Episode 11: Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch
In this episode, Pauline Homsi Vinson interviews poet Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch about their award-winning poetry collection, The Good Arabs. El Bechelany-Lynch's The Good Arabs explores the many simultaneous realities present within their Arab, Lebanese community such as anti-Black sentiments and the embracing of capitalism while also being hospitable and generous. The Good Arabs examines race and class, gender and sexuality, and the experience of language all within the Lebanese diaspora.
About Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch:
Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is a writer living in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). Their work has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 anthology, The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. They were longlisted for the CBC poetry prize in 2019. Their book, knot body (2020), published by Metatron Press, was shortlisted for the QWF Concordia First Book Award, and their second book, The Good Arabs, published by Metonymy Press in 2021, was granted the honorary mention for poetry by the Arab American Book Awards and won the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. They are an acquisitions editor at Metonymy Press. Their translation of Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay’s La fille d’elle-même from the French is forthcoming Fall 2023. With co-editor Samia Marshy, they are editing El Ghourabaa, an anthology of weird and experimental queer and trans writing by Arab and Arabophone writers.
