at the English Department, Old Campus in which a number of instructors at the Department participated. Mu’ez Anwar presented a lecture on graphic design and visual contact at the Faculty of Fine Arts, New Campus which was attended by several instructors and students from the Faculty.

Nathalie Handal gave a lecture titled “Creative Writing: New Voices in Palestine” while Taleen Voskertstein spoke in her lecture about her personal experience in translation.

Dr. Ghada Karmi concluded the meetings with her lecture titled “Keeping the Memory of the Nakba (1948 Exodus): Importance of Preserving the Memory” which was held at the Conference Room, Old Campus library and attracted a large number of students, lecturers, writers and artists participating in the 2011 Festival.

Mu’ez Anwar, Specialist in photographic and marketing design, technical guidance, photography and printing. He also conducts design and visual experiments on Arabic and Latin letters to develop the heritage aesthetics of the Middle East. Moreover, he created a modern and vivid style away from the dominant European culture and technology in the field of advertisement. He is currently working as a designer for a unique publication project in cooperation with Bloomsbury, Qatar and the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar capital, Doha.

Nathalie Handal is a French and American poet, writer and playwright of Palestinian origin. She has lived in Europe, the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Arab World; she is also a visiting professor at Leipzig University in Germany.

Mohammed Hanif, a Pakistani novelist and journalist who was born in Okara and graduated from Pakistan Air Force Academy as a pilot officer but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism. He initially worked for Newsline, The Washington Post and India Today. In 1996, he moved to London to work for the BBC. Later, he became the head of the BBC's Urdu service in London. He graduated from the University of East Anglia in 2005, and moved back to Pakistan in 2008. Hanif wrote for the New York Times, The Guardian, and the Aaj; he also wrote scenarios for stage and TV drama including the BBC drama, “The Long Night” film and “The Dictator’s Wife” play. He currently works as a correspondent for the BBC Urdu and lives in Karachi.

Ghada Karmi is a Palestinian-British doctor of medicine, author and academic. She works as a researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter in Britain. She is expert in Arab/Islamic medicine in the middle ages which she studied in Syria and Jordan. Her famous memoir “In Search Of Fatima-A Palestinian Story” was positively received and was re-printed in 2009, as well as “Married to another man: Israel's dilemma in Palestine”. Karmi is now working on documenting the history of Arab medicine in the middle ages.