Amira Hanafi

Experimental Writer

[writerartistamira]

The Science of a Good Lie (2026)

Back in 2017, I took a book off the “Africa” shelf in the library of the Swiss artist Andreas Züst, where I was doing an artist residency for a couple of weeks. The encounter set off years of reading, re-reading, and research, and the making of this work of electronic literature: The Science of a Good Lie.

At the website you can find a republication of LoBagola’s memoir, which was first published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1930 and entered the public domain in 2026, which means it’s free of copyright and legally permitted to circulate through the universe. Besides the book in pdf and epub formats, the website contains texts that remix language cut from the book, clips of pages that contain passages about deception and falsehood, and a library of fragmented texts that I collected in my research, most of which took place from my then-home in Cairo, Egypt and during a residency at Nida Art Colony in Lithuania. In both locations, I did not have access to a physical library or login privileges to a scholary digital repository.

My work reflects on the labor required of researchers who are located outside of authorized research environments, and learns a strategy from LoBagola’s work to subvert systems that seek the authenticity of their research subjects. A Black man born in Baltimore in 1877, LoBagola identified as a native African, appeared on the school lecture circuit, performed as an entertainer, and acted as a cultural informant to scholars in the nascent field of ethnography in the United States. In interaction with his memoir, I imagine liberation through kinship and entanglement.

The website is published at https://thescienceofagoodlie.net.

[writerartistamira]

https://thescienceofagoodlie.net

[writerartistamira]

[writerartistamira]

Acknowledgements

This work was initiated through an encounter with a book in the Bibliothek Andreas Züst, where I was an artist in residence in April 2017. Thank you to Mara Züst for her support. I accomplished a great deal of research for the project during a months-long residency at Nida Art Colony of Vilnius Academy of Arts in 2018, supported by MASS Alexandria within the framework of 4Cs From Conflict to Conviviality Through Creativity and Culture. Thanks in particular to Wael Shawky, Luísa Santos, and Rasa Antanavičiūtė. During my residency at Nida, I launched an opening chapter of the project in the form of an exhibition at Sodų 4 project space in Vilnius, Lithuania, with the support of curator Indrė Liškauskaitė. Soon after, Karolina Rybačiauskaitė published a conversation with me on the platform Echo Gone Wrong, a document that provides a good deal of context for the work. An early version of the web work was exhibited as part of Data Ficiton: Cairotronica's 3rd edition in 2021.  Sound for this work was recorded in 2026 at Penn Museum (the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology), where LoBagola appeared as a living exhibition in 1911.

[writerartistamira]

[writerartistamira]

[writerartistamira]

17 June 2026

I led a Make New Language workshop at Breaking the Code: Hacktivating Non-Normative Algorithms conference at FLUP Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Porto.

The workshop invited conference participants to make new language together using an app I'm developing that incorporates collaborative text editors that have been intentionally altered to make room for overlap, friction, and coexistence between languages. We spoke about translanguaging, a perspective that sees named languages as colonial inventions which must be disinvented in order to allow people to access all of their linguistic resources, and used the software to try and disrupt existing hierarchies of language.

Thank you to the conference organizers, in particular Diogo Marques, for including me on the Scientific Committee, inviting me to moderate a panel, and making space at the conference for a freeform share of an emergent work of electronic literature.

[writerartistamira]

21 February 2026

I spoke about A Dictionary of the Revolution, my project to document people's political speech after the 2011 uprising in Egypt, at the College Art Association conference in Chicago (February 18-21, 2026). I was part of a panel called The Agency of Artists Through and Beyond Books along with Renee Yu Jin and April Sheridan, organized by Kelly Chorpening and Matthew Conboy.

[writerartistamira]

January 2026

Jeneen Naji reviewed A Dictionary of the Revolution for an issue of Reviews in Digital Humanities focused on “Electronic Literatures and their Worlds” and edited by Samya Brata Roy, Reham Hosny, and Leah Henrickson.

From the review:

"This is an important work, as it provides a bottom-up approach to a notable sociopolitical happening in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region in 2011 ... The translation and documentation of the work are rigorous. The interface is intuitive, and the project is easy to navigate and aesthetically pleasing. It makes good use of white space, clean lines, and a simplified design that foregrounds the content of the work. The design belies a complex backend and encyclopedic range of content ... A Dictionary of the Revolution is a unique and notable digital work."

[writerartistamira]

29 November 2025

I read an excerpt from the manuscript I'm working on now for the Global Reading for Freedom of Expression and in Solidarity with Palestine organized by Pamenar Press. I was invited to read as part of the Egypt segment by Antony Fangary.

