Read Write Now – Creative Workshop for Writers for Young Adult Readers: Cairo, 11 to 16 March 2007
Culture Resource held a creative workshop for youth literature in the period from the 11th to 16th of March 2007. The workshop took place at Cataract Resort in Haraneya, Cairo.The Writers Creative Workshop is one of the components of Read Write Now, a project aiming to encourage reading amid Arab youth as well as supporting writing for them, moreover the workshop attends to a regional need for producing literature specifically written for young readers, the largest age group in the Arab world.
The Read Write Now! project is designed and carried out by Culture Resource in collaboration with: Tamer Institute for Community Education (Palestine), Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Egypt), Toledo Translation School (Spain), Next Page Foundation (Bulgaria), and The British Council (GB). The project is supported by Anna Lindh Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures.
The Read Write Now! project was launched with two reading festivals for adolescence in Ram Allah and Alexandria that were organized by Tamer Institute for Community Education and Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The festivals aspired to encourage Arab youth to reading, and were pursued by the Creative Writing Workshop.
Through the workshop, Culture Resource sought to attract a limited number of Arab writers and illustrators who are interested in developing fresh Arabic literature projects designed for this specific age group. The participants were selected through an open application process, in which their applied projects and proposals were evaluated. The selected participants then discussed and developed the projects during the workshop and under the supervision of Arab specialists in their respective fields of writing, illustration and book design. The instructors were: Mohie Eddin Elabad (visual artist & graphic designer, Egypt) and Professor Alhabib Almazini (Author, Morocco). The workshop also hosted Professor Sahar Elmogy (Author, Egypt) to conduct an open discussion on the general techniques of novel writing.
The final phase of the project is the Next Page Foundation’s fund to supporting writers and publishers of youth literature in the Arab world. The outcome projects of the workshop shall be recommended to receive the publishing fund.
The workshop featured twelve participants:
Morocco:Abdelwahed Estito
Abdelaziz Errashedi
Egypt:
Sameh Ismael
Ashraf Nasr
Mohammed Ragab
Palestine:
Basma Altakrouri
Hadil Karkar
Mona Thaher
Maen Samara
Lebanon:
Mona Merhi
Tunisia:
Maryam Bousalmi
Yemen:
Ahmed Alsalami
