Now for the Descendants: Dayna Ash & lisa luxx in conversation with Barakunan

We are delighted to share this piece with you! Our favorite revolutionary poets and activists joined us for a fireside chat in Tunefork Studios in Beirut a few weeks ago. The result is a two part conversation with live readings interspersed throughout. 

The first episode launches on Radio Alhara on March 29 at 5PM Bethlehem time. The show will migrate over to our Spotify page soon after its radio release. 

An audiobook featuring the poems read throughout the episode will be up on Bandcamp. 

Thanks to Goethe Institut, Radio Al Hara and Tunefork Studios for making this episode possible.

Live long under the Barakunan sky!

Dayna Ash is an intersectional feminist, cultural activist, writer, and the founder & Executive Director of Haven for Artists, an unapologetic cultural feminist organization working at the intersection of art and activism. She was named one of the BBC's 100 most inspirational Women in 2019, awarded the Woman of Distinction award in 2020, and the Leader in LGBT Health Equity award in 2021. In 2020 She wrote and produced the film, Courage, which was awarded Best Experimental Film in Montreal Independent film festival in 2022 and the Berlin Indie Film Festival in 2021.

Dayna serves on the Artist Change maker Advisory Council for the Global Fund for Women, is a Selection Committee Member for The Doria Feminist Fund, is a cultural delegate for the Edinburgh Festivals Cultural Diplomacy 2022, and is a Champion for SheDecides+. In 2022, she was named the Intersectional Feminism Advocacy Fellow for The Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut. In 2023, she was named the Arts for Gender Equality Fellow by CARE USA and The Rockefeller Foundation and awarded the Bellagio Artist Residency.

lisa luxx* is a poet, activist, playwright, and essayist. Published by Penguin Books, New England Review and a plethora of literary journals and publishers worldwide.

A short film was produced for her poem ‘Lesbian.’ which was broadcast between popular television shows on national TV in the UK throughout 2020 (as a means of disruption and interruption to regular broadcasting). It went on to win Best LGBTQ short at Independent Shorts Awards among five other awards. Her poems are regularly broadcast on BBC Radio 4, as well as on TEDx.
In 2021, she published her debut poetry collection Fetch Your Mother's Heart to rave responses from literary critics and audiences, Poetry Review celebrated it as “vigorously intellectual and politically febrile.”

luxx’s next book, Sun Son, narrativizes the queer-political as short stories, it will be released in Spring 2024 by Comma Press. In 2023 she has two new plays on tour. Between writing she guest lectures at universities in the UK, Lebanon, and the USA on revolutionary poetics and embodied grammatology.