This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

Christodoulos Makris is a poet. He was born in Nicosia, studied in Manchester, and has lived in London and Dublin. He is currently based in north county Dublin and works for the public library service. He is the author of the collection Spitting out the mother tongue (Wurm Press, 2011) and the chapbooks Round the clock (Wurm Press, 2009) and Muses walk (yes but is it poetry), 2012. He was also Dublin regional editor for Succour magazine.