Khidr Collective's Manchester Launch!

Join the Khidr Collective for our very first Manchester event on Saturday 25^th July! It comes after the release of Issue Five: Holding Joy.

Celebrate independent publishing with our panel of grassroot zines and writers. There will be poetry, music, chai, nibbles and more!

Doors open from 6pm, event begins at 6:30pm. Standard and solidarity tickets include admission to the event and one copy of the zine per person.

Here’s the schedule so far:

Welcoming Sufiyaan Salam - author of WIMMY ROAD BOYZ

We are delighted to host Sufiyaan Salam for an interview about his newly released book WIMMY ROAD BOYZ. We will be talking to him about Manchester, representation, publishing and more! He will also be reading a short excerpt of his book alongside answering questions from the audience!

Sufiyaan Salam is a writer (and former animator) from Blackburn. He co-wrote the BAFTA-nominated, BIFA-winning short film MAGID / ZAFAR and won the #MerkyBooks New Writers’ Prize for his debut novel WIMMY ROAD BOYZ.

He will be interviewed by Warda Khokhar - editor at the Khidr Collective. She is a researcher and writer.

Panel on independent publishing in Manchester and beyond

This panel will be hosted by Jessica El Mal. Jessica is a British-Moroccan curator whose work with the Jarda Collective has been featured in KZ5: Holding Joy. Her style blurs the line between artist and curator, and focuses on care and community as the foundation of any activity. She is also a co-director of A.MAL Projects, an art and research initiative between North Africa and Europe.

Fajar Kayani is a multidisciplinary creative based in Manchester. Her practice mainly explores the significance of everyday objects and how their origins and daily use can be used to create a portrait and/or archive of the self. Working mainly in print, zine-making and poetry, Fajar takes inspiration from the mundane to extract works which aim to express a sense of nostalgia, memory and personal history.

Fajar is a co-founder and member of Mango Jam – a collective of four artists and friends from Pakistan and the Philippines. The collective aims to uplift and inspire South and South East Asian communities through creativity, collaboration and cultural exchange.

Afzal Khan is the founder of Practising Empathy in Mirrors, a multidisciplinary project that examines the entangled relationships between Muslimness, politics, and spirituality through publishing, design and film.

Khidr Collective's photography editor, and museum curator, Nishat Alam, will join the panel.

Poetry with Kamran Sajid and Maryam Alsaeid

Kamran Sajid is a writer currently based in Manchester. His writing explores an underworld intuition, discussing themes such as codeswitching and surrealism He is published in English PEN’s Transmissions series, and has read his poetry at Simon Armitage’s ‘Blossomise’ book launch, Manchester Literature Festival and Aviva Studios. Kamran has shared his poetry internationally too, with Young Identity at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne. He won the 2025 Forward Prizes Young Poets’ Summit Slam, and was a Shadow Judge of the 2024 Forward Prizes. Kamran was published this year as part of New Writers x Angel’s Bone, an English National Opera production.

Maryam Alsaeid is an Iraqi-British poet, pharmacist, and facilitator based in Manchester. Her work explores faith, memory, Arabic music, longing, and the intimate landscapes of family and womanhood. She has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales, The Manchester Review, Bad Lilies, and elsewhere, and has performed at festivals and literary events across the UK. She is currently developing her first full-length poetry collection as part of the Advanced Writing Programme at Arvon, where she is exploring the intersections of devotion, inheritance, and the Arabic lyric tradition.

With sounds, chai and nibbles!

You’ll have a chance to buy a selection of zines, previous KC issues and KC merch, and Sufiyaan Salam's new book at the event. For questions about ticket pricing and more, please get in touch with us on Instagram or on email: info@khidrcollective.co.uk.