EVENTS

August 8, 2025, 7:00pm, Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008

Badra will be in conversation with Heba F. El-Shazli, an Egyptian American and an avid lover and reader of literature from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. She is an associate professor of political science (retired as of June 2025) at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. Heba taught courses on governments and politics of the Middle East and North Africa, Islam and politics, international relations, Israel and Palestine, and the role of civil society and social movements in democratization. She has been teaching at Politics & Prose bookstore since 2013 and she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. During the 2023-24 academic year, she was a visiting academic at St Antony’s College, Oxford University. Heba recently (February - April 2025) taught a series of classes at Politics and Prose about the Kurds and their literature in an attempt to better understand the Kurdish people: their culture, history, society and politics. 

August 23, 2025, 7:00pm, Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street, Coolidge Corner, Brookline, MA 02446

Join the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith for an in-store event with Holly Mason Badra, Hajjar Baban, and Pınar Banu Yaşar to honor the release of Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora.

Hajjar Baban is a Pakistan-born Afghan Kurdish poet. She has won a Pushcart Prize and has poems in West Branch Mag, The Hopkins Review, and Poetry Daily. Baban is a poetry reader for Muzzle Magazine and a co-founder of the Kurdish Poets Collective.

Pınar Banu Yaşar is an educator, poet, and pole dancer. A Best of the Net Nominee, a Poetry Online Launch Prize Finalist, and a Storm Cellar Quarterly Flash Fiction finalist, Yaşar has been published in print and online. Most recently their work can be found in the Futurities Issue of Mizna as well as Sleeping In The Courtyard, an anthology of Kurdish women and nonbinary writers from University of Arkansas Press. Yaşar has received continued support from Tin House Summer Writers Workshop as well as Kenyon Review Writers Workshop since 2019.

August 30, 2025: Henar Press’ Sleeping in the Courtyard Reading, Virtual, 2:00pm (ET)

Henar Press invites you to join us for a reading and discussion with Sleeping in the Courtyard editor Holly Mason Badra and contributing writers and translators Shene Mohammed, Essmat Sophie, Hiva Panahi, Leila Lois, Shohreh Laici, and Hero Kurda.

Henar Press is an independent, nonprofit press based in Columbus, Ohio, dedicated to bringing experimental Kurdish writing to the world. Their books span fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction from both emerging and established writers from the homeland and diaspora.

September 6, 2025, 6:00pm, GMU Kurdish Student Organization Book Celebration at George Mason University (Johnson Center Bistro), 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA 22030

The George Mason University Kurdish Student Organization will host a book launch party to celebrate the release of Sleeping in the Courtyard. The event will include a discussion, reading, Q&A, and a reading by one of the book’s contributors, Zhawen Shali.

Zhawen Shali is a Kurdish poet and journalist. She was born in 1986 in the city of Suleimani in Southern Kurdistan. She graduated from Sulemani Polytechnic University and worked as a journalist for several Kurdish outlets. She published her first book, The Autumn of My Life, in 2008 (Sulaimani Pen House). Her second book, Neither You Nor Rain Stayed, was published in 2013 by the Kurdish Writer’s Union in Erbil. She has won several national and international prizes in literature. Her poems have been translated into English and published in Circumference Magazine and included in the anthology Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Poets in Diaspora. She currently lives in the US.

September 9, 2025, 7:00pm, Montgomery County Public Library, Stories to Broaden Understanding, Virtual

Stories to Broaden Understanding is in partnership with Montgomery County Middle Eastern American Advisory Group, Office of Community Partnerships and Baltimore Luxor Alexandria Sister City Committee.

Author Holly Mason Badra will be discussing her work Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora. After her presentation, there will be a Q & A session.

Registration required. The Zoom link to participate in the program will be sent to registrants 24 hours before the event. Participants will need to be signed into Zoom to attend this program via the web. To sign in, you must first create a free account: https://zoom.us/signup

September 12, 2025, 12:00pm, George Mason University Center for Humanities Research Book Launch, Hybrid (In Person and Virtual options)

Co-sponsored by The Alan Cheuse International Writers Center, The Global South Hub, and the Women and Gender Studies Program at GMU. In celebrating the publication of Sleeping in the Courtyard, join us for a conversation with authors Holly Mason Badra and Meryem Uzumcu about the collection’s process, content, and impact. They will explore topics related to erasure, gender, literary visibility, and more.

Coffee/tea provided in person, Horizon Hall 6325 (GMU Fairfax, 4400 University Dr Fairfax VA 22030). There will be a Q&A at the end. The event is hybrid (with our authors appearing in person), with the option to attend in person or on zoom (link emailed upon registration). Attendees will receive a discount code from the press to order the book if they choose. Register here for zoom link.

Meryem Rabia Uzumcu is a women's, gender, and sexuality studies PhD candidate at Rutgers University, where she is completing her dissertation on the state nexus of disability, race, and sexual violence in Diyarbekir. Her poems and audio story, "Family Rashomon," has been featured in Jasur Mag and also in the forthcoming anthology of Kurdish writers in diaspora with the University of Arkansas Press. Partaking in Holly Mason Badra's project, Sleeping in the Courtyard has in many ways reiterated her commitments to shared oral histories through storytelling from her maternal family's homesite of Diyarbekir/Amed, a city critically situated in Kurdish anti-assimilation and anti-colonial struggle.

October 11, 2025, 10:30am-11:45am, RAWIfest, University of Houston Honors College, Houston, TX

Anthologies as Community Spaces: Anthology Editors in Conversation

With Susan Muaddi Darraj, Holly Mason Badra, Aryan Omar Hassan, Andrea Abi-Karam, and Lisa Suhair Majaj. Join the editors of Ask the Night for a Dream, Sleeping in the Courtyard, Henar Press, We Want It All, Etel Adnan: Critical Essays, and more, in a discussion on the potential of anthologies in community building.