Pop star, activist, skincare entrepreneur and founder of an editorial platform (among her many ventures), Dua Lipa has long championed manifestation, from writing down her goals and using her song Training Season to manifest her ideal partner to mapping out major career milestones, including headlining Glastonbury.

Now, she is turning her attention to literature, taking on the role of curator for this year's 19th London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre, one of London's leading arts and cultural venues, and cementing her status as a literary goddess of our time.

The festival brings together established literary names and emerging writers for conversations, readings, and events that explore the stories and ideas shaping our lives.

Generously supported by Bukhman Philanthropies, this year’s edition also coincides with the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary.

Running until 1 November, the festival has already offered plenty to get stuck into. From conversations with literary icons to poetry confronting the realities of our time and powerful personal testimony, The New Arab looks at some of the standout moments and ideas that have stayed with us so far.

Literary icons, intimate conversations and the power of poetry

For one day only, Dua made an appearance at the festival, taking to the stage alongside some of the most celebrated names in literature.

First up was British novelist Zadie Smith, whose debut novel, White Teeth, was published when she was just 24 and went on to become one of the most celebrated novels of the new millennium.

The programme also featured American singer and writer Patti Smith, who discussed her memoir, Bread of Angels. She spoke about her family and early interest in art, recalling how seeing a Picasso painting at the age of 12 and leaving the church after being told there was no place for art helped shape the independent spirit that has remained a defining part of her life and work.

Dua also welcomed Mustafa Ahmed, known as Mustafa the Poet, to the stage to discuss Nour, a project created with WePresent that brings together poetry, photography, interviews and visual art. Made freely available in 2025, the project explores themes of faith, love, grief and everyday rituals.

During the conversation, Dua revealed that Mustafa officiated her wedding to Callum Turner and wrote a poem for the couple. She described the gesture as meaningful and dedicated Noor Hindi’s Ode to Friendship to him.

Their discussion also touched on friendship and the importance of allowing the people we love the freedom to change and grow.

Special guest readings from poets Victoria Chang and Safia Elhillo added to the programme’s celebration of poetry.

A celebration of British Somali poetry 

The focus on poetry continued beyond Dua’s appearance with A Celebration of British Somali Poetry, which brought together five poets to explore identity, migration and belonging. Among them was Samatar Elmi, who shared The Genocide Will Not Be Televised, a poem that combines historical references with raw, contemporary outrage.

Samatar recited the poem, which includes the lines: “The genocide will not be televised. The genocide will not be brought to you by Newsnight, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Piers Morgan will not ask if you condemn Hamas twice a day and thrice on Sundays. There will be no need to learn that if you place a gun to a parrot’s head, it squawks: ‘Israel has a right to defend itself,’ ‘Israel has a right to defend itself,’ in [a hundred and sixteen] languages, because the genocide will not be televised.”

Nadia Murad on survival and reclaiming her life

From poetry confronting the reporting of violence, the festival moved to personal testimony.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad sat down with BBC journalist Lyse Doucet to discuss surviving Islamic State group (IS) captivity in Iraq, becoming a leading voice for survivors of sexual violence and reclaiming her life beyond her past.

As Nadia put it, "Survival isn’t the same as finding peace. It’s an ongoing negotiation with memory." She also reflected on the expectations she faced early in her activism, when people pressured her to put her work before her own hopes of building a new life. "Are you supposed to suppress the part of myself that loved makeup and hair?" she asked.

Nadia also spoke about her mother, who was killed by IS, and the price women have to pay during violence and conflict.

Reflecting on how public conversations often focus on the numbers of soldiers and men killed, she said: "You know, the world focuses so much on how many soldiers are recovering or how many men were killed. It’s always about the numbers and the destruction.

"But there is always a specific price that women pay. My mother was killed because she was a woman, and they felt she was a threat to them. They thought that if she survived, she would rebuild that house or build a new one and bring the family together."

To end, Nadia reflected on how she met her now-husband, Abid Shamdeen, who was working as her translator at the time.

