Public lecture Adiana Shibli – 30 October 2026

Adiana Shibli – Language as an Impasse

Closing lecture · SLARG 2026 Research Week
Friday 30 October 2026 · 18:00–19:30
Showroom, Sint Lucas Antwerpen

Sint Lucas Antwerpen welcomes Palestinian writer Adania Shibli for the closing lecture of SLARG’s 2026 Research Week. In Language as an Impasse, she explores the fragile spaces between words, silence and writing.

Free admission, places limited, registration required here.

Language as an Impasse

An interruption in the flow of words. Posing for the right word to approach. A prolonged silence between words. Blocks in which no words would emerge. Then, their repetition. Where do words disappear? But first, why?

Taking the process of becoming dysfluent in writing as a point of departure, Shibli looks at moments when language falters, stalls or repeats. The talk explores silence as a counterpoint to speaking, and the ways in which writing encounters the limits of language.

About Adania Shibli

Adania Shibli (Palestine, 1974) has written novels, plays, short stories and narrative essays. She has twice been awarded with the Qattan Young Writer’s Award-Palestine in 2001 and in 2003. Her third novel Tafsil Thanawi (Al-Adab, 2017, translated as Minor Detail, Fitzcarraldo Editions/UK, and New Directions/USA, 2020, Text Publishing/ANZ), was shortlisted for the National Book Award in 2020, and in 2021 it was nominated for the International Booker Prize. Shibli’s latest is Tamwih (al-Adab, 2025, to be released as Misleiding by Koppernik in Fall 2026, Delusion in 2027 by A. Knopf/USA, Fitzcarraldo Editions/UK, and Text Publishing/ANZ).

Shibli is also engaged in academic research and teaching in different universities across Europe, as well as at Birzeit University, Palestine (2012–2018). From 2022–2025 she acted as a co-curator of the Bergen Assembly 2025, Bergen, Norway.

Image credit
Khalil al-Sakakini, handwritten diary entry, 2 January 1950. Image courtesy of Adania Shibli.