Letter from Sharjah: the Sharjah Publishers Conference

The Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) is a literary festival and cultural event for the general public, but it is preceded each year by the Sharjah Publishers Conference, a rights marketplace and networking opportunity for publishers from around the globe.

This year, the Publishers Conference, which closed on 4 November, welcomed participants from 116 countries, including many delegates from Africa, India and the sub-continent, and Southeast Asia where cultural links with the Muslim-majority countries of Malaysia and Indonesia are strong. There were also significant numbers of participants from the English-speaking world, from Europe and central Europe, and from China and East Asia. The majority of participants were nevertheless from the Middle East, and a visit to the Conference provided an ideal opportunity to learn from them about books and writing in their home countries.

At any rights fair, translation is bound to be a hot topic.

An Iranian publisher asked that I withhold both his name and his publishing house, so he could talk freely about the problems he faces in his working life. In discussing publishers’ struggles with censorship, he said: “Iranians don’t submit to oppression, we fight censorship, and publishers are getting clever at working around it.” That provoked the obvious question: how? He wouldn’t tell me, but he did say Iranian publishers are determined to bring out books which are relevant right now, to social conditions in his country. For example they’re currently publishing: “Lots of books for women, by women, reflecting the lives of women, or to educate women.”

He then rebuked me for being too interested in censorship, saying everybody knew there was censorship in Iran, whereas a more interesting problem was copyright: “Iran is not a signatory to the Berne Convention; I don’t think it’s a deliberate government policy to isolate Iranian publishers, but it serves to isolate us just the same, as it means international publishers are wary of dealing with us, and we have limited access to their titles. Many domestic publishers do try to adhere to copyright law, but the costs involved make it challenging for us; we need international publishers to understand that we’re trying to adhere to the law, and to support us when we can’t afford it, so we can remain connected to the international community; we have an eagerness for connection.”

This year, the conference also shone a spotlight on the role of AI in publishing.

At any rights fair, translation is bound to be a hot topic. Given that for many outside the region, Middle Eastern scripts and languages are impenetrable, SIBF quite literally places a high value on translation: it’s home to the Sharjah Translation Grant, a fund worth US$300,000 annually. Eligibility criteria allow for books to be translated from any language, into any other language, but translations to or from Arabic receive the lion’s share of the available money.

This year, the conference also shone a spotlight on the role of AI in publishing, with discussions including, AI for editorial, AI bookseller, and a session on the ethics of AI in making audiobooks affordable through producing them at scale—presumably it covered the rights and wrongs of using AI generated voices.

Similarly, I spotted a poster in the business development section which appeared to advertise an AI translation service. Though there was nobody to ask, so I may have misunderstood, when my new friend, the Iranian publisher, mentioned there was a dearth of (human) translators from Persian into English, I asked what he thought of the idea of resorting to AI: “Not any time soon, as all other things aside, the AIs are not trained on Persian.”

Abdulmalik Alothman of Kuwait’s Majarrah Publishing House made the same point, with respect to Arabic: “The machines aren’t trained on it; it’s not in their data sets. AI as an assistant, maybe. As an editor, perhaps. But not as a writer or translator. It will ruin a book. Don’t do it.”

“People know the Emirates as a place to visit… They do not try to read our authors, or our poetry.”

Turning to more general topics, Abdulmalik said that though Kuwait is a small country, its publishers are willing to take risks; they produce a wide range of books, some experimental. He pointed out that Kuwaiti authors such as Saud Alsanousi and Bothayna El Essa are prominent figures in the Arab literary world, and have been lauded internationally. He said the sophistication of the Kuwaiti literary scene is because in the 1960s and 1970s, it was home to a still-flourishing literary magazine, Al Arabi. This, he said, provided at the time an unrivalled platform for new authors, so the groundwork was laid for a successful publishing industry today. As for new voices, he recommended a debut novel by Yemeni author Marvra Bin Shaaran. It’s currently only available in Arabic, but he hopes to see it translated for the global market. Its title in English would be, The Land of the Sun’s Blood—he explained Land of the Sun’s Blood is an old name for Yemen. It’s in the historical crime genre, set in Yemen in the 1960s, when Britain was the colonial power.

Palestinian Publisher Sa’d Q Abdul Hadi works for Al Nasher, in Ramallah, which, he said “is fifteen minutes from Jerusalem when the roads are open, and which serves Palestinians as a capital until we get Jerusalem back.” His company publishes novels, history, philosophy and anthropology. Also poetry, which he said is very important to Palestinians. He showed me a poetry collection, in Arabic, by Nima Hasan who lives in Gaza, and who documented the war through her poems. He translated the title as To Stop the Light Leaving Me. Some of Nima’s poems are available in English here: https://arablit.org/2025/08/05/i-bequeath-life-to-you-for-we-die-without-life-knowing-us/

One-woman powerhouse Ameera Binkadra is a poet and children’s author, a partner in Dubai-based, female-run Ghaf Publishing, and the president of the Emirates Publishers Association. She told me her dream is that the whole world should read Emirati literature. She wanted people to know about: “our culture, history, literature, philosophy and poetry. We are undiscovered. People know the Emirates as a place to visit, high towers, beaches, tourism. They look at us on Instagram, but do not look at our artists. They do not try to read our authors, or our poetry. Read us!”