On Tuesday, the Community Development Board adopted guidelines to provide clarity in the design process for developments or renovations within bounds. The Downtown Creative District now has design guidelines to better guide development within the corridor. The Book One program provides an opportunity for the Simon's Rock community to share a summer reading experience. Ibtisam Barakat will be addressing the incoming class, other members of the Simon's Rock community, and the visiting faculty members participating in the Early College Teaching Seminar. The author will speak during the week of their orientation program, the Writing & Thinking Workshop, to enrich their appreciation of the book and to give them the chance to ask questions of the author. The Book One program asks the members of the incoming class to read the first book of the Simonâ€™s Rock general education program â€“ and their college careers â€“ over the summer before their arrival on campus.

She currently lives in Columbia, Missouri. She has also worked with organizations such as the United Nations to facilitate a dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. Her writing, which has been included in anthologies, focuses on the use of writing as a route towards personal transformation and the healing of social injustices. in human development from the University of Missouri. Says childrenâ€™s author Jennifer Armstrong: â€œThis is a poignant, eloquent testament of a war-torn childhood, a story we in the United States have only glimpsed before now.â€īarakat holds an M.A. â€œIbtisam Barakat is a luminous writer and thinker. Â€œNothing is missing in this exquisite, tender account of a Palestinian childhood - love, attachment, struggle, fear, humor, resilience,â€ says writer Naomi Shihab Nye.

In writing this book, I finally could own a piece of my childhood.â€ When I lived in Ramallah, there was the sense that anything I loved or owned could be taken away from me in an instant. So I wrote Tasting the Sky as an exercise in freedom and as an expression of it. She says of her work: â€œI grew up in a world that ached for freedom but could not touch it.

Set during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Barakat captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. Tasting the Sky is a memoir of Barakat's experiences growing up in Ramallah. Her talk, which is a part of the Book One program at Simonâ€™s Rock, will be presented for incoming students in the McConnell Theater of the Daniel Arts Center, and it will be free and open to the public. 01:16PM / Thursday, JPrint Story | Email StoryIbtisam Barakat, author of Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood, will speak at Bard College at Simonâ€™s Rock on Sunday, August 19 at 7 p.m.

Tasting the sky a palestinian childhood