Describing him as the "love of her life, who gives me hope every day," she also shared a touching story from her latest book, I Choose My Beginning: A Story of Courage and Activism.

When Abid asked if there was one thing she wanted to do for herself, Nadia admitted that she felt self-conscious about her teeth. He never judged her for it. Instead, he eventually told her, "Nadia, I found you an orthodontist." Before she knew it, she had braces, "like a teenager."

Ta-Nehisi Coates and Tareq Baconi on Palestine and freedom

The festival also turned to questions of freedom and justice, as authors Ta-Nehisi Coates and Tareq Baconi joined journalist Nesrine Malik to discuss Palestine, decolonisation and their books, The Message and What Now: On Palestine, Freedom, and Our Global Future.

Tareq argued: "People who have and continue to colonise Palestine, there is no way in which the ‘us’ and the ‘them’, this colonial relationship, can coexist. Zionism means Palestinian extermination, so if we are committed to Palestinian life, we have to confront Zionism for what it is: this racist ideology that has no place in our world."

Ta-Nehisi, meanwhile, discussed how American slavery's need for expansion ultimately contributed to its own undoing, suggesting that oppressive systems can be driven by an insatiable appetite for more land and control.

He also pointed to Zionism's emphasis on maintaining a Jewish demographic majority as evidence of its exclusionary character, arguing that such a "project" cannot be separated from questions of racism.

Rama Duwaji brings the festival theme to the screen

Beyond the festival’s live events, a campaign film featuring words by Dua and animation by Syrian artist Rama Duwaji brings this year’s theme, Read the World Differently, to life on the Piccadilly Lights billboard and at the Southbank Centre.

One standout piece of writing on screen was an excerpt from Sufiyaan Salam’s Merky Books New Writers’ Prize-winning debut novel, Wimmy Road Boyz, which was also featured on Dua’s Service95 platform. The story follows three British-Pakistani friends on a chaotic night drive down Manchester’s Curry Mile.

A book swap for readers

For festivalgoers looking to take a little literary inspiration home, the festival’s book swap offers the chance to exchange books and leave recommendations for fellow readers.

It is a simple way to keep the conversation going beyond the stage, with each book offering the chance to discover a new favourite or see a familiar story in a new light.

And if there is one thing Dua’s own love life suggests, it is that a shared love of books can be a pretty good conversation starter. 

The singer and Callum reportedly first bonded at a party in Los Angeles after discovering they were both reading Hernán Díaz’s Trust, having each just finished the first chapter when Callum joked, "So we’re on the same page."

The London Literature Festival runs until 1 November 2026, with events still to come

Zainab Mehdi is a British-Iraqi journalist and Associate Features Editor at The New Arab. She holds a BSc in Modern History and International Relations from the University of Essex and an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS

Follow her on Instagram: @zaiamehdi_/@zainabmehdiwrites_

At its core, every coming-of-age memoir asks: How do I convince the world that I exist? However, Elena Dudum’s memoir They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful (Atria/One Signal) complicates this simple idea by asking: How do I prove my existence when the world is committed to destroying the evidence?

Unlike traditional coming-of-age memoir that simply deals with the trials of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, this memoir is dedicated to the process of coming into consciousness in the face of outright denial. 

A Palestinian Christian raised in San Francisco, in some ways Elena’s upbringing follows the prototypical footprint for any diasporic Arab American — her grandparents came to America and built lives.

However, the particulars of her story stand out — her Palestinian-born grandparents married American-born Arabs, and contrary to post 9/11 American popular conception, she is not Muslim.

Instead, she was heavily involved in her Palestinian Christian community as a child. She moved through adolescence and young adulthood in proximity to privilege, privately educated and rubbing elbows with San Francisco's elite.

However, the truth is that although she was in the right rooms, people viewed her differently.

A third grader in 2001, she pulled her teacher aside: "I told Miss Crane that my cousin and I would not share where our family was from… We would tell people we were from Guatemala."

The fact of their origins, uttered in hushed tones. Disguised and distorted, for fear that true disclosure would mutate into misunderstood hatred.

