Arabic Literature in Translation with Yasmine Seale

Please note this program is in person only.

With the health, well-being, and comfort of all as our top priorities, City of Asylum requires that our staff, artists, and all those attending an event be fully vaccinated. Please click here to learn more about our Covid 19 policies. 

Join City of Asylum for a live reading and conversation with translator and poet Yasmine Seale, the first female translator to release The Thousand and One Nights in English. 

For centuries, readers have been haunted and thrilled by the stories in The Thousand and One Nights—from Shahrazad to Sinbad to Aladdin. Yet for all this time,  the English-speaking world has relied on dated translations from men. 2022 marks the release of a translation of Nights from a female voice, that of the exquisitely talented poet and translator Yasmine Seale. 

Yasmine’s voice is distinctly contemporary and lyrical, breaking decisively with the masculine dynasty and finally striipping away the deliberate exoticism of the tales. 

About Yasmine: 

Yasmine Seale is a writer and translator living in Paris. Her essays, poetry, visual art, and translations from Arabic and French have appeared widely. Her work has received a PEN America Literary Grant and the Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Poetry. Published work includes Aladdin: A New Translation (Liveright, 2018), The Annotated Arabian Nights (Liveright, 2021) and Agitated Air: Poems after Ibn Arabi, co-written with Robin Moger (Tenement Press, 2022).

About your visit: 

Please note the in-house restaurant 40 North is closed on Monday and Tuesday evenings.