Karim Alrawi

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Karim Alrawi
Reading at Prairie Lights bookstore, Iowa City, Iowa, 2016
Reading at Prairie Lights bookstore, Iowa City, Iowa, 2016
BornAlexandria, Egypt
OccupationWriter, playwright
GenreLiterary Fiction, Children's fiction, Plays for stage, radio and television
Notable worksMigrations, Child in the Heart, Promised Land, The Unbroken Heart, Deep Cut, Madinat al-Salam
Website
www.karimalrawi.com

Karim Alrawi (Arabic كريم الراوي) is a writer born in Alexandria, Egypt. He has taught at universities in the UK, Egypt, US and Canada. He was an International Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa and taught creative writing at the university's International Writing Program.[1] He was president of Egyptian Pen (the local branch of the international writer's organization) from 1992 to 1994 replacing Mursi Saad El-Din. He was followed in the position by novelist Gamal El-Ghitani.

Biography[edit]

Alrawi is a graduate of University College London, the University of Manchester[citation needed] and the University of British Columbia.[2]

In the UK, he was Literary Manager of the Theatre Royal Stratford East and later Resident Writer at the Royal Court Theatre in Central London. He served on the Arts Council of Great Britain's Drama Panel and the Great London Arts Council. He later returned to Egypt where he taught in the theatre department of the American University in Cairo. In Egypt his plays were banned by the state censor.[3][4] He was later arrested and detained for interrogation by Egyptian State Security for his work with the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR)[5] where he was Deputy Secretary General and Foreign Press Spokesman.[6]

He went to the United States as a Fulbright International Scholar[7] where he had residencies at a number of theatres including Meadow Brook Theatre (MBT) in Michigan, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Kennedy Centre, Washington DC, and LaMama, New York.[8] He has written and edited several international publications and was Editor in Chief of ARABICA magazine,[9] the leading nationally distributed Arab-American publication[10] with an independently certified readership of over 100,000 readers.[11] He supervised EU, US and Canadian government funded media training programs in North Africa and South Asia.[12][13] He was a member of the Canadian delegation led by Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conference on Good Governance in the Arab World,[14] as well as a member of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s Programme on Governance in the Arab Region (POGAR, 1999–2005)[15] and Communications Advisor and Manager of External Affairs for the Middle East and North Africa for the World Bank in Washington, DC. He was Executive Director of the US-Arab Economic Forum and was in Egypt during the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011–2013.[16]

After the return of military rule, Alrawi was among 190 Egyptian human rights and civil society activists charged by Egyptian State Security under case 173–2011.[17] The charges pertained to his training journalists in media ethics and use of the internet, purportedly a contributory factor to the Arab Spring 2011 uprising. On December 20, 2018, an Egyptian court dismissed the charges.[18] A decision confirmed by the court of appeal on December 4, 2020.[19] On March 20, 2024, an investigative judge declared the case closed.[20]


Awards[edit]

Alrawi's fiction, plays and productions have received several awards including:

He has received writer's awards from the Arts Council of Great Britain and from the Canada Council for the Arts.

British plays[edit]

Karim Alrawi with Joint Stock receives Edinburgh Fringe First Award 1985, Edinburgh, Scotland

Alrawi's first full-length play Migrations was produced at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and his second play A Colder Climate was produced at the Royal Court Theatre in Central London. It was followed by three plays, Fire in the Lake, A Child in the Heart and Promised Land for Joint Stock Theatre, then one of Britain's major touring companies.[21] All three plays provoked controversy at the time of performance.[22][23] As Carol Woddis noted about Child in the Heart, "this almost messianic piece about the desperate pain of loss of roots and, in the truly biblical sense, tribal identity, refuses to let its audience off the hook."[24] Fire in the Lake was awarded an Edinburgh Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Crossing the Water a play about the British in Egypt and the Suez War was given a stage reading at the ICA in London before being produced at the American University in Cairo's Jamil Center despite a banning order by the Egyptian state censor.[25]

Alrawi's play Blind Edge, produced by the Old Vic Theatre, was staged at the Commonwealth Institute in London as part of the Festival of Asia, while his play Aliens won the Festival of Asia & Capital Radio's National Playwriting Award.[26]

Theatres Alrawi wrote plays for included Royal Court Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Joint Stock, The Old Red Lion Theatre, Soho Theatre, M6 Theatre, Half Moon Theatre, Newcastle Playhouse, the Old Vic Theatre, London, Liverpool Playhouse, Theatre Royal, York, and the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.[27]

Arabic plays[edit]

City of Peace (Arabic stage play) with Mahmoud El Lozy and Tamim Abdu, Cairo 1990.

