Inmates’ experience launched as e-Book

Imran Mojib, Special Correspondent

Emirates Literature Foundation, Dubai, launched ‘Tomorrow I will Fly’ and ‘The Tolerance Books’ series as ebooks. ‘Tomorrow I Will Fly’ is the ground-breaking book featuring a collection of essays and stories written entirely by the inmates of Dubai’s penal and correctional institutions, and ‘The series of Tolerance’ books by young Emirati authors, were published earlier this year.

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‘Tomorrow, I Will Fly’ was launched at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature earlier this year, the culmination of the year-long project ‘From the Inside Out’ with authors Clare Mackintosh and Annabel Kantaria.

The project, the first of its kind in the Arab World, stems from a long-term collaboration with the Emirates Literature Foundation, supported by Dubai Police and Dubai Central Jail, which organises visits from Dubai-based and international authors to talk to inmates about books and the process of writing.

 'Tomorrow,I will Fly.'

Following a week of intense creative writing workshops with a group of male and female inmates led by the two authors, the resulting collection of essays and personal reflections were collated in the anthology, enabling the prisoners to find their voices and tell their stories. Copies of the book were made available to other prisons in the UAE, the Arab World and further afield, including prisons in the UK.

‘The Tolerance Books’ are a result of a joint project between the Emirates Literature Foundation and the Ministry of Tolerance to encourage talented young Emirati authors and illustrators. The results were published in a series of thirty beautiful children’s books on the theme of tolerance in both Arabic and English at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in 2020.

The writers and their illustrators interpreted the theme of tolerance in a myriad of ways; from drawing on folklore in the form of djinn to the rise of the modern country that is the UAE; and to the effects of materialism on friendships. The books were distributed to libraries, schools and cultural centres across the UAE and internationally as part of a new Foundation initiative. The ebooks can be downloaded from the Publishing section on the Emirates Literature Foundation website. Also featured in this section is ‘For the Love of Words,’ which commemorates the 10th anniversary of The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.