Join Lost & Found and Litmus Press for an evening of reading, music, and conversation to celebrate and launch poet, translator, critic, and scholar Ammiel Alcalay‘s highly-anticipated, monumental new book CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books (Litmus Press, 2025). Alcalay will be introduced by Zohra Saed, followed by a musical introduction by Safira Berrada-Riggs on ‘oud and vocals.

CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books combines three of Ammiel Alcalay’s previously published poetic texts—Scrapmetal (2007), the cairo notebooks (1993), and from the warring factions (2002)—with a new work, “Controlled Demolition.” Unlike most writing categorized as “documentary” poetry, here the author and his process are constant reference points, serving as a prism to refract changes over time and circumstance in what becomes a mix of memoir, poetry, auto-critique, prose narrative, history, and investigative journalism by other means.

Books will be available at the reading, which will be followed by a reception. Free and open to all, this reading and book launch will take place in the Martin E. Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, NYC. Please register to attend.

About the Author

Poet, novelist, translator, essayist, critic, and scholar Ammiel Alcalay’s latest books are CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books, his co-translation of Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, and the forthcoming Follow the Person: Archival Encounters. In 2017, he received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for his work as founder and General Editor of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative; he is a Distinguished Professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center.