Festival Report 2025

My journey to the Read My World Festival began with a short ferry ride from Amsterdam Central Station to the city’s northern shore. Just a few minutes on the water were enough to make me feel that I was crossing from the noise of daily life burdened with war and exile into another space that was waiting for me.

Arriving at Tolhuistuin, the cultural garden that hosts the festival, the place felt like a small island of literature and the arts, surrounded by trees and lit by hanging lights that guided the way inside. The atmosphere carried the very rhythm of this year’s theme The Beat of Belonging. It was not just a venue, but a heartbeat: a space where languages, music, and stories could meet, where belonging was felt as sound, as movement, as shared presence. From the first moment, it was clear that the festival invited us not only to listen, but to take part in the living rhythm of connection.

The first thing that welcomed me was a small exhibition with a wide variety of books on display. Yet what caught my eye were the many flyers and cards carrying quotes from Palestinian writers such as Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, Suad Amiry, and Susan Abulhawa, presented in both Dutch and English. Seeing their words at the very entrance made me feel as if Palestine had already arrived here before me.

Inside, the hall resembled a beehive buzzing with words and faces. The book market had originally been planned for the garden, but the weather brought it indoors, where warmth remained present. Tables were filled with books from bookstores like American Book Center, Savannah Bay, and Fort van Sjakoo, with colorful covers and multiple languages. Among them, one detail stood out for me: the presence of Noon Coffee and Culture, a newly established bookstore dedicated to Arabic literature, run by Palestinian Subhi Al-Khatib. It added a special layer to the atmosphere.

Visitors wandered between the tables, touching the books, exchanging smiles or conversations, while Dutch, English, Arabic, and French voices blended in the air. For me, this interaction embodied the very spirit of the festival: literature as a meeting place, a bridge between distant experiences, and a living memory that resists erasure.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, I took my seat in the next hall, which quickly filled with a diverse audience of young people and literature enthusiasts from Amsterdam and beyond. On stage were Maboula Soumahoro, Gloria Wekker, and Ayyan Abukr, each bringing rich backgrounds in the study of colonialism, diaspora, and gender. The session was titled Ode to Maryse Condé, but the discussion moved beyond celebrating her to exploring the meaning of identity, history, and belonging.

Maboula Soumahoro spoke about Condé’s ability to “balance between history and the present, between global identities and the individual self,” and how she manages to reflect collective memory without losing the intimacy of personal experience. As I listened, I found myself thinking of Gaza of the similarities between Caribbean literature, which reimagines life after colonialism, and Palestinian literature, which struggles to preserve a voice amid war and exile.

As evening approached, I attended the launch of Kookpunt, the new book by Dutch-Moroccan poet and writer Nisrine Mbarki. For me, this was not just a literary event but a personal moment, since I had met Nisrine earlier over lunch with Ayyan AbuBakr and others. Seeing her present her new work before a diverse audience reminded me once again that literature can shorten distances and create unexpected bonds. For her, writing is a visual language that moves like a camera lens, while maps become symbols of memory and belonging. The book launch itself was a special moment that embodied the festival’s theme: The Beat of Belonging.

In the program Lament as Resistance, Dutch-Kurdish singer Naaz took the stage. Born and raised in the Netherlands after her family fled Iraqi Kurdistan during the Gulf War, she spoke about living between two cultures and how her sense of belonging intersects with other stories of exile and roots. She also sang a Kurdish song. Even though I do not speak Kurdish, I felt I could understand it. Her voice became a bridge that transcended language, carrying longing and the search for freedom, uniting us all in a shared moment.

Then came Palestinian writer Rasha Hilwi. She began with an old folk song: “Allah ysa‘ed, Allah y‘een, ‘ali saar b’Filastin” (“God help, God support, what has become of Palestine”), as she beat on a drum. She then told the story of her grandmother Salma from the village of Iqrit in northern Palestine, who was expelled in 1948 and was only able to return after her death, when she was buried there.

Listening to her, I felt her story was very close to mine. My grandfather, too, was from the village of Bashit, and he was forced to leave his land during the Nakba. Like Rasha, I felt that I too was a refugee in my own homeland. This session was one of the most powerful moments of the festival, moving many in the audience to tears. It reminded us that grief itself can be an act of resistance, and that memory has the power to survive despite attempts to erase it.

Rasha’s session was the last one I attended before leaving around nine in the evening. Yet the program continued late into the night with a wide range of events: from Poetic Bodies, blending poetry, dance, and music, to the interactive Blackout Poetry Workshop; the Masterclass Literair Vertalen on the art of literary translation; and later evening performances such as Who Sampled That?, which mixed hip-hop sampling traditions with poetry, and Nation Language, exploring language as identity and resistance. The night concluded with Under the Poetree, offering emerging voices the space to experiment and create.

This variety spanning poetry, music, workshops, and conversations captured the true spirit of the festival, where literature meets other forms of art in one space, and audiences are invited to discover new voices and styles.For me, the experience was beautiful, even though I was only able to attend for one day. When I was asked to write this report, I decided to share the moments and feelings I experienced during those hours. The festival was not just a cultural program, but a warm and friendly space where people met through words, music, and memory. I left with two new books to begin reading: ‘Ala Qulubihim Mashaw (On Their Hearts They Walked) and another by a Palestinian writer exploring the Holocaust and the Nakba. Even after leaving Tolhuistuin, the beat of belonging lingered, reminding me that literature can keep us connected, even across borders and exiles.