‘While the Earth Sleeps We Travel’ UK Book Launch: Badr, Al-Oraibi & Damluji

Starts on Fri, 13 Nov 2020 18:00 GMT

Tickets here.

Join author, poet, social entrepreneur and former refugee Ahmed M. Badr for the UK launch of his book While the Earth Sleeps We Travel.

Ahmed will be in conversation with Mina Al-Oraibi (Editor in Chief, The National Newspaper) and Hassan Damluji (Deputy Director, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and author of The Responsible Globalist), moderated by the President of both the Cambridge Arab Society and Cambridge Yemen Society Shady M. Qubaty.

The event will take place on Zoom and you will receive the relevant details after signing up.

The event will also feature a performance by The Vision Collective, a Juilliard-founded initiative that strives to make refugees and immigrants feel recognised, valued, and celebrated through collaborative music-making.

Attending the panel is free; however, by ordering the book through Eventbrite, you will receive a SIGNED bookplate in your copy of While the Earth Sleeps We Travel, courtesy of the Heffers Bookstore. Please note the books will be shipped out after the event. Kindly allow up to two weeks for the book to ship to you. Customer details will be shared with Heffers for the purpose of fulfilling orders.

While the Earth Sleeps We Travel is a diverse and moving collection of stories, poems, and artwork from displaced youth across the world. It features a foreword from actor, director, and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Ben Stiller.

A meditation on the concept of “home” and a testament to the power of storytelling, this book pairs Badr’s own personal poems and narratives with contributions from storytelling workshops for displaced youth—in and outside refugee camps—from around the world. Beginning in 2018, Badr traveled across Greece, Trinidad and Tobago, and Syracuse, New York to host the workshops to discuss the complexities of displacement and amplify the often unheard perspectives of those navigating through and beyond the complexities of displacement.

Biographies:

• Ahmed M. Badr: A poet and social entrepreneur working to combine poetry, archival material, and multimedia to explore the complexities of migration, identity, and self-expression, with a focus on re-framing and reclaiming the power of tragedy. On July 25, 2006, Ahmed’s home in Baghdad was bombed by militia troops. He and his family relocated to Syria, where they lived as refugees for over two years before receiving approval to move to the United States. As a teen, Ahmed founded Narratio, an organization that activates, supports, and highlights the creative expression of displaced young people through fellowships, workshops, publishing, and partnerships. Ahmed has addressed the United Nations on more than ten occasions. A recent graduate of Wesleyan University, he serves as one of 17 UN Young Leaders for the Sustainable Development Goals in the Office of the UN Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth.
• Mina Al-Oraibi: A journalist and political analyst focused on the Middle East. Since 2017, Mina has been the Editor-in-Chief of The National, a daily English-language newspaper based in Abu Dhabi and covering regional affairs. Previous to that, she was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for State Effectiveness where she focused on the state in Iraq, Syria, and the wider Middle East. Earlier, Mina was Assistant Editor-in-Chief of Asharq Alawsat, an international daily pan-Arab newspaper. From 2009-2011, she served as Washington D.C. bureau chief for Asharq Alawsat. She has covered the Geneva talks on Syria, Iraqi refugees, and American and European foreign policies towards the Middle East and North Africa region.
• Hassan Damluji: Deputy Director at the world’s largest philanthropy, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he leads a global team responsible for policy and advocacy across the Middle East, Pakistan, Japan and Korea. He is the author of The Responsible Globalist: What Citizens of the World Can Learn From Nationalism (Allen Lane). Damluji is also active in politics and education in the UK, where he has founded a school rated “outstanding” by Ofsted. He has been named every year since 2015 as one of the 100 most influential Arabs under 40, by Arabian Business magazine.
• Shady M. Qubaty, moderator: As Yale’s 2020 Henry Fellow, Shady is pursuing an M.Phil. in development studies at King’s College, Cambridge, focusing his research on post-war economic recovery in Yemen. An honorary recipient of a Cambridge Trust Award and King’s College Scholarship, Shady has been elected president of both the Cambridge Arab Society and Cambridge Yemen Society. A native of Aden, Yemen, Shady received his BA from Yale University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, graduating with highest honours (summa cum laude) and a double distinction in economics and Near Eastern studies. Qubaty is the first-ever Yemeni to graduate from Yale College. He is the co-founder of Yemen’s leading international NGO Adalah, which has been appointed as the official secretariat to the UK Parliament, and serves as the vice president of the Economic Forum for Sustainable Development. He participated in United Nations Human Rights Council meetings in Geneva, spoke before and moderated panels at the UK Parliament, and was the only Yemeni and youngest panelist invited to the Beirut Institute Summits in Abu Dhabi.