Abu Dhabi: Saudi Arabia’s Literature, Publishing and Translation Commission is organising a number of virtual meetings from July 5 to 18, featuring a number of elite Saudi and Arab intellectuals to discuss various cultural and intellectual issues.
The meetings will be broadcast live on YouTube through the official channel of the Saudi Ministry of Culture.
These meetings are part of the efforts of the commission to build bridges of communication between intellectuals and the public, enrich the local cultural scene with cultural meetings and enhance cultural dialogue.
Reader’s effectiveness
Critic Dr Abdullah Al Ghazhami will be a guest on the first of these meetings at 7.30pm (Saudi time) today, where he will be interviewed by journalist Mohammed Al Tumaihi on the topic of ‘The Efficiency of the Reader’ and related topics, including factors affecting the reader’s effectiveness, the recipient’s ability to recycle literary text, the act of reading in literary criticism, the writer’s role in productivity, effectiveness of reading and the ability of the reader in representation and assimilation.
Novelist Dr Wasini Al Araj will be a guest at the second meeting, which will be held at 8.30pm on July 6 and he will be interviewed by Dr Zainab Al Khudairy about the magic of narration and the various stages in the emergence of a novelist.
In the third meeting, which will be held at 8.30pm on July 7, author Mohamed Reda Nasrallah will talk about the memory of culture, including the Saudi cultural identity and the role that cultural media played in the intellectual development of society. He will also share his personal experience with the giants of literature and thought in the Arab world.
Arab calligraphy The virtual meetings of the Saudi Literature, Publishing and Translation Commission will also feature calligraphist Ibrahim Al Arafi, who will be interviewed on the spirituality of Arabic calligraphy. This session will start at 8.30pm on July 9 and will be hosted by Nisreen Al Turki. Cultural critic Ali Al Amim will be a guest at 8.30pm on July 10, in a meeting titled ‘Something of Criticism, Something of History’ in which he will offer glimpses of Saudi cultural history.
On July 11, poet Sultan Al Sabhan will be a guest, talking about poetry and its arts. On July 12, historian Dr Saad Al Rashid will be the guest at a meeting titled ‘Antiquities of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Through the Ages’.
Children’s literature will be a major focus of the meeting on July 13, in which Dr Arwa Khamis and Amine Ibrahim will present ideas on ‘Creating Imagination in Children’ and ways to enrich them. The genre of the novel
Poetry will be the focus of a meeting on July 14, with poet Abdullatif Bin Youssef talking about ‘The Poetry Engineering’ and the pillars of building a poem.
On July 15, a meeting will be dedicated to the genre of the novel under the title ‘The Life of Writing’, in which novelist Zainab Hefni will talk about the rituals of writing, the life cycle of the text and its relationship to reality.
Novelist Hawraa Al Nadawi will be the guest at a meeting on July 16, speaking about the poetry of the narrative text and the role of diaspora literature in documenting the Arab experience. On July 17, the discussion will be on the realm of translation, in a session titled ‘Translation and the Thresholds of Text’, in which translator Dr Walid Belhaysh Al Omari will speak about the concerns of translation.
The virtual meetings will conclude on Saturday, July 18, with a meeting titled ‘Traditional Culture and Folklore’, with social thinker and historian Dr Saad Al Suwayyan taking part in a discussion on the cultural identity and signs of folklore in literary works, and the importance of multiple sources of culture in a civilisation.
