January 12th, 2026 — Conchitina Cruz’s (CRF 2025) first translation into Arabic has been published today, translated by Zeina G. Halabi (CRF 2025), a product of the two writers meeting during residency at Civitella. The two writers met this past summer, part of Group 3, and their conversations opened onto a sustained engagement that eventually led Zeina to translate Conchitina’s poem “Wife”.
Conchitina read the poem during the two’s shared presentation in August and since then they had a few conversations about the significance and linguistic challenges of translating it into Arabic. Speaking about the translation, published today by Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Art Journal, Zeina wrote,
“I wanted to acknowledge how directly this work is connected to the conditions Civitella makes possible. The original piece that Conchitina wrote turns to the figure of “the wife” to think through marriage as a structure of power and discipline, and to register how the intimate can be shaped by legal and religious imaginaries as much as by affect and memory. In bringing the text into Arabic, I found myself working through questions that were not only lexical but also political and tonal: how to hold onto the text’s deliberate shifts, how to carry its pressures without flattening them, and how to translate terms that resonate differently across cultural and institutional contexts.
I share the piece as a way of saying that the publication is not simply an individual milestone, but an outcome that emerged from the community and the forms of attention the residency cultivates. I wanted to thank you again for creating a space where such encounters are possible and ideas can continue to travel long after the residency ends.”
Conchitina added,
“Civitella was the space that allowed Zeina and me to cross paths, and for this translation to be the outcome of that convergence is so special to me. Thank you again, Zeina, for this, and thank you Civitella friends for the unforgettable kindness and generosity. I hope everyone is well.”
Collaboration is core to the Civitella experience and the Foundation is proud of the ways encounters in residence take shape and develop outside its walls.