The UAE Writers and Authors Union

Abstract

This article examines the UAE Writers and Authors Union as a cultural and publishing institution that has played a significant role in supporting literary activity in the United Arab Emirates. The text outlines the Union’s establishment and principal objectives, most notably raising the cultural and artistic level of writers and authors, publishing members’ works in books and periodicals, and encouraging the translation of distinguished works into world languages. In this sense, the article presents the Union as an institutional framework that organized local literary production and transformed it into a structured process of publication and cultural circulation.

The article further explains how the Union supported Emirati creativity in practical terms through the First Book Committee, the publication of poetry and short story collections, and the launch of periodicals such as Shu’un Adabiyya and Dirasat. It also highlights the Union’s ability to sustain publishing activity despite financial and technical challenges associated with book production. The text includes quantitative data on the Union’s publishing output across poetry, fiction, research papers, seminars, studies, and journal issues, demonstrating the scale of its contribution to literary and cultural life. It also refers to exhibitions organized to introduce the Union’s publications and strengthen the connection between readers and knowledge-producing institutions. Overall, the article offers a documented portrait of an Emirati cultural institution that contributed to building the infrastructure of local literary publishing and consolidating the presence of Emirati writing within the broader cultural sphere.