Adania Shibli: What Formed Me As a Writer

Why It Matters

Shibli’s memoir shows how childhood literary immersion and playful writing become tools of cultural resistance, guiding educators and creators in fostering critical consciousness within conflict‑affected communities.

Key Takeaways

• Childhood reading sparked lifelong belief everyone is a writer.
• Notebook play became serious, strategic tool for imagination.
• Forbidden Palestinian literature taught the power of delayed access.
• Writing serves as resistance against oppression and narrative gaps.
• Playing with language transcends trauma and expands personal agency.

Summary

In a candid interview, Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli traces the origins of her literary voice to a childhood saturated with books and a conviction that everyone, in some form, is a writer.

She recounts how a simple notebook, gifted by her sister while her father worked at a bookshop, turned reading into a game of invention, allowing her to rename classmates as fictional characters and to rehearse alternative realities. The practice of play evolved into a disciplined, strategic tool that later helped her confront political oppression.

Shibli cites Brecht’s “five difficulties” as a theoretical anchor for using play to counter tyranny, and she describes the layered library at home—European classics on the lower shelves, forbidden Palestinian works like those of Ghassan Kanafani and Emil Habibi kept out of reach—creating a palpable “not yet” that intensified her desire to engage with the narrative of the Nakba.

The story illustrates how early literary exposure, coupled with imaginative play, can forge a resilient creative identity that not only enriches personal expression but also functions as a subtle form of resistance, offering a model for educators and cultural workers seeking to empower voices in contested societies.

Original Description

Palestinian writer Adania Shibli reflects on the formative experiences that shaped her as a storyteller—from growing up surrounded by books to discovering the power of fiction as a form of play and resistance.

"For me, learning to write meant taking part in this practice of writing," Shibli explains. "Somehow it came mainly from reading, being surrounded by these books as a reader." As a child, she spent hours immersed in literature, reimagining the stories she read and turning them into her own: "I used to be a lonely kid… I would wander in nature, carrying a book, and thinking a continuation of these books."

Shibli describes how literature provided a means of navigating both personal and collective histories. "My parents were 15 when the Nakba took place in 1948, but this is something they never spoke about," she recalls. "So, narration—or the impossibility of narration—was very present in our daily life." Books, she suggests, offered a way to fill these silences: "You're lost for words, but then you have all these books that somehow bring something back to you."

The act of writing, for Shibli, remains inseparable from the act of play. "It felt like playing as a kid," she says. "You would play with toys, but for me, it was playing in this notebook and writing… until now, perhaps, it’s a playing, but it is a serious playing, a committed playing."

Reflecting on her literary influences, Shibli highlights the significance of Palestinian authors such as Ghassan Kanafani and Emile Habibi, whose books were once off-limits to her. "There was always a ‘not yet’—a sense that I wasn’t ready for these books," she says. "And this ‘not yet’ is very important. I don’t take it as an act of prevention, but an act of thinking, growing with this impossibility until you realize why it’s possible now."

Adania Shibli, born in Palestine in 1974, is a celebrated author, essayist and cultural critic. Her acclaimed works include Touch (2010) and Minor Detail (2017), which was longlisted for the International Booker Prize. Shibli’s writing is known for its poetic prose and exploration of memory, identity, and the limits of narration. Shibli holds a Ph.D. from the University of East London in Media and Cultural Studies. Her dissertation is titled Visual Terror: A Study of the Visual Compositions of the 9/11 Attacks and Major Attacks in the ‘War on Terror’ by British and French Television Networks. Adania Shibli continues to be a vital voice in contemporary literature, bridging personal and political realities through her work.

Lotte Folke Kaarsholm interviewed Adania Shibli in connection with the Louisiana Literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in August 2024.

Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard

Edit: Signe Boe Petersen

Produced by Christian Lund

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026

Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond

Subscribe to our channel for more videos on literature: https://www.youtube.com/thelouisianachannel

FOLLOW US HERE:

Website: http://channel.louisiana.dk

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/louisianachannel

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LouisianaChannel