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Leila Essa

@leilaessai.bsky.social

550 followers 270 following 350 posts

assistant professor of comparative literature at utrecht uni. projects on post-partition lit & authorial politics. current research and writing at https://intervention.sites.uu.nl/. she/her.

intervention.sites.uu.nl

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · Jul 10

a quick research blog update with lovely book news and much gratitude for anna bernard's solidarity talk at utrecht last month and for the "for now" conference organisers in berlin last week

intervention.sites.uu.nl/2025/07/10/f...

For now

The book that I mentioned in my last post is taking shape: Marta Cenedese and I have just signed a contract with Bloomsbury Academic for our edited volume Activist Writing / Activist Reading. We are v...

intervention.sites.uu.nl

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 3h

maybe repping my late postal worker granddad

Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 3h

today, however, a parcel that I had assumed lost to this world reached its destination after all and it restored my optimism for our collective fate

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 3h

i am overinvested in the postal service as a Basic Social Good to the extent that any indication of a collapsing postal service puts me in a pit of despair

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 1d

love to see all the variations of muppet comrades

Michael Edison Hayden @michaelehayden.bsky.social · 2d

“They are highly organized … [they] have purchased their own animal costumes”

Andy ngo mad about muppets again — this time in Chicago

Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 2d

you’ll have to listen on double speed like the students do ha

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 2d

just a minor fun fact, but one of the big bestselling romance audiobook narrators (for Emily Henry’s novels) has written a romance novel about audio book narrators

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 3d

So so so wish I could be in Berlin for the Kurt-Tucholsky-Preis ceremony for Maryam Aras today. All the more glad that @jeannetteoho.bsky.social will be there to present our jury reasoning and @mahaelhissy.bsky.social will hold a laudation.

Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 27d

And the winner is: Maryam Aras. So happy our jury statement is now live here: tucholsky-gesellschaft.de/kurt-tuchols...

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Workshops4Gaza @workshops4gaza.bsky.social · 4d

redo w/correct link. pls share again!

‼️‼️‼️Sameer Project urgently needs our action. Can we do a $75/mattress-for-babies fundraiser today?

The situation:

From Sameer Project on on X: “The pediatric department at Nasser Hospital requested our help!!
Support: chuffed.org/project/1368...

Screenshot of video of babies who arrived at Nasser Hospital in need of urgent care. Go to Sameer Project on c to view

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Faisal فيصل @faisalhamadah.bsky.social · 4d

Non-ironically my favorite genre of writing these days is a syntactically awkward student paper that is nevertheless brimming with ideas they’re trying on

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 4d

The palpable relief of reading a syntactically awkward student paper nevertheless brimming with ideas they’re trying on after having to consume the stale cardboard generalities of a Chat GPT essay.

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Mai El-Sadany @maitelsadany.bsky.social · 4d

"Asked what freedom felt like, [Alaa] said: “It is overwhelming. It is also comfortable and natural, and I am immediately fitting in with them, including witnessing three family fights in two days. The usual stuff."

Don't miss this Guardian interview: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

‘I deserve to heal’: freed British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah on his prison ordeal and next steps

The campaigner, who spent more than a decade in an Egyptian ‘vortex of incarceration’, wants to join his son in the UK while he reflects on the fight for freedom

www.theguardian.com

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Natalia Cecire @ncecire.bsky.social · 5d

Anyway, read @miayou.bsky.social's poem "The Love Song of My Hologram" brainwashfestival.nl/en/poem-by-m...

mia you: the lovesong of my hologram – Brainwash Festival

brainwashfestival.nl

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Lorena Jaume-Palasí @lopalasi.bsky.social · 5d

Maria Corina Machado, Nobel Peace Prize Winner sees her politics aligned with Milei's (see e.g. www.clarin.com/mundo/maria-.... She's signatory of the Charta of Madrid -created by the think tank of Spain's right wing party Vox, whose leader introduced it to Trump. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_...

