Sara Saleh on writing: Transcending the white gaze and imagining future worlds
Posted on: Sun 12 Sep 2021
Sara M. Saleh is an award-winning writer and poet, long-time human rights activist, community organiser, and campaigner for refugee rights and racial justice.
She has spent over a decade in grassroots and non-governmental organisations in Australia and the Middle East, published a poetry collection and chapbook, and co-edited the anthology Arab-Australian-Other: Stories on Race and Identity.
She is widely published, in Arabic and English, across international and local media and literary platforms. You can read her work via Red Room Poetry, Overland, and Cordite Poetry Review, among others.
Saleh was recently awarded the Australian Book Review’s Peter Porter Poetry Prize for her poem ‘A Poetics of Fo(u)rgetting’, and is working on a novel as a recipient of the inaugural Affirm Press Mentorship for Sweatshop writers from Western Sydney.
Sara Saleh speaks to us about navigating the complexities of representation in the mainstream literary scene and poetry’s ability to shape language and foster anti-colonial resistance while also moving beyond solely existing as a response to the colonial project.
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Produced by Anisha Pillarisetty
