Literatures of Annihilation, Exile and Resistance, founded by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi in 2020, is a research collective, conversation series, and digital archive dedicated to contemporary literature shaped by exile, transnational migration, and human rights violations. The series brings Southwest and Southeast Asian and North African writers and artists into sustained dialogue with American writers and scholars to imagine new modes of literary production across borders and cultivate intersectional solidarities. Developed as a global public humanities project in partnership with institutes and initiatives both within and beyond the University of Notre Dame, it has hosted writers such as Elias Khoury, Isabella Hammad, Karan Mahajan, Aatish Taseer, Nadia Owusu, Sinan Antoon, Brandon Hobson, Noor Naga, Kaveh Akbar, Solmaz Sharif, Roger Reeves, Moustafa Bayoumi, Hannah Lillith Assadi, Aria Aber, Jan Jamil Kochai, and Deborah Taffa among others.In 2022, Oloomi was featured as part of the Women Lead series at the University of Notre Dame where she discussed the intersections between her own writing practice and Lit of Exile programming.

“Writing about exile is a constant reminder both of the loneliness of exile and its tremendous transformative potential. There are a lot of blind spots when it comes to understanding the true costs of displacement, but at Notre Dame, there’s also goodwill to want to understand the lived experiences of others.”

—Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi

Watch videos from the LitERATURES of Exile Archive