Madrid Forum - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 5d

Huge librarian appreciation week over here - taking care of, vocally supporting, and chasing up every single one of my purchase requests for this course

Mahmoud Darwish’s The Butterfly Burden reserved under my name

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 5d

beautiful complaint

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So Mayer @suchmayer.bsky.social · 6d

It's real & it's here. I'm real & I'm here. There were times during the writing where I didn't think that those sentences could simultaneously be true. So yes I am grinning like a dork.

Pre-order BAD LANGUAGE from Peninsula Press. It's not secondhand yet... 👇🏻

peninsulapress.co.uk/products/bad...

So Mayer, a short, grey-haired white person, holds up copies of Bad Language. There's a sign that says Second-hand Books behind them.

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Gabriel Flynn @gabrielflynn.bsky.social · 6d

If you're excited by long-haired literary men being in the spotlight, come along and see me talk with the ‘Kilkenny Krasznahorkai’ @elfodongo.bsky.social tonight!

Gabriel Flynn @gabrielflynn.bsky.social · 7d

Berlin pals, this is happening tomorrow! Please come along. The book is great and Tim is very funny and eloquent. It’ll be nice.

Me and Tim MacGabhann talking about his memoir THE BLACK POOL at Shakespeare and Sons on Oct 9th 18:45

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 6d

Huge admiration for Naoise Dolan. (Also imagining what any of the German PENs would have to say about a German author joining the flotilla.)

Irish Literary Times @irishlittimes.bsky.social · 7d

Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann is gravely concerned about the detention of writer Naoise Dolan...The flotilla was illegally intercepted last night and seized by armed Israeli forces in international waters.
irishpen.com/2025/10/08/t...

Thousand Madleens flotilla Statement - Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann

8 October 2025 Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann is gravely concerned about the detention of writer Naoise Dolan, one of several Irish citizens taking part in the Thousand Madleens f...

irishpen.com

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 6d

The essay is here, thankfully web.archive.org/web/20080511...

web.archive.org

Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 6d

The wonderful Utrecht University librarians did get ahold of this out-of-print book for me, which is listed as the original place of publication in the German translation, but it turns out that it contains an interview with Adnan rather than the essay

Unheard Words: Women and Literature in Africa, the Arab World, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America, edited by Mineke Schipper

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 6d

Crazy that syllabus design relies on the wayback machine now (Etel Adnan's To Write in A Foreign Language only available on the defunct Electronic Poetry Review)

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Silver Press @silver-press.bsky.social · 7d

Finished copies of Palestine is everywhere (publishing 16 Oct) 🖤 Edited by Skye Arundhati Thomas, this book contains dispatches from Gaza — essays, poems, images and letters from prison — reflecting on resistance, solidarity and the right to self-determination. www.silverpress.org/collections/...

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 7d

Joke’s on EU lawmakers because the single best veggie fake available in Dutch supermarkets is called ‘Little Willies’ www.reuters.com/business/eu-...

www.reuters.com

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Draught @draughtjournal.bsky.social · 7d

Draught is now live!
www.draughtjournal.com
Issue 1.1.1 with contributions by Glenn Adamson, Jen Calleja, Don Mee Choi, Mark Cousins, Daisy Lafarge, Mark Manders, Rosalind Nashashibi, Lisa Robertson, Christina Tudor-Sideri and Francesca Wade

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Books Upstairs @booksupstairs.bsky.social · 9d

A small fire at the front of the bookshop was started last night after rubbish bags that were awaiting collection were set on fire. The guards don’t have reason at this time to believe it was a targeted attack. Thankfully the damage was limited and everyone is safe. We are open for business as usual

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Leila Essa @leilaessai.bsky.social · 9d

"Thankfully the damage was limited and everyone is safe. We are open for business as usual. Thanks so much to everyone for checking in on us ❤️ So grateful for the kindness, THANK YOU ❤️❤️❤️"