As revolution — carried on the wings of poetry and social media — dawns across the Middle East, all eyes are on the fabled region, including, auspiciously, those of the Aspen Writers’ Foundation (AWF). Celebrating “the magical literature of the modern Middle East” next month during the 35th annual Aspen Summer Words Literary Festival, the AWF and its boundary-defying festival are once again at the leading edge of literature today. The 2011 festival, with the official theme, “Papyrus,” will feature some of the most important Middle Eastern spellbinders of our time — Khaled Hosseini, Mona Eltahawy, Firoozeh Dumas, Assaf Gavron, and Reza Aslan among them — weaving stories of their homelands and illuminating timeless themes in ways that shed new light on old worlds. Aspen Summer Words will be held June 19 through 24 at the Doerr-Hosier Center, the Aspen Summer Words’ headquarters on the Aspen Meadows campus. Festival passes, starting at $150, are available now from Aspen Show Tickets at www.aspenshowtix.com and 970.920.5770.
“We look forward to sharing these magnificent storytellers whose trail of words extends across the Middle East, from Pakistan to Israel to Egypt to the U.S.,” said Lisa Consiglio, executive director of the Aspen Writers’ Foundation. “I can guarantee that this will be an eye-opening, insider view of a long-misunderstood part of the world.”
Firoozeh Dumas, a festival advisor and featured author of Papyrus, adds: “Festivalgoers will come out of this experience with an expansive outlook, and, perhaps, a craving for hummus.”