Whether it was classmates' parents, a friend's boyfriend at the bar, or even the college administration, Elena Dudum constantly had to push against the idea of her identity rather than its reality. 

A scene that stands out: Her own sense of self, punctured as an eight-year-old, when a friend's father driving her asks, "Where’s your family from again?" This inspired a grown man to ask a child whether or not she supports Israel. The first of a lifetime of questions ended with the resolute thought, "You guys anti-Semitic or something?" 

From a young age, she is forced to understand that her identity is immediately challenged. Her family, a threat.

But she didn't understand this alone. Her father, forever frenzied with the need to educate his children, through private education and lectures on the way to school, armed them with the phrase: "You would be attributing to me a prejudice to which I do not subscribe." 

A legacy of proof

This memoir, of course, follows the coming-of-age canon by having a parent to push against, but what I admire most is that this father-daughter relationship is unsentimental and deeply unresolved.

Are family dynamics ever truly resolved? So many memoirs pretend they can be. But Elena does not stray from truth: the difficulty of her father, and the identity of being Palestinian.

From childhood to adulthood, her father's lecturing is consistent. But his command and ferocity deplete her (and him) over time, her willingness to listen as a child arms her for the revelations she finds on her own as an adult.  

How do you not lose your mind when trying to prove something you know exists? Elena writes, "Now he scours the web for one-hundred-year-old magazines about Palestine: LIFE, National Geographic, even The Illustrated London News, the world’s first graphic weekly news magazine. For years, he would reference these mysterious documents but show them to nobody. ‘I have proof,’ he would say, ‘that Palestine exists.’"

He has the archive. The difficulty lies in his inability to trust, even when his own daughter tries to access what he has hoarded as precious truth. 

The lack of sentimentality comes down to this fact: this book is about inheriting a mission, whether she wanted to or not.

Each chapter starts with an epigraph from her father's archive: A quote from a 1946 issue of Life Magazine, describing the beauty, bounty, and existence of Palestine.

As much as he tries to keep her from it — growing belligerent and paranoid at the request — the epigraphs nod to one simple fact: she has inherited his mission, his collection.  

She doesn't want to inherit this mission; her very existence forces her to. 

Refusing to be erased

Elena’s memoir looks hard at who gets cast as actor and who as victim in narratives of atrocity, and how American institutions and everyday language shape that framing.

Her writing is clear and cogent: it points to the syntax and grammar of oppression, as well as the deliberate silence it produces.

What I find most palpable in this text is the question of how language can erase, displacing blame and reframing crime as power. 

But it's not simply syntax and grammar; it's a lifetime series of silences. She takes her reader through her experience as an undergraduate at Barnard and a graduate student at Columbia, both institutions I also attended.

However, I did not embody the very identity that those institutions deny, villainise, and deliberately silence. She takes us through her discussions with the president of Barnard after their banner was removed from Barnard Hall after one single day (which I witnessed firsthand).

Elena goes against her father's advice, fearing for her safety. She speaks up, but to no avail: "I resented him for instilling a fear in me just as much as he instilled a fire."

As a graduate student at Columbia, Elena audits a course called The Creation of Israel. After sitting in class, agitated by the rage she witnessed her father embody, she can’t help but push back on every claim backed by studied evidence and stats, and the professor ultimately asks her not to participate. 

But Elena knows better. Her family’s orange grove, remembered by her grandfather, whom she calls Siddi. She imagines Siddi as a child, sitting in a tree with ripe fruit in his palm.

The gold jewellery on her wrist, all her Taita carried away with her during the Nakba. In her genome, through generational word of mouth: she remembers. Her family’s name, engraved above a doorway in Palestine. Her family’s history, still standing in Ramallah. 

When asking her father the very question she grapples with most: "When did I know I was Palestinian?" Her father replies, "‘It’s not because I’m Palestinian that I’m like this,’ he says. I can’t see him, but I know he’s shaking his head. ‘It’s just who I am."' 

