About Us

The project of an “International Writers’ House in Beirut” was born of the observation that Beirut and Lebanon, as opposed to other countries and cities across the world, do not have a specific structure or forum dedicated to meetings between the public and writers from varied places and cultures, nor a place dedicated to the research and review of contemporary literary production. This is despite the fact that Beirut is the symbol of a city with multiple cultures and languages, where literary creation and other artistic practices are very active and set the standard, providing an example for the region and the world. To address this gap, the International Writers’ House in Beirut is proposed as a structure dedicated to the reflection and study of the relationship between the different international cultural disciplines, the phenomena of art work mobility, the themes in international literature as well as the works of writers belonging to minority group and immigrants and their relationship with their host countries.

The purpose of the International Writers House in Beirut is to create a space where writers meet, create literature and conduct research in Beirut. This space is meant to reflect facets of the city itself: the intersection of cultures, the port where many immigrants departed, and the multilingual capital of many cultures and minorities. This new structure is designed to foster reflection and debate around literature that comes from two worlds, immigration literature, second and third generation immigrant literature, and where the imagination is fuelled by the country of origin (fantasy or not).

In addition, the International Writers’ House in Beirut aims at reinforcing the position of Lebanon as a crossroad between the Americas and Africa (through immigration), the Mediterranean on which it opens, and the Orient (near and far). It seems natural and important that the debate proposed by the organization ponder and reflect on the literary relations between the different regions of the world, starting from the premise that contemporary literature lives and results from mobility of people, from themes and works as well as the process of acculturation of minorities, indigenous or migrant, within the large cultural areas.

The discussions and debates that will be the core annual activities of the International Writers’ House in Beirut will be:
  1. Literature of the Old World and its dialogue with the literature of the New World. This dialogue is also heard between Europe and the Mediterranean from one side, the Americas and Australia from another, as well as between Europe and the Mediterranean from one side and the Far East, as a new territory of modern literature, from another.
  2. The multilingual cultures and the literature of minorities, where the literature lies between the culture of the minority and that of the majority.
  3. Literature of immigration and the relationship between the immigrant and the host country.
  4. The issue of diaspora literature, and the relationship between the diaspora and the home country.
As an institution, the International Writers’ House in Beirut would also aim at directly encouraging literary creation through its own electronic and paper publications. It would provide Lebanese and international writers with greater visibility by promoting them at home and abroad, regardless of the language they create in, and by getting them to know each other while promoting, through literature, a genuine dialogue between different cultures.