Based on the unceded lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka/Mohawk Nation, we recognize a particular responsibility to Indigenous literatures across Turtle Island by highlighting and stocking their literary production. We centre Arab, feminist, Black, Indigenous, minority, and racialized voices, with space for liberation movements, including Black Power, Land Back, and others, as well as radical political thought. We aim for Diwan Canada to be a space grounded in care, human creativity, solidarity, and a rejection of hatred and discrimination.
Diwan Canada operates through Grotte des Merveilles / Cave of Wonders, a registered Quebec nonprofit.
Literature creates belonging.Rowayat
Our mission
To connect people through literature by making writing from across the Arab world, the wider Southwest Asia and North Africa region, their diasporas, and the Global South more accessible in Canada and the United States. Diwan Canada champions Arab, SWANA, feminist, Black, Indigenous, minority, and racialized writers, working with and alongside traditions of radical thought and liberation. Through thoughtful bookselling and exchange across languages, we celebrate human creativity and support the right of peoples to represent themselves on their own terms. Our work is grounded in solidarity and a firm rejection of hatred and discrimination.
Our vision
We envision Diwan Canada as creating a lasting literary home in Montreal, connected to readers across Canada and the United States, with a wide catalogue reflecting the many countries and communities of the Arab/SWANA region, its diasporas, and the Global South. Indigenous literatures and Black liberation writing will be integral to this home. We want people to encounter different histories and radical ideas, create together, and find community through books.
A book can exist and still be difficult to find. Diwan Canada grows from the wish to close that distance.
For more than a decade, Rowayat and Diwan Egypt have brought writers from Canada to Cairo for readings, book launches, and residencies. Diwan Canada grows from those relationships, and from the literary home Diwan has been for many of us in Egypt. Bringing that spirit to Montreal is a continuation of what we do at Rowayat: creating possibilities for writers, helping their words travel, and building community around their work.