I found a wonderful article on the Huffington Post today. The posting is from the blog of Ir Amim, an Israeli non-profit that works to examine issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within Jerusalem. When I was last in Jerusalem, I took a tour of East Jerusalem with Ir Amim. The author of this story, Yizhar […]
Life through a new lens
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
A short piece a wrote for the University of Calgary’s Alumni magazine has just been published. In it, I talk a little about my walls project and my own origins as a writer. You can find it here. I just finished a first draft of half of my walls book – I will need to […]
A Nakba of Olives – an excerpt
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
[What follows is an excerpt from my Walls book-in-progress. This is from my chapter about the West Bank Wall called ‘A Nakba of Olives.’ Most of the chapter is about my time in the Palestinian village of Jayyous, and this excerpt is part of a longer account of an anti-Wall demonstration I observed there last […]
Audacity and the Wall
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
I’ve finished a new draft of my West Bank Wall chapter and will post a short sample soon. It was a difficult chapter to write. There are so many facets to the Wall that I had trouble knowing when to stop. What struck me most during the writing, and during my time in Palestine earlier […]
"Books Not Bombs" online
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
A story I wrote about Tmol Shilshom, my favourite place in Jerusalem and a mecca for writers, is now online on the Maisonneuve magazine site. You can find it here.
John Irving on Wrestling and Writing
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
The author John Irving was interviewed by Michael Enright on CBC Radio a few weeks back. He spoke about how his own career as a wrestler influenced his writing. Irving started to wrestle when he was an ill-tempered fourteen year-old. He told Enright that “you can’t lose your temper on a wrestling mat”, and that […]
Article: “Berlin Wall is gone but Israel’s inhumane barrier still stands”
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
I found an excellent essay about the West Bank Wall on the Herald Scotland website. The author – who, oddly, is not named – writes eloquently on many of the ideas I mentioned in my last post. You can find it here. [Correction: David Pratt wrote the aforementioned Herald Scotland piece.]
Walls in Berlin and Palestine
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Along with the Berlin Wall anniversary celebrations this week came the parallels between the Berlin Wall and the wall Israel has built around the West Bank. (The photo is of graffiti on the Wall in Ramallah.) These comparisons were inevitable, of course, and so was the subsequent scoffing of the West Bank Wall’s supporters. There […]
Representing the Other
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Yesterday I was part of a panel discussion with writer Sid Marty, and moderated by Pamela Banting, about “Representing the Other” in Creative Nonfiction. We covered several interesting ideas during the 90 minute discussion, but a comment from a member of the audience questioned the responsibility of the author in portraying the Other, and I […]
“Wall of Shame” goes digital
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
The digital version of the current Geist magazine is now up and running. My story about the Saharawi refugee camps, titled “Wall of Shame,” begins on page 53. The good people at Geist did a fantastic job with the layout. My work has never looked so pretty. This story has turned out to be rather […]