In Egypt, Alrawi taught at the theatre department of the American University in Cairo (AUC).[28] His first serious run-in with the state censor was when his play Crossing the Water was banned and he was summoned to give an account of himself to the censor's office.[29] Later that year, as a response to the censor, he adapted The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, setting it in contemporary Egypt. It was staged at the Wallace Theatre of AUC in central Cairo.[30] Also, Alrawi wrote four stage plays in Arabic two of which were staged at the Wallace Theatre.[25] Madinate el Salam (City of Peace) is a retelling of the life of the Sufi poet Mansour al-Hallaj who was executed in tenth century Baghdad on charges of heresy. The play was produced twice, both times after being refused a license by the state censor that led to threats of arrest of Alrawi by state security. The second produced play, Al-Bayt al Mahgour (The Abandoned House) was about sexual exploitation and its roots in Egypt's history of class privilege. The production of the plays, despite being denied rehearsal and production licenses by the state censor, was a contributory cause to Alrawi's later arrest and interrogation.[31]

Autobis al Intikhabat (The Election Bus), a satire on the Egyptian electoral system and Mudun Gha'iba (Absent Cities) about the destruction of Arab cities by war were two full-length plays that were to be produced with a cast of students from AUC. Alrawi and his actors were denied access to the Wallace theatre during the final days of rehearsals resulting in cancellation of the performances.

North American plays[edit]

Karim Alrawi receives Canadian National Playwriting Award 1999 from John Tennant, Canadian Consul, MI, USA

Karim Alrawi was resident writer at a number of institutions, including Iowa State University, Pennsylvania State University, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Oakland University and at Meadow Brook Theatre (MBT) in Michigan.[32] He taught playwriting at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada and later was an International Writing Fellow at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa,[33] where he taught creative writing and global literature courses for the Between the Lines program.[34]

The Unbroken Heart a play based on the life of the blues singer Ethel Waters was first performed at the Fisher Theatre in Iowa before touring nationally.[35][36] His plays for MBT included A Gift of Glory,[37] about the Mexican artist Diego Rivera and the Ford family; Chagall's Arabian Nights,[38] a story of Marc Chagall's painting of the Arabian Nights and Killing Time,[39] a play about physician assisted suicide. He also wrote plays that toured local schools and ran theatre workshops for disadvantaged children in South-East Michigan.[40]

Karim Alrawi receives Free Press Theatre Excellence Award, 1998

His play Sarajevo about the Bosnian war was given a workshop production at MBT and the Shenandoah Arts Theatre. The play Sugar Candy was given a staged reading at Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis.

Patagonia[41] a play about torture and resistance was first performed by Ruby Slippers Theatre in Vancouver, Canada. Across The Morne a play for two actors and dogs, set in Newfoundland, was given a staged reading at the Playwrights' Theatre Centre, Vancouver, Canada.

Deep Cut, a play set on the American Gulf Islands about cultural conflict and political and personal expediency, was staged at La MaMa ETC[42] in New York as well as by Golden Thread Theatre in San Francisco and Washington, DC.[43]

Children's fiction[edit]

Alrawi has written two children's picture books: The Girl Who Lost Her Smile and The Mouse Who Saved Egypt.

The Girl Who Lost Her Smile was winner of Parents Magazine Gold Award 2002 and was a finalist for the Kentucky Bluegrass Book Award (Kentucky Students' Choice) 2002.[44] It was staged and performed as a children's play in the UK by Tutti Frutti Theatre and York Theatre Royal,[45] and in the United States by Golden Thread Theatre.

