In collaboration with FotoFest and the Arab American Cultural and Community Center, celebrated poet Fady Joudah and renowned musician Rahim AlHaj present an evening of Arab poetry and oud music.

Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American poet and physician. Joudah's poetry has been published in a variety of publications, including Poetry Magazine, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Drunken Boat, Prairie Schooner and Crab Orchard Review. He is the 2007 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition for his collection of poems The Earth in the Attic. In 2012, Joudah published Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, and Other Poems, a collection of poems by Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan translated from Arabic, which won the 2013 International Griffin Poetry Prize.

Rahim AlHaj is a an Iraqi American oud musician and composer who has performed all over the world. His music delicately combines traditional Iraqi maqams with contemporary styling and influence with a focus on the experience of exile from his homeland and of new beginnings in his adopted country. AlHaj has released several recordings, one of which was nominated for a 2008 Grammy Award.

A reception on the plaza follows the program.