Join us for a discussion with author, playwright, poet and award winner Samah Sabawi about her book Cactus Pear For My Beloved.

The story follows the journey of Samah’s parents. who were born as their parents were being forced to leave their homeland in Gaza. It tells how Samah’s father, who was born to a disabled father and illiterate mother, was a believer in peaceful resistance and became a leading Palestinian poet and writer before being forced (with his own young family in tow) to flee and start a new life in Australia.

In 2020 Samah received the prestigious Green Room Award for Best Writing in the independent theatre category, and was shortlisted for both the NSW and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. With Stephen Orlo, Samah edited the anthology Double Exposure: Plays of the Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas, winner of the Patrick O’Neill Award and she co-authored I Remember My Name: Poetry by Samah Sabawi, Ramzy Baroud and Jehan Bseiso, edited by Vacy Vlazna, winner of the Palestine Book Award. Samah received a Doctor of Philosophy from Victoria University for her thesis titled Inheriting Exile, transgenerational trauma and the Palestinian Australian Identity.

About Cactus Pear For My Beloved:

Filled with love for land, history and its peoples, it is more than anything else a family story and a love story told with  optimism, humanity and feeling. It reminds us that the call of home and land remains strong, and that belief in words, art, family and community can help you rise from poverty and exile into a fulfilling life.

As Samah put the finishing touches on this story, another war on Gaza began. Those in her family who had remained in Gaza have now all lost their homes. Much of the landscape described in the book has now turned to scorched earth. Can Gaza rise again? History tells us it will – and Samah wants to believe it too.

Booking details will be released soon.