Ultimately, Elena’s personal narrative is the counter-archive: her life, testimony. She braids memoir with archival fragments; the form itself treats family memory as resistance. She knows the rage, the denial, the sheer fight, foisted upon her and her father: "Here I am, Palestinian in your wake." 

Those who witness her and her memoir in entirety hold her rage and pick up the mantle. She is no longer alone in the fight for posterity, for truth. No one can ignore this memoir, or the power of rage-inducing truth. 

Paulina Pinsky is a Los Angeles-based writer, author, writing coach, educator, podcaster and performer. She is the co-author of the teen guide to consent, It Doesn’t Have to Be Awkward: Dealing with Relationships, Consent, and Other Hard-to-Talk-About Stuff

Follow her on Instagram: @paulina_pinsky

How does the sudden death of a sibling change the way we perceive our lives and our understanding of everything around us? In her memoir, Mourning Air, Leena Magdi shares her personal experience of grief and its lasting impact on her soul. 

"The loss of my younger brother is a tragedy that uprooted systems of imbedded beliefs about how the world operates." 

Leena Magdi is a Sudanese immigrant who has lived in the United States since she was five years old. She has two sisters and a younger brother named Hamoodi, to whom she was very close. Yet, his sudden death while on summer vacation in Sudan changed her life forever. 

Faced with such a profound loss, Leena finds that expressing grief in any form, whether through painting or writing, helps ease the sadness. So she chose to write her memoir as a letter to the world, sharing her personal experience. 

"My hope for this book is that it will paint a picture of a mind in grief."

Sudden loss and permanent grief 

"After loss, the air changes around us. It’s heavier and lighter at the same time. It’s like a veil is lifted. It seems impossible to keep going. It feels like we have to try to keep living. But we don’t. We keep breathing, and we don’t even notice it."

Throughout her memoir, Leena explains how grief isn’t temporary. It lives inside us for a long time as we carry it forever. Losing her brother felt as if part of her had been taken away.

At first, she lost the ability to talk to others, laugh with someone, or feel normal again. Even fleeing Sudan during the war was harder because she was leaving her brother buried there. 

In the book, Leena addresses him in emotional verses: 

"I’ve only ever carried you 

I’ve only ever cradled you 

And watched you grow 

I never thought I’d watch you go."

As she continues to live with his loss, Leena also expresses the permanent sadness that she feels every day. She writes: "Grief does not know logic. There is no beginning, middle and end. It is all present still. That is the reality of grief. It is every day renewed."

But as time passes, Hamoodi’s death makes her rethink her existence and redefine the way she perceives it. She starts treating people with a little more love, enjoying her time with her kids, appreciating happy moments, and letting things be. She believes that even in death, clarity can change us for the better. 

War, betrayal, and belonging 

"This is my story of escaping a forgotten war. Mourning a forgotten country. And grieving as a forgotten mourner."

Once the war erupted in Sudan back in 2023, Leena Magdi and her family had to flee the country and head to Egypt. 

In her memoir, she describes what they went through during those horrifying moments: "One bomb. And then another. The walls shaking. Wondering if the next one would come through the bedroom wall, or the roof, or the living room […] We couldn’t quite see where it was coming from, but death seemed unescapable."

According to her, the war in Sudan was terribly dismissed and left without any media coverage, with an "international silence."

Both the experience of war and the loss of her brother became deeply connected to a feeling of betrayal. Losing her younger brother made her feel as if she had been betrayed by everything and everyone around her: time, homeland, and life itself. 

"Betrayed by the men claiming to stand for security and freedom. Betrayed by the country he proudly and bravely stood for."

This sense of betrayal also leads her to question the system that allowed Hamoodi’s death to happen. Leena puts the blame on a corrupt political system for killing him: "A corrupt system allowed a trained officer to believe he could purposely shoot and kill my brother, an innocent, unarmed civilian. A corrupt system allowed him to believe whatever he did was justified."

Yet, Leena’s relationship with Sudan begins to change. Before Hamoodi’s death, she felt no sense of belonging to her homeland. Later, she feels a deeper connection to Sudan and embraces the idea of having two homes and two cultures. 

