Meetup with Rania Mamoun

On February 13, 2025, Rania Mamoun talked about her life as a displaced Sudanese activist and writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction with scholar Nevine Abraham. Their conversation was in Arabic and was not recorded to protect the privacy of those who attended.

Rania completed Something Evergreen Called Life, a poetry manuscript written during COVID-19 quarantine, translated into English by Yasmine Seale and published by Action Books in March 2023. Rania has published two novels to great international acclaim, Green Flash and Son of the Sun, and Thirteen Months of Sunrise, a short story collection shortlisted for the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. In January 2024, she published her second book since she came to the US, A Woman Alone under the Neem Tree, in Arabic, with Elmosawarat Publishing. Rania continues to organize for democracy in Sudan. Her writing has appeared in English, Korean, French, and Spanish translation. She has been a writer-in-residence at City of Asylum Pittsburgh since 2019.

Nevine Abraham is Assistant Teaching Professor of Arabic Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on literary cultural studies in the Arabic-speaking world. Her publications investigate issues of social justice, civil rights, diasporic memory, and examine minorities in the intellectual, social, and political history of the Middle East and North Africa.