Interview with Nadine Kaadan for Macfest

Last month, I interviewed children's author and illustrator Nadine Kaadan for an online event that was part of the annual Macfest international festival. She was born in Paris, raised in Syria but left during the conflict there and moved to London, where she still resides. It was fascinating to hear how that life experience informs her work, and a whole lot besides...

You can now see the whole thing on YouTube here:

The books cited are:

• Tomorrow, written and illustrated by Nadine Kaadan (2012)
• The Jasmine Sneeze, written and illustrated by Nadine Kaadan (2016)
• The Kind Activity Book, by Alex Scheffler, Nadine Kaadan and Renia Metallinou (2022)
• The Power of Welcome: Real-Life Refugee and Migrant Journeys, by Marie Bamyani, Ada Jusic, Nadine Kaadan, Ramzee and Sonya Zhurenko, illustrated by Ada Jusic (2023)

I also mentioned what I should have called the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2026, and there is also a Children's Writers' and Artists' Yearbook 2026. I am so old, I still think of them as annual handbooks.

You may also be intereted in a previous post, my family the refugees. And previously for Macfest I've interviewed Shirin Shamsi, Sefi Atta, Fatima Manji and Osman Yousefzada.