Songs for the Dead and the Living
Awards
Winner of the Barbara Jefferis Award
Shortlisted for Khairallah Prize for Literature and Multicultural NSW Award at the NSW Premier's Literary Award.
Synopsis
When the ground beneath your feet is always shifting, how can you ever know where you belong?
Jamilah has always believed she knows where her home is: in a house above a paint shop on the outskirts of Beirut, with her large, chaotic, loving family. But she soon learns that as Palestinian refugees, her family's life in Lebanon is precarious, and they must try to blend in even as they fight to retain their identity.
When conflict comes to Beirut, Jamilah's world fractures, and the family is forced to flee to Cairo: another escape, and another slip further away from Palestine, the homeland to which they cannot return. In the end, Jamilah will have to choose between everything she knows and pursuing a life she can truly call her own.
Songs for the Dead and the Living is a coming-of-age tale played out across generations and continents, from Palestine to Australia. Through stunning prose, acclaimed writer and human-rights activist Sara M Saleh offers a breathtaking portrait of the fragilities and flaws of family in the wake of war, and the love it takes to overcome great loss.
The Flirtation of Girls / Ghazal El-Banat
Awards
Winner, Anne Elder Award 2024
Shortlist, Aus Literature Society Gold Medal 2024
Shortlist, Aus Literature Society Mary Gilmore Award 2024
Synopsis
Sara M Saleh’s first full-length poetry collection introduces us to the polychromatic lives of girls and women as they come into being amidst war, colonial and patriarchal violence, and exile and migration. This searing work interrogates and represents the complexity of Arab-Australian Muslim women's identities as they negotiate an irresistible world full of music and family, grit and grief, love and loss.
Saleh's poetry is not only an inherently political act, but a deeply personal one, charged with multilayered conversations and meditations among three generations of women in Sara's family. Her poems dazzle with an incantatory force of spirit, survival and selfhood, proving without a doubt that Saleh is one of this country's most compelling, contemporary poets.
Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity
Synopsis
22 separate Arab nationalities representing an enormous variety of cultural backgrounds and experiences, the portrayal of Arabs in Australia tends to range from homogenising (at best) to racist pop-culture caricatures.
Edited by award-winning author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah, and activist and poet Sara Saleh, and featuring contributors Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Ruby Hamad and Paula Abood, among many others, this collection explores the experience of living as a member of the Arab diaspora in Australia and includes stories of family, ethnicity, history, grief, isolation, belonging and identity.
Poetry and Prose – a Snapshot
‘Museum of Arab dreams’, HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE US (Forthcoming 2025, Haymarket) ‘Say ‘Free’, Poetry Foundation | Out of Gaza, Global Poetry Anthology (2024, Smokestack) ‘The Long List (of Receipts)’, Fine Print Magazine (2023)
‘White Lover (Progressive)’, Red Room Poetry Month (2023)
‘Elegy for a (Hated) Body’, Admissions: Voices within Mental Health (2022)
‘Border Control: Meditations’, Best of Australian Poetry (2022)
‘Punctuation as Organised Violence’, Meanjin (2022-2023 edition)
‘Our Raqs is Sharqi: A Ghazal’, Borderless: Transnational Anthology of Feminist Poetry (2022)
Communities of Concern, Another Australia (2022, Affirm Press)
‘Leaving Beit Samra, Racism (Sweatshop 2021)
‘Live from Gaza’, Rabbit Poetry Journal (2021)
‘Eyad’, Brownface, Cordite Poetry Review (2021)
Arab Mother Guilt, Sweatshop Women’s Anthology: Volume II (2020, Sweatshop) bani adam’, Modern Elegy, Australian Poetry Journal 10.1 (2020)
Portrait of a Poet: Bel 3arabi chapbook, BAYT, Cordite Poetry Review (2019)
‘InshaAllah’, Solid Air: Australia and New Zealand Spoken Word (2019, UQP)
‘Aylan’, Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by Refugees (2019, Interlink)
‘To the cities that changed us’ and ‘oud’, Blade of Grass (2017, Smokestack)