His picture book The Mouse Who Saved Egypt was listed for the People's Prize in the UK.

He also authored a children's literary cookbook: Arab Fairytale Feast that was shortlisted for the Forest of Reading Children's Books Awards, 2023.[46]

Adult fiction[edit]

Alrawi's novel Book of Sands, subtitled a novel of the Arab uprising, was published by HarperCollins in the Fall of 2015. The novel won the inaugural HarperCollins Publishers Prize for Best New Fiction.[47] It was a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Best Book of the year[48] and shortlisted for the Amazon Best New Fiction award. [49]

Other productions[edit]

Karim Alrawi has written for BBC radio and television, as well as for Channel 4 television in the UK.

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Writers | The Writing University - The University of Iowa". writinguniversity.org. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
  2. ^ "Karim Alrawi, MFA 2013". Creative Writing. April 17, 2020. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
  3. ^ Karim Alrawi, "Pop Goes the Censor", Writer's Blog, June 3, 2011, http://www.karimalrawi.com/writer/Writers_Blog/Entries/2011/6/3_Pop_goes_the_Censor.html Archived March 25, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ "The still, small voice within Egypt" Index on Censorship, London, February 1992
  5. ^ "Fear of the Word." Media Guardian, The Guardian newspaper, London, December 20, 1993
  6. ^ "Death on the Nile" Index on Censorship, London, May/June 1994
  7. ^ "Karim Alrawi Biography", The Writing University, UNESCO City of Literature, https://www.writinguniversity.org/writers/karim-alrawi Archived November 29, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ "Fifty Years of Meadow Brook Theatre", Arcadia Publishing, July 2015 ISBN 9781467114202
  9. ^ Lama Bakri, "Arab-American magazine draws national readership", Detroit News, March 23, 2000, ISSN 1055-2715
  10. ^ Jim Dulzo, "Arabica magazine finds lucrative niche", Detroit News, December 20, 2000, ISSN 1055-2715
  11. ^ "Arabica magazine Subscriber Profile", John Zogby International, client report, October 2000
  12. ^ "CBC: Canadian media could use some help too". canadafreepress.com. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
  13. ^ Government of Canada, Radio Rabi'ah Balkhi gives women a voice in Afghanistan, http://www.afghanistan.gc.ca/canada-afghanistan/stories-reportages/womenradio-radiofemmes.aspx Archived March 2, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
  14. ^ Good Governance for Development in the Arab Countries, http://www.oecd.org/mena/governance/34945764.pdf
  15. ^ Karim Alrawi, "Media Development (initiative in support of civil society in Iraq)," United Nations Development Programme, July 2004, http://www.iq.undp.org/UploadedFiles/Projects/8f5f4742-6952-4ac1-9775-eb988e0579a3.pdf Archived September 28, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  16. ^ Patrick Martin, "After the trial, the battle begins", Globe and Mail, Canada, August 3, 2011
  17. ^ قاىمة المنظمات المتهمة بالتمويل الاجنبي” ,آحمد شلبي ومحمد منصور", Almasry Alyoum, المصري اليوم, Egypt, March 20, 2016, http://www.almasryalyoum.com/news/details/913796
  18. ^ "Egyptian court acquits 40 NGO workers whose case strained ties with U.S." Reuters. December 20, 2018. Retrieved May 10, 2023.
  19. ^ عودة جيل المستقبل, Al-Manassa, December 5, 2020
  20. ^ Egypt: NGOs demand apology after closure of 13-year case over lack of evidence, Middle East Eye, 22 March 2024, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/egypt-ngos-demand-apology-after-closure-13-year-case-over-lack-evidence
  21. ^ Ritchie, R. (ed), "The Joint Stock Book: Making of a Theatre Collective," Methuen, London, 1987, ISBN 0-413-41030-7
  22. ^ Joyce Devlin, "Joint Stock: From Colorless Company to Company of Color." Theatre Topics Journal, Johns Hopkins University Press, March 1991, ISSN 1054-8378
