Georgetown Qatar Closes “Qalam” Author Series with Powerful Reflections on Grief, Memory, and Love
Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) concluded its year-long Qalam literary series with a moving conversation featuring acclaimed author and academic Sonali Deraniyagala. The event marked a rare public appearance by Deraniyagala, whose searing memoir Wave has been hailed as one of the most powerful accounts of grief and survival in contemporary literature.
Deraniyagala was joined in conversation by GU-Q’s Writer-in-Residence, the award-winning novelist Kamila Shamsie. Together, they explored the devastating loss at the heart of Wave, the writing process that allowed Deraniyagala to confront memory, and the enduring presence of love in the aftermath of unimaginable tragedy.
Wave, which won the PEN Ackerley Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, begins in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami which engulfed Deraniyagala’s family while they were vacationing in Sri Lanka, causing the deaths of her parents, husband, and sons.
Speaking to a captivated audience, Deraniyagala reflected on how the book began not as a literary project but as a private exercise in making sense of the incomprehensible. “It was important for me to learn to hold my nerve with the remembering,” she shared. “What I learned–of course you are terrified of memory–but most of my memories were actually full of joy, so once you get through that pain, you are in a very good place.”
Born and raised in Sri Lanka, Deraniyagala holds a PhD in economics from the University of Oxford and currently teaches at both SOAS University of London and Columbia University. In recent years her work has turned to the economics of disasters. Her rare appearance at GU-Q offered students, faculty, and members of the public an intimate glimpse into the relationship between storytelling and moving past trauma.
Kamila Shamsie guided the conversation with empathy and insight, drawing connections between memory, survival, and how language can both shield and expose writers and their readers.
A Year of Fostering Love of Literature
In his introduction, Dean Safwan Masri, who established the Writer-in-Residence program in 2024, thanked Shamsie for her service as the program’s inaugural author. “Over the past year, Qalam has brought us together with some of the most celebrated voices in literature from the Global South,” he said, adding: “It has been a privilege to share these evenings of literature and dialogue with you.”
For Shamsie, the final event was a chance to reflect on a year spent at GU-Q sharing her love of literature and insight on the creative process. “I’ve loved running the Qalam series,” she said, recalling the five award-winning authors she hosted at GU-Q. “There is shared understanding between the writers from the Global South and the Doha audience, but there is also newness and surprise for many in the audience, particularly the students, who have often read novelists but seldom met them.”
But it was not just the GU-Q community that benefited from Shamsie’s conversations with the extraordinary series of writers. “It’s been wonderful to see how many people from the wider Doha community turn up for the events, and then stay to have books signed by the authors,” she said, adding: “One moment that summed up the spirit of Qalam occurred when Ahdaf Soueif read—for the first time—from the novel she’s been working on for years. The audience’s rapturous applause was largely for the brilliance of the writing, but it also showed how much they appreciated and understood Ahdaf’s generosity and the trust she’d placed in all of us by making public what had for so long been private.”
As GU-Q celebrates its 20th anniversary in Qatar, the evening was a poignant reminder of literature’s power to bear witness and to connect.
Past Qalam Series Events