Hamza Lakhal was born in El Aaiún, capital of Western Sahara, eight years after the 1975 invasion of his country by Morocco. His first poetry collection, published in Arabic by L’Harmattan-RASD, talks of a young man’s passion for his violated but resistant homeland. Joanna Allan interviews Lakhal about the struggles of a poet and activist living under a brutal and repressive occupation.

Ali Issa, the author of Against All Odds: Voices of Popular Struggle in Iraq, is in the midst of a book tour that covers the United States, Lebanon, and United Kingdom.

Ali Issa, Against All Odds: Voices of Popular Struggle in Iraq. Washington, DC: Tadween Books, 2015.