Dear friends,
We’re excited to introduce The Key, a new online magazine brought to you by the Palestine Festival of Literature.
I’m Sara Yasin, the editor-in-chief, and I want to tell you a little bit about this new publication.
Every two weeks, we will offer subscribers unique analysis, essays, and reportage on Palestine. We will cover Palestine as the core issue at the heart of the modern world — exactly how it should be covered.
We will publish bold, fresh stories by established writers, and introduce important new voices. We will commission fearless reportage and analysis, publish new poetry and literary criticism, and highlight key material from PalFest’s live events and podcast.
Today we’re publishing Issue 001, in which we have the incisive Alaa Alqaisi — poet, writer, and translator — meditating on her surreal transition from Gaza to life in Dublin; a remarkable new poem by Tamara Nassar; and a deeply illuminating and personal conversation between Yasmin Zaher and Saleem Haddad from the PalFest Podcast reflecting on their breakthrough first novels and their thoughts on language, style and identity in their sophomore efforts.
Finally, in this issue, we have a personal essay from me, about the time I spent as managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, and why mainstream media might just be too broken to save.
Subscribers will get a new issue in their inbox every two weeks, and for a limited time we’re offering a Founding Reader rate of just $2 a month, as well as free codes for anyone for whom that is not affordable.
Upcoming issues of The Key will have stories on the battles over Palestine playing out in Hollywood and the music industry; Israel’s economic efforts in Nigeria; wellness influencers and techno DJs; we’ll have pieces from prisoners and those standing trial for direct action; we’ll have book reviews, original reportage and political analyses from the psychoanalytic to the economic.
For subscribers who can afford $10 a month we’ve arranged for 10% discounts at some of the best bookshops and publishers around the world, as well as our own PalFest shop.
There’s so much editorial talent coming together to tell you about.
I’ll be joined on the editorial team by Mahmoud al-Shaer, a longtime PalFest collaborator, who was finally able to evacuate from Gaza to Spain; and Paul Hamilos, one of the best editors in the business and a veteran of the Guardian and BuzzFeed News. The Key is a PalFest project, and PalFest’s Director, Omar Robert Hamilton, will serve as The Key’s publisher.
We’re honored to be working with a new Poetry Board made up of Jehan Bseiso, Huda Fakhreddine, Anahid Nersessian and Solmaz Sharif; and a Review Board with Ibtisam Azem, Yasmin El-Rifae, Budour Hassan and Abdaljawad Omar. In the coming months we will be working on building out a large list of even more Contributing Editors, who will help expand the breadth of our coverage.
The genocide in Gaza has fractured the media landscape, and there's no turning back. PalFest is building this space thanks, in part, to the dedication of our community of supporters, including you, who have expressed a hunger for writing and journalism that cuts through the noise. We need publications that can articulate how the world is changing, and subscribing to The Key will let you be a part of that.
I’ll leave it at that for now. Please subscribe if you can, email us if you can’t, send me feedback of absolutely any kind — and I look forward to building this with you.
Sincerely,
Sara Yasin
