Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense

Across Palestine, from the Allenby Bridge and Ramallah, to Jerusalem and Gaza, Marcello Di Cintio has met with writers, poets, librarians, booksellers and readers, finding extraordinary stories in every corner. Stories of how revolutionary writing is smuggled from the Naqab Prison; about what it is like to write with only two hours of electricity each day; and stories from the Gallery Café, whose opening three thousand creative intellectuals gathered to celebrate.

Pay No Heed to the Rockets offers a window into the literary heritage of Palestine that transcends the narrow language of conflict. Paying homage to the memory of literary giants like Mahmoud Darwish and Ghassan Kanafani and the contemporary authors they continue to inspire, this evocative, lyrical journey shares both the anguish and inspiration of Palestinian writers at work today.

Marcello Di Cintio is an award-winning Canadian writer who has lived in West Africa, North Africa, India and the Middle East. He is the author of three books including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, which won the 2013 Shaugnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the City of Calgary WO Mitchell Book Prize adn the Wilfred Eggleston Prize for Non-Fiction. www.marcellodicintio.com