March 09, 2018

Sayed Kashua, a well-known Israeli-Arab author and journalist, will read from a selection of his works as part of Susquehanna University’s Seavey Reading Series at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 20, in the Cunningham Center for Music and Art’s Stretansky Concert Hall.

The reading is co-sponsored by Jewish and Israel Studies and is free and open to the public.

Kashua is best known for his humorous and satirical writing about the challenges of Jewish-Palestinian coexistence in Israel. He writes columns in Hebrew for Haaretz newspaper and has written for the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha’lr. He is the author of four novels: Dancing Arabs, which won the Grinzane Cavour Award for Debut Novel (Italy, 2004) and was made into a film in 2014; Let It Be Morning, which began production for the film adaptation early last year; Second Person Singular, which won both the Bernstein Prize (Israel, 2011) and the Prix des Lecteurs du Var (France, 2012); and Exposure. Kashua has also published Native, a collection of essays, and is the creator of one of Israel’s most popular sitcoms, Arab Labour.

He currently teaches Hebrew and writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The New York Times calls Kashua “a master of subtle nuance in dealing with both Arab and Jewish society,” and of Native, the Kirkus Reviews calls it “a wickedly ironic but humane collection.”