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.

"The quote by Euripides, one of the great tragedians of classical Athens, expresses my feelings about why I joined the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition. Too often we turn away from atrocities like this. Either because we don't know how to react to carnage, pain, loss, and sorrow, or because a constant barrage of violence portrayed in the news has dulled our feelings"--Artist's statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.