For those of you celebrating Western Christmas, be merry-merry and read some Badr Shakir al-Sayyab over at Jadaliyya. And look back at the last year:

January

In a rough year, January was a fairly positive month.

On January 7, International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) organizers announced their longlist, which included a number of big names, but only two women among longlisted authors.

On January 16, Jonathan Wright and William Hutchins were announced as co-winners of the Banipal translation prize and, on the 18th, Rowayat journal launched its first issue in Cairo.

Feburary

IPAF organizers announced the prize’s shortlist in Jordan on Feb 10. As always, there was controversy in the choices, and Jordanian poet Siwar Masannat wrote about “Lady Writers, Experimentation, and the Possibility of ‘Pure’ Literary Criteria.”

At the close of the 2014 Cairo International Book Fair, the book-selling service Kotobi.Com was launched, and Lebanese poet Ounsi…