Welcome Farah Ali in discussing her book of short stories People Want to Live with local performance artist and writer Fargo Nissim Tbakhi!
This event will be held in-person at Lost City Books and is limited to 40 attendees. Masks will be required during the event.
About People Want to Live:
Set primarily in Pakistan, these award-winning stories follow people living on the brink of abandonment - in their personal relationships and their place in the world. A mother, coping with the sudden death of her son, uncovers long buried secrets in his absence. An anguished girl grabs a chance for a life beyond the orphanage walls where she lives and discovers the price of freedom. A young couple tries to keep their fraught relationship steady as a heat wave engulfs their city. A son returns to visit his ageing parents while beset with memories of a troubled childhood. And two thieves find themselves in a situation more precarious by the minute, and more dangerous than their original mission. Farah Ali's debut collection of thirteen stories, People Want to Live features stories of togetherness and reckless faith in the face of a world that's built to break us. Her characters mount battle with loneliness and in their fight reveal surprising vulnerabilities and an astonishing measure of hope.
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Farah Ali is from Karachi, Pakistan. Her work won the 2020 Pushcart Prize and received special mention in the 2018 Pushcart anthology. Her more recent stories can be found in Shenandoah, The Arkansas International, The Southern Review, and Kenyon Review online. Her debut short-story collection, “People Want to Live”, is forthcoming from McSweeney’s in October 2021.
Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a queer Palestinian-American performance artist and writer. He is the winner of the Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Prize, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and a Taurus. He has received fellowships from Rhizome DC, VisArts, Desert Nights Rising Stars, Halcyon Arts Lab, Mosaic Theater, and RAWI. His writing appears in Foglifter, Mizna, Peach Mag, Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, the Shallow Ends, Prolit, and select bags of Nomadic Grounds Coffee. His performance work has been programmed at OUTsider Fest, INTER-SECTION Solo Fest, the Rachel Corrie Foundation’s Shuruq Festival, the Alwun House Monster’s Ball, Mosaic Theater, and has been supported by the Arizona Commission on the Arts.
People Want to Live is available at Lost City Books!