Something About Living

Join us for the Edinburgh launch of Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s poetry collection Something About Living featuring a live reading from the poet, a conversation with Zain Rishi, and an audience Q & A.

Something About Living explores Palestinian life through the lens of language, revealing a legacy of obfuscation and erasure. What happens when language only permits ongoing disasters to be packaged neatly for consumption and subsequent disposal? It was the recipient of the US National Book Award for Poetry 2024, and was shortlisted for the Pen Heaney Prize 2025, and is a Poet Book Society Recommendation.

This event is brought to you in collaboration between the87press and Palestine Museum Scotland.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is a poet, essayist and translator. She is author of three books of poetry: Something About Living (University of Akron Press, 2024; the87press, 2025), winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Poetry and the 2022 Akron Poetry Prize; Kaan & Her Sisters (Trio House Press), finalist for the 2024 Firecracker Award and honourable mention for the 2024 Arab American Book Award; and Water & Salt (Red Hen), winner of the 2018 Washington State Book Award and honourable mention of the 2018 Arab American Book Award. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Arab in Newsland, winner of the 2016 Two Sylvias Prize, and Letters from the Interior (Diode, 2019), finalist for the 2020 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. For more about her work, visit www.lenakhalaftuffaha.com.

Zain Rishi is a writer from Birmingham, UK. He graduated with a masters in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh in 2023 and has since worked in independent bookselling. He won the 27th annual Ware Poets Competition, placed third in the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize and was highly commended in the Poetry Wales Award 2024-25. His poetry has featured in Magma, Wildness, Fourteen Poems, Gutter, Propel and various anthologies. He is currently based in Edinburgh. Noon is his debut poetry pamphlet.

Doors open at 7pm for a 7.15pm start.