"This is my Sudan. The soil that held my brother. It is the land that witnessed his last steps. The air that carried his last breath."

Synchrony of life 

Throughout her memoir, Leena Magdi emphasises the synchrony between good and bad. Her main belief is that peace and pain coexist. 

"I realise that I can be dressed in layers of hurt and still carry pockets of laughter. I can flow in rivers of happiness and still feel the ripples of stones. I do not have to be one or the other. Most days, I am both. That is the beauty of being, it is all encompassing."

She believes we are always living in both states, good and bad, happiness and sadness, in synchrony.

At the same time, she emphasises the beauty that exists around us. Even in bad times, beauty is always there. "In that, we see the synchrony that has always been there." She further adds: "Life and death exist in synchrony."

So, finding synchrony in life means understanding how both states carry lessons that push us forward and help us accept things as they are. 

Ultimately, Leena highlights the inner strength that lets us stand firm and not let grief or any other trauma determine our future. She still grieves for her brother, but she looks ahead and sees her children and the life that awaits her. 

Joyce Bou Charaa is a Lebanese freelance writer and book editor, with a keen interest in writing about literature, culture, and history

Follow her on Instagram: @joyboucharaa

How did a few thousand Uyghur hairdressers and farmers, shoe salesmen and writers, become part of an elite fighting troop, a pivotal force in overthrowing Syria's brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad?

That is the question at the centre of this remarkable, rarely-told story. Journalist Emily Feng had gone to cover the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire in December 2024, but instead made her way to Syria as Assad fell.

In 2025, she found Central Asian fighters everywhere she went. With the help of exiled Uyghur writer Abduweli Ayup, essential when the new regime banned her from interviewing them directly, they tracked down some five dozen fighters and families from a 20,000-strong Uyghur community that had made Syria home.

About 4,000 of them took up arms. But why would stateless people endure hardship and martyrdom for a country that was not their own?

The answer is that Syria was never the point. The history of this rebel movement is not straightforward. Feng's candid interviews shed light on their complicated, fractured story. Our Hearts Burned For Home: Uyghur militants in Syria’s Civil War is the result.

A revolution within a revolution

Their presence in Syria was almost accidental; a mix of China's crackdown after the 1990s protests and 2009 Ürümqi riots, geographical chance, and revenge.

Unwilling to live in what they called the prison of Xinjiang, they made their way, some via Afghanistan to Syria, not to save Syrians but to learn how to fight for Hotan and Kashgar.

With no Arabic and no war experience, they typically got three months of training and were sent straight to the front.

In Jisr al-Shughur, in houses emptied by war, they built a state within a state: schools, businesses, their own security, raising children for the next war.

"We are raising our own army," one commander tells Feng. They decorated classrooms with cardboard tanks and anti-aircraft rockets to "acclimatise" children to war.

Never losing sight of that goal, they avoided joining other rebel groups and insisted on fighting as Uyghurs. But ideologically, things got complicated and fractured.

From 2014, ISIS/ISIS-K tried to recruit Uyghurs for a global caliphate. Most Turkestan Independence Party (TIP) Uyghurs rejected it; they wanted a Uyghur state, not a caliphate. Those who joined ISIS were arrested and became enemies.

When East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) leader Abdul Haq in Afghanistan pressed them toward al-Qaeda and the Taliban, they split from the Afghan Uyghurs in 2018, swapped the black Islamist flag for the blue flag of East Turkestan, and recast themselves as nationalists.

As far as the new regime-in-waiting was concerned, it made them rather unreliable allies. In 2016-17 they refused to formally merge into Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Their goal was Xinjiang, not Syria, and joining HTS meant mission creep.

And yet they fought against the regime. Ferociously.

From neutral newcomers, they were dragged into the rebel independence fray in 2015, earning a fearsome reputation for holding the northern front against Russian bombardment for a decade.

They lived off savings brought from Xinjiang and weapons captured from regime forces. Forced to learn fast, they fashioned shoulder-launched rockets from scrap canisters and mixed their own explosives.

