Safi Alsebai

Safi Alsebai is a writer and poet from Arkansas. His concerns lie in materialist inquiries into form, narrative, and image—drawing from traditions as disparate as modern political theory, medieval Islamic thought, contemporary critical theory, and the medical humanities. He currently lives in Philadelphia, where he is an internal medicine resident.

Recent Publications:

• "At the Checkpoint That Has Not Evaporated" and "Invertebrate Song" in Michigan City Review of Books
• "The Passion According to a Citizen of Geneva" in Journal of Medical Humanities
• "Short Commentary on Aristotle's Categories" and "The Dream Image" in Vers Lit Mag
• "Hayy Ibn Yaqzan" in DIALOGIST
• "Tarrare" in MIDCULT*
• "Hand Cemetery, Mountain View" and "Being Swanlike" in ballast
• "The Nineteenth Century" in Virgo Venus Press
• "This Fear Feels Anachronistic" in Discount Guillotine
• "Affidavid" in Amygdala Journal

Exhibitions, Presentations, Readings:

• Empathic Interruptions of the Clinical Wish at the Alden March Medical Ethics Conference
  (New York Academy of Medicine, New York, New York 2026)
  ( Poster )

• Reading at Art from the Heart
  (University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas 2026)

• Reading at the John P. Murphy Symposium in Medical Humanities
  (Cleveland Clinic & Case Western Reserve, Cleveland, Ohio 2026)

• Zines for Made in Color
  (Caldero Collective, Little Rock, Arkansas 2025)
• A Suite of Aniconic Maps & Matters for Anticolonial Maps for Lost Lovers
  (American Arts Center, Casablanca, Morocco 2025)
( Companion Catalogue )

Forthcoming:

• Poetry in Medicine and Meaning

• English translations of poetry by Lamia Abbas Emara

Press:

• Northeastern Ohio University (NEOMED) The Pulse
• Profile in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette
• Profile in Arkansas Medical Society's The Journal

Also:

• Global Center for Advanced Studies-Jēhan [ x ]
• Falsework, Smalltalk: Political Education, Aesthetic Archives, Recitations of a Future in Common
  (Common Tern Works/Folio Books, 2021) [ x ]
• Hic Rosa Collective / Falsework School / Materialist and Decolonial Studio (Brno, Czech Republic) [ x ]
• "An Image With A Lowing Sound": Medieval Islam, Modernity, and Politics as Seeing
  (Bard College at Simon's Rock, 2019) [ x ]
• Association for Medical Humanities Conference (Sofia, Bulgaria)

“I do not believe that things will turn out well,
but the idea that they might is of decisive importance.”
—Max Horkheimer