Readings by Mirene Arsanios
and Malak Helmy

SALT Galata, SALT Research

After conversations from afar and exchanges of work, this is the first time that writers Mirene Arsanios and Malak Helmy will read together, addressing shared concerns and themes that run through their writing. They will each read a number of pieces of creative writing, including stories and prose, that deal with the city as a background and its relationship with more intimate interior spaces. By finding a shared tonality and atmosphere the aim is to allow for a dialogue to emerge through the practice of writing and reading.

A number of their publications will be available for review at SALT Research during and following the event.

Co-produced with Mophradat (formerly the Young Arab Theatre Fund) in parallel to its annual Informal Meeting, which gathers artists and art practitioners from the Arab World for a topical discussion, taking place this year on Büyükada Island, Istanbul.

The readings will be held in English.


Mirene Arsanios is the author of The City Outside the Sentence (Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, 2015). Her writings have appeared in publications such as The Rumpus, Ink & Coda, Enizagam, and The Outpost, among others. She co-founded the collective 98weeks Research Project in Beirut and is the founding editor of Makhzin, a bilingual literary magazine. She holds an MA in Art Theory from Goldsmiths College and a writing MFA from Bard College. She lives in New York where she is currently a writer-in-residence at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Malak Helmy is an artist and writer. Her work has appeared in The Happy Hypocrite, oo-oo.co, Two Days After Forever: A Reader on the Choreography of Time (The Cyprus Pavillion, Bienniale Arte 2015), Stationary, Log Journal, among others. She is the founding editor, with Nida Ghouse, of Emotional Architecture, and co-editor of the second edition of Stationary (with Christina Li) published by Spring, HK. She is a co-curator of Meeting Points 8 and currently lives in Cairo.