This spring, after a few months, 18 Arab writers will receive the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity “first edition,” amid an Emirati-Arab celebration of these young creativity from various Arab countries in stories, novels and poetry. As is known, this warm honor is not limited to the distribution of well-deserved awards, but there are also poetry readings and mutual meetings between Arab writers, Emirati writers, and Arab writers residing in the country.
The Department of Culture in Sharjah implicitly established an Arab publishing department that included hundreds of titles and even thousands of publications in fiction, fiction, and poetry, in theater, criticism, art, and translation. I hope to be accurate if I say that the largest share of these titles and publications went to the winning works in Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity “First Edition”.
Here, I stop at the symbolic and moral dimension related to the “first edition,” which is a publication of great cultural and moral importance for the young Arab writer who relies on this first book between himself and himself, as he places himself as a writer on the first steps of the path of writing, which is always the most beautiful path for poetry, storyteller, or novelist. And let’s call it, the path of hope.
The Sharjah Department of Culture fulfills this first hope for the young Arab writer in terms of publication, distribution and honor.
The young Arab writer was walking on thorns at the beginning of his life to reach a respectable publisher who would sponsor the printing of his first collection of poetry or stories. This writer would be lucky if he found a publisher who would not take money from him to print his book.
The publisher naturally asks: How can I take the risk of publishing a book by a novice or promising poet? Despite my personal reservations about these two descriptions, this fact exists and is known to many Arab publishers.
In this case, the Department of Culture comes and welcomes the first edition in particular. It adopts, supports, and honors it, and it is a primarily honoring phenomenon that is essentially an initial cultural vision in the Sharjah literary, publishing, and aesthetic project.
The first edition is a creative cultural birth, and the department is sponsoring this birth, to take the young Arab writer’s hand to the future of his pen, to where he achieves his writerly self.
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