A previously unpublished account of Kahlil Gibran’s meeting with the Russian-trained Orthodox priest John Shamieh, who was often judged as the “Mad Monk” - recorded by their mutual friend Joseph Nahas in his 1975 memoir, A Depression Miracle. By Francesco Medici ...
In a privately printed memoir of 1975, the Lebanese emigrant Joseph Nahas recalled a lunch shared with Kahlil Gibran at Hitchcock’s Beanery, across the street from New York’s City Hall, and the blunt verdict the poet delivered on the marble statue standing outside it. By Francesco Medici ...
Mikhail Naimy is remembered as Gibran's closest friend and the secretary of Arrabitah — but years before he reached New York, a Lebanese boy from Baskinta was reading Puškin and Dostoevskij at a Tsarist seminary in Poltava, and writing poetry in Russian. ...
A decade before Zaynab was hailed as the "first" Arabic novel, a Lebanese-Louisianan named Afifa Karam was already publishing novels, editing newspapers, and fighting for the rights of Syrian women in New York's Mahjar press — and history has almost entirely forgotten her. ...
A newly surfaced Gibran watercolour, hidden for over a century inside a presentation copy of Twenty Drawings, sheds light on the Parisian diplomat and writer who helped to bring Gibran's first English book to Alfred Knopf. ...
In 1905 the young Kahlil Gibran published his very first book — a slim hymn in prose to the art of music. Francesco Medici traces the melodies that ran through Gibran’s life, from the ‘Atābā of Bišarrī to the symphonies of Boston, and from a love declared in red ink to the funeral marches that carried him home. ...
A Damascus-born lawyer, poet, and tireless advocate for Syrian immigrants in America — Jamil B. Holway stood at the margins of the Mahjar literary world, known to everyone, claimed by no one, and now al...
A Syrian poet, publisher, and nationalist who helped forge Arab-American literary identity — and who died four days before his only book of poems reached print.
A new monument in Lower Manhattan has ignited a fierce debate about identity, history, and who has the right to name the dead. Glen Kalem-Habib traces the paradox at the heart of the controversy - and offers an answer no plaque can contain. By Glen Kalem-Habib · May 2026 ...
In the spring of 1946, a poet named Barbara Young signed her name in a guest book at a summer house in the Adirondack wilderness. It is one small token of a friendship that ran deep — one that produced years of correspondence, shared lunches, and the gifting of objects from Gibran’s own personal collection. This is the story of Barbara Young, Kahlil Gibran’s devoted secretary and biographer, and of Madeleine McAlpin Vanderpool — the woman whose friendship with Young would ultimately lead to the most significant donation of Gibran-related material ever made to our collection. ...
Al-Qalam: A Monument to the Poets and Community of Little Syria Comes to Light — Kahlil Gibran Collective Inc.
• ❧ KGC ❧ • Kahlil Gibran Collective · Articles Figs, Halvah and the Face of the Prophet A Testimony from the Past on Gibran and Naimy By Francesco Medici Kahlil Gibran Collective · 2026 · kahlilgibran.com ...
• ❧ KGC ❧ • KAHLIL GIBRAN COLLECTIVE Still Speaking The Prophet at 117 Languages — and Still Growing New translations confirm Kahlil Gibran's masterpiece as one of the most translatedsingle-author works in the history of the written word By Glen Kalem-Habib Contributing Writer Francesco Medici Kahlil Gibran Collective · April 2026 · kahlilgibran.com ...
He shared Gibran’s Paris years, sketched him at the Café du Dôme, and outlived him by three decades — sculpting the monuments of a country that barely had an art school. Francesco Medici on Yusuf Huwayyik. By Francesco Medici ...
In April 1923, at a Brooklyn hotel, the Lebanese community of New York marked twenty-five years of its daily newspaper. Gibran rose to speak — not about the paper, but about what a newspaper is for. By Glen Kalem-Habib and Francesco Medici ...
Joseph Nahas met Gibran in a newspaper office in Little Syria and kept what he saw. Among his recollections: the courtship conducted entirely by letter with a writer in Cairo whom Gibran never met. By Francesco Medici · as told and recorded by Joseph Nahas ...
She was eighteen when she translated The Prophet into French — the first person to do so in any language. Gibran had already illustrated her own book of poems, and drawn her portrait. By Philippe Maryssael ...
A table, a room dressed for the occasion, a meal drawn from Gibran’s own world — and conversation with the people who study him. Lekme’ wou Hekme is looking for cities to visit. By The Kahlil Gibran Collective ...
They called him the Complaining Poet. When Rasheed Ayoub published his second collection in New York in 1928, Gibran designed the frontispiece, decorated the pages, and painted something new for it. By Francesco Medici ...
The monuments to Gibran around the world honour the poet. A stele unveiled in the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento honours something else — what he did during the famine of 1916. By Glen Kalem-Habib ...