  23. ^ Sara Freeman, "Writing the History of an Alternative Theatre Company: Mythology and the Last Years of Joint Stock." Theatre Survey 47:1, American Society for Theatre Research, May 2006, ISSN 0040-5574
  24. ^ Carol Woddis, '"Child in the Heart, play review." City Limits magazine, London, April 21, 1988
  25. ^ a b Walter Eysselinck, "Identity and Anxiety in the Plays of Karim Alrawi." Theatre Workshop Paper, American University in Cairo, 1991
  26. ^ Madhav Sharma, producer and theatre directing credits, http://www.madhavsharma.com/?page_id=63
  27. ^ Karim Alrawi, Guide to Plays, doollee.com, http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsA/alrawi-karim.html Archived July 6, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
  28. ^ Karim Alrawi interview, Dramatists Guild Quarterly, Spring 1994, http://www.karimalrawi.com/writer/Interview.html Archived July 5, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  29. ^ "No Queens on the Nile." The Guardian newspaper, London, July 27, 1990
  30. ^ "The Three Sisters", American University in Cairo, http://www.aucegypt.edu/huss/pva/theater/archive/Pages/ThreeSisters.aspx Archived August 9, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  31. ^ "Kindest regards: you're banned." Index on Censorship, London, February 1992
  32. ^ Thom Foxlee & Maryann Foxlee, "Fifty Years of Meadow Brook Theatre", Arcadia Publishing, July 2015, ISBN 978-1467114202
  33. ^ "2013 Resident Participants The International Writing Program". iwp.uiowa.edu. Retrieved April 10, 2017.
  34. ^ International Writing Program, University of Iowa, http://iwp.uiowa.edu/programs/between-the-lines/2015
  35. ^ Joe Pollack, "Busy Theatre Calendar", St. Louis Post, Missouri, USA, September 6, 1992
  36. ^ Peter Lennon, "Speaking out in a volatile climate", The Guardian, UK, May 28, 1994
  37. ^ George Bullard, "Play shows Detroit as an art sanctuary", Detroit News, March 6, 1999, ISSN 1055-2715
  38. ^ Celia Wren, "I Dream of Genie", American Theatre magazine, volume 17, issue 4, April 2000, ISSN 8750-3255
  39. ^ Michael Margolin, "Killing Time questions living without quality of life", Detroit News, February 16, 2001, ISSN 1055-2715
  40. ^ Meadow Brook Theatre Archives, Kresge Library, http://library.oakland.edu/information/departments/archives/Meadowbrooktheatre.html Archived October 6, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  41. ^ Chris Dafoe, "Sled among top Jessie nominees", Globe and Mail, May 17, 1997
  42. ^ Nelson Pressley, "Deep Cut needs a sharper production", Washington Times, April 19, 1996
  43. ^ Rashad Rida, "From Cultural Authenticity to Social Relevance: The plays of Amin al-Rihanni, Khalil Gibran and Karim Alrawi." Colors of Enchantment, Ed. Sherifa Zuhur American University in Cairo Press, 2010 ISBN 977-424-607-1
  44. ^ Author Awards, Tradewind Books, Webarchive, https://web.archive.org/web/20110825160013/http://www.tradewindbooks.com/author-biography%26Name%3DKarim_Alrawi
  45. ^ Tutti Frutti return with enchanting children's play, York Theatre Royal, http://www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk/cgi/news/news.cgi?t=template&a=209 Archived September 30, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  46. ^ Yellow Cedar, Forest of Reading, Yellow Cedar Award, https://forestofreading.com/yellow-cedar-nominees/
  47. ^ Karim Alrawi wins inaugural Prize for Best New Fiction, "Quill & Quire", November 12, 2013, http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/awards/karim-alrawi-wins-inaugural-prize-for-best-new-fiction/ Archived December 14, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  48. ^ Book of Sands, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Best Books 2015, http://www.cbc.ca/books/2015/09/book-of-sands.html
  49. ^ Amazon Awards 2016, https://thewalrus.ca/partnerships/amazonfirstnovelaward2016/

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