Writer, editor, and publisher Marcia Lynx Qualey remarked that “the literature currently in the spotlight, in many languages, is Palestinian” while accepting the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature in 2024. 

As Israel’s genocide of Palestinians continues, Marcia said that the demand for Palestinian literature has grown exponentially. Submissions to prizes and magazines have ballooned, as have requests from publishers asking Marcia’s advice on various manuscripts. These are not works necessarily written by Palestinians, but that “deal with Palestine in some way,” she added. 

Historically, writers, translators, and editors have struggled to get Palestinian writing published, so this should be good news. But unfortunately, Marcia said it should give us pause. 

While some publishers are certainly trying to engage from a solidarity perspective, many approach it with an extractive motive and to capitalize on the disaster. Luckily, Marcia explained how readers can discern between the books that might be exploiting the moment and those that might come from a place of activism and a desire to amplify Palestinian voices. 

In this wide-ranging conversation, Marcia also offered insights into this and several other problems that plague publishing about Palestine at a time when Palestinians, Palestinian culture, and Palestinian history itself are being erased before our eyes. 

She explained how the Publishers for Palestine came about—a coalition we are proud to be part of as the Radical Books Collective. P4P’s growth is the industry’s overwhelming desire to decenter big corporate publishing. Marcia discussed the shifts in Arabic-language publishing with the coming of new book fairs, prizes, and presses in Qatar and the UAE, though she worries that they seem to be imitating Western corporate conglomerates, after all. 

Finally, Marcia spoke of how ArabLit, the digital magazine and ArabLit Quarterly, the print magazine—which she was instrumental in creating—have attempted to provide material support and foster community for writers, poets, and translators trapped inside Gaza. 

With people in Gaza atomized and their lives completely fractured, putting writers, poets, and translators in contact with each other remains the first priority for ArabLit. Their most recent issue on “Grief” illustrates that grief and mourning are not about being “alone and sad, but to be together and to propel ourselves forward.” 

At this moment of bitter despair, Marcia insisted that editors and publishers find alternative routes to create business structures that might be decolonial, abolitionist, and anti-capitalist. 

“We need these new ways for talking about Palestinian literature, not these old extractive, profit-seeking, iconizing, boiling down ways of it,” she said. “I think it involves making partnerships, it involves changing the way that we do business.”