Contributors

Osama Alomar
Contributor History

Biography
Syrian writer Osama Alomar is a prominent practitioner of the Arabic “very short story” (al-qisa al-qasira jiddan). Previous English translations of his work have appeared in NOON, and he has published three fiction collections in Arabic: Ayuha al-insaan (O Man), Rabtat Lisaan (Tongue Tie) , and Jami’ al-huquq ghayr mahfuza (All Rights Not Reserved) , as well as one volume of poetry, Qaala insaan al’ asir al hadith (Man Said the Modern World). The 2007 winner of Egypt’s Najlaa Muharam Short Story Contest, his work is regularly heard on the BBC Arabic Service and he is a regular contributor to various newspapers and journals in Syria and the Arab community, including Tishrin, an-Nur, Spot Light, al-Halil, Adab wa Naqd, and al-Ghad

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In Print

Vol. 82
Works & Days
Spring 2024
Bradford Morrow

Online

April 24, 2024
The July morning was alive with a sound in the air, strange communications, the acoustics of the big yard amplifying each rustle, each wave. Odd creatures glittering on the ground. Herds spread lavishly, a wilderness of transparent wings, bug eyes, a mosaic of glassy fragments. Glinting. They covered the grass, the sidewalk, covered the branches of the trees.
April 17, 2024
The sound reverberated in my sense of what was right and reliable in the world like drone weaponry, and what I wanted to ask was: what business have you left undone, and did you do a thing you so regretted that you can’t let go of it, was there a person you cut off, when sympathy would have been the better gesture, was there a person you trod on to get ahead in your sales job, speaking ill of them, so that they were forever harmed, did you say something awful about a friend in school, did you call a friend the worst of names in middle school, because it was a thing they said then, the boys did that, only to find, later on, that you loved that boy in a way . . . .
April 10, 2024
I do not like old water.

The water in the ocean is old

The lake is old

But maybe it’s not

Subject to the logic of time, of old and new.

Water.