"War became free training," one says, for the future war with China.

Feng is compelling on the brutal reality of that training. The rebel regime was punishing and relentless as it hammered the motley band of volunteers into disciplined soldiers versed in intelligence, strategy and logistics.

Bilal, a former hairdresser, says, "Sometimes, I was so sad I cried.” Revenge pulled him through.

The book's heart is how they fought. After ten gruelling years of fighting hand-to-mouth, the book builds to its climax: Operation Deterrence of Aggression in November 2024.

Triggered by a regime strike that killed children in Ariha, the Uyghurs used a disused tunnel at Dadikh to penetrate Assad's stronghold.

Tragically, digging 500 metres short of their target, they pushed on regardless to break the line to Aleppo. Half their team was stuck with a jammed motorcycle in the tunnel, and one of their tanks was lost to a minefield.

But by November 30, thanks to a rebel-negotiated ceasefire with Russia, Aleppo finally fell. Days later, rebel troops stormed Damascus, and Uyghur fighters waving blue East Turkestan flags rolled into town, earning the respect of the new regime and a place in Syria’s independence struggle.

A new Syria, an uncertain future

It should have been triumphant. But it was hollow.

Feng captures the mood perfectly. They had fought tooth and nail for ten years, losing hundreds of kin. But this was not their war. They wept — not for Syria, but for home. They preferred to save their tears for Hotan or Kashgar one day.

What comes next is the book's most painful part. Where do 20,000 stateless Uyghurs fit in a new Syria when their loyalty lies 4,500 km away?

There are almost as many answers as there are Uyghurs.

Some Uyghur children feel no affinity with East Turkestan and want to become Syrian.

Others, with their long black beards and children who call Alawites and Christians "infidels," frighten locals and want to remain a state within a state independent of Syrian state institutions.

Neutrality, however, might have made them good wartime partners, but how could political independence work in the new Syria?

For many others, comfortable inertia has set in, and the debate over whether to settle or keep fighting for a liberated East Turkestan now dominates.

The new Syria is moving forward anyway, with or without the Uyghurs, and it has big decisions to make.

The TIP has been disbanded into the Syrian Army’s 84th Brigade, and Uyghur commanders have been given posts in the Defence Ministry.

Many hope for citizenship and schooling. But as one interviewee tells Feng: "I hope this exile does not last very long, because they will become more and more Syrian. I hope at the end, when we have our own land back, maybe they at least will still want to visit me in East Turkestan."

Debates about their future rumble on both inside Syria and among the exiled faithful marooned in Turkey.

Many of those in Turkey are de facto stateless after Ankara refused passports over their East Turkestan independence activism.

Living under a cloud of frequent threats of repatriation to China, Syria looks like the perfect place to raise children free to study the Quran and practise their faith.

Squeezed from all sides, the Uyghurs are threatened not only by Turkey but also by Beijing, determined to drag them back to the homeland.

Radicalised Syrian Uyghur fighters have been in China's sights for years, and the fear they might stir trouble in Xinjiang is never far from the surface.

One way for Beijing to solve that problem is to use them as a bargaining chip in Syria's desperate need for reconstruction. Rumours of such a deal abound, but Damascus has denied them for now.

What comes after victory?

Feng and Ayup have done something extraordinary in Our Hearts Burned For Home. This is not just a war story, but one of exile, ideology and what happens when a displaced people borrows another people’s revolution to train for their own.

Their story is not without controversy.

Some Uyghurs fear their militancy is justified, while others find it distasteful. They fear being tarred with the terrorist brush and thereby vindicating Beijing in its crackdown in the Uyghur region.

Feng was drawn to the sheer improbability of Assad's overthrow: some 30,000 rebels in fractious bands up against the Goliaths of Iran, Turkey and Russia. And winning.

In her conclusion, she hints their story might not be over: "What several thousand highly motivated, highly experienced Uyghur fighters can do may end up surprising us all. They have already surprised me."

The author is writing under a pseudonym to protect her identity