Watch video of the reading on YouTube.

[writerartistamira]

16 October 2025

My poem 'Edges' was published in Mizna 26.1 Kindred, in the good company of contributions from Andrea Abi-Karam, Nancy Agabian, Sara Deniz Akant, Essam M. Al-Jassim, Basman Aldirawi, Amogha, Lara Atallah, Summer Awad, Farah Barqawi, Saddiq Dzukogi, Atef Ebeid, Antony Baher Fangary, Daniel Blanga Gubbay, Malvika Jolly, Mohja Kahf, Nour Kamel, Elina Katrin, Kristin Lueke, CP Nwankwo, Chiwenite Onyekwelu, Maru Pabón, Andrew Riad, jess rizkallah, Jna Shelomith, and Emmanuel Umeji.

Read my contribution (pdf)

[writerartistamira]

25 August 2025

I started my first semester as Assistant Professor of Digital Publishing & Writing in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, PA. I'm excited to join the faculty at this small liberal arts college, home to a robust creative writing program and a major in publishing & editing in which I'll teach many of my courses. As a place of learning that is committed to experiential education, there's plenty of space at SU for me to continue innovating my teaching, making it more accessible, experimental, and relevant for both my students and me.

[writerartistamira]

4 - 9 May 2025

I returned for a second time to the Sundress Academy for the Arts at Firefly Farms in Knoxville, Tennessee for an intense week of mostly offline reading and writing in the Writers Coop, a tiny cabin overlooking a ravine. This residency has a truly special energy powered by the voluntary labor of loving literary folks around the country. I am sure I will stay connected to this community for years to come.

[writerartistamira]

28 April 2025

I'm pleased to share my article, "Language for the Fluid, Multiple, Unified Self," which was just published in Materialities of Literature Vol. 11 No. 1 (2024), Interweaving voices: creating and sharing electronic literature, edited by Daniela Côrtes Maduro and Paulo Silva Pereira.

The article expands on my keynote address delivered online at the 2023 Electronic Literature Organization Conference, Overcoming Divides: Electronic Literature and Social Change hosted by the Universidade de Coimbra and held at different venues in Coimbra, Portugal and online from 12 to 15 July 2023. The article covers how I am using my current artistic practice to look for nonviolent language. It might be more accurate to say “create” nonviolent language, because I think it’s a practice. I’m trying to create situations in which people have access to use language in new ways, to create their own meanings, and to have others hear them. In this article, I share some of what I’m working on, as well as past projects. I give some background to my artistic research, suggest a few characteristics that I imagine for nonviolent language, and present different projects that I’m using to investigate these characteristics.

You can download a copy of the paper here.

[writerartistamira]

7 April - 2 May 2025

During a month at Loghaven, a residency in Knoxville, Tennessee with extraordinary facilities and support, I was able to push far forward with my work on an experimental memoir about Cairo in 2011 and how the events of that year have come to live in my body, where they defy any linear sense of time. I'm working with an archive of fragments I've written, along with printed material, interviews, articles and other items I've collected to multiply perspective and portray a nonlinear and fluid sense of time in the book.

I also found time to work on an essay on the potent powers and terrors of paper for a forthcoming anthology. I hope to share more on that soon.

[writerartistamira]

20 January - 13 February 2025

I spent a good part of the winter at Monson Arts deep in the snowy woods of Maine, with a group of incredible creative folks. I think a lot of us were thinking about how our writing and art can be meaningful in the current context of so much violence and devastation. We talked a lot about what we were making and thinking and feeling, but I also felt like we made a silent pact to avoid direct or prolonged conversations about "the news." Sometimes we just hung out. We were together. I left feeling rested, cared for and re-energized. I learned how nourishing it can be to get vulnerable with a group of strangers. Well, they're not strangers anymore.

Pictured, from left to right: Tanya Rey, me, Keziah Weir, Adele Brown (front row), Esmé Deprez with Kit, Karin Campbell, Kailey Coppens, Indiana Hoover, Abby Wang (standing)

[writerartistamira]

1 - 14 September 2024

I'm excited to have received a Residency Fellowship that allows me to spend two weeks at the Sundress Academy for the Arts at Firefly Farms in Knoxville, Tennessee. The quiet—punctured occasionally by the bleating of sheep—is supporting my work on a longterm book project, as is shared space and conversation with fellow residents Jazmin Witherspoon and Stella Lei.