The Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais Cultural Foundation will be hosting a webinar under the title of “Writing and Isolation in the Time of Coronavirus” on Wednesday, May 20, 2020 at 10 p.m. The event will feature authors Dr. Shoukri Al Mabkhout, Abdo Wazen and Dr. Taleb Al Rifai.
The webinar, which will be hosted on Zoom online platform, will shed light on the topic of writing in a time of quarantine and isolation. Moreover, the webinar will discuss the intellectual and psychological effects of such isolation, and how some writers have used it to create great literature to reflect the momentous global event currently affecting planet earth.
It is worth mentioning that the Sultan Bin Ali Al Owais Cultural Foundation had previously hosted a number of webinars, including a webinar on poet Saeed Bin Ateej Al Hamli, which saw the participation of Mu’ayad Al Shaibani and Ibrahim Al Hashemi, as well as a webinar on late poet Ahmed Amin Al Madani, which featured Bilal Al Budoor, Dr. Mariam Al Hashemi, Dr. Haytham Yahya Al Khawaja and poet and researcher Ibrahim Al Hashemi.
The participants in the new webinar all come from prestigious cultural backgrounds. Tunisian academic and novelist Shoukri Al Mabkhout is one of the most prominent contemporary Arab authors and has won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his novel, Al Talyani (The Italian).
Moreover, Kuwaiti author Taleb Al Rifai, is one of the most leading short story writers and novelists in the GCC region. Apart from being a recognized academic, and a renowned media personality, Al Rifai is also the head of the Al Multaqa Prize for the Arabic short story. Al Rifai’s most recent novel, Haby, has gained wide critical acclaim.
Furthermore, Lebanese poet and media personality Abdo Wazen is a recognized figure in the Arab cultural front. He is an award-winning poet, translator, novelist and journalist who has won many literary awards, including the prestigious Sheikh Zayed Book Award for his novel, Al Fata allathi Ra’a Lawn al- Hawa (The Boy who Saw the Color of Air).
