Laila Lalami

I am about three weeks away from the end of my Fulbright Fellowship in Morocco, and I’ve already received several emails from friends asking me, “What next?” I’m happy to report that I’ll be joining the Creative Writing department at the University of California, Riverside. I was hired at the same time as Reza Aslan, and we’ll both start in the fall. I’m very pleased about this for several reasons: UCR has the most diverse campus in the UC system. The creative writing department itself is particularly strong. And it offers the opportunity for me to try something new in class. I am going to miss Portland (particularly Powell’s, the greatest bookstore on earth!) but it feels right to be back in the Los Angeles area, where I’ve lived for more than 11 years, and where I have so many friends and family.

(art credit: Kerne Erickson)

Percival Everett has a new novel out next month called The Water Cure, described by publisher Graywolf Press as the “chilling confession of a victim turned villain.” Here’s what they say about it:

Ishmael Kidder is a successful romance novelist. His agent is coming to visit her usually productive client. But Kidder’s eleven-year-old daughter has been brutally murdered, and it stands to reason that he must take revenge by any means necessary. The punishment is carried out without guilt, and with the usual equipment—duct tape, rope, and super glue. But how will he explain the noises in the basement to his agent? How does he know he has the right man?

Everett read an excerpt from The Water Cure at last year’s Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, and I remember it vividly; it was a scene in which the father finds out that his daughter is missing, and goes to his ex-wife’s house to wait for the police. Heartbreaking, terrifying, and yet at the same time laced with the usual Everett humor.

(Via TEV)

Last week, journalist Mustapha Hormatallah and editor in chief Abderrahim Ariri, both of Al Watan Al An newspaper, were held in police custody for 96 hours, three days after the publication of a July 14 cover story on “Secret reports behind the state of alert in Morocco.” The article reproduced classified information, and a police raid on the paper’s offices allegedly turned up classified documents.

In the course of investigative work, journalists the world over try to get access to classified information, so the idea that obtaining these documents is a crime in itself is a little bizarre. An independent court system might have helped Ariri and Hormatallah regain their freedom, but don’t hold your breath. The case is likely to be influenced by politics.

Yesterday, a Casablanca court decided to charge but release Ariri on bail, while Hormatallah was taken to Okacha prison. The first hearing is scheduled for tomorrow; they risk prison terms of one to five years. The journalists have received support from their colleagues and from human rights organizations across the board. You can send the paper a note of support here.

Last year, my story “The Fanatic” was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing, along with pieces by Sefi Atta, Darrel Bristow-Bovey, Muthoni Garland, and Mary Watson. The finalists’ work appears in a new anthology, titled Jungfrau and Other Short Stories, and it can be ordered from Amazon.co.uk. I believe the book also contains selected stories by writers who have attended the annual Caine Prize workshop, held in Kenya in mid-spring. (There’s a brief mention of this in Boyd Tonkin’s column in the Independent.)

I often get asked to name literary influences and favorite authors, and I’ve never quite figured out how to answer either question. Everything I read, experience, or witness influences my writing in some way, so it’s difficult to say something neat and predictable, like “My writing owes a debt to X literary movement.” And naming favorite authors is equally difficult because so few writers publish consistently significant books over the years.

One author whose books I often include in my ‘favorites’ list is J.M. Coetzee. I admire the breadth of his work (novels, criticism, translation), and it’s something I aspire to myself. I love his use of language (I don’t know if it’s because he was trained as a linguist (as was I) that I am so sensitive to his choices.) I like that he never forgets that the story should always come first. Each book of his is a reason to celebrate, as far as I’m concerned.

Recently, the New York Review of Books published an excerpt from Coetzee’s new book, Diary of a Bad Year (which will be released in December 2007, according to Amazon). The excerpt is, quite simply, incredible. I can’t wait to get my hands on the novel.

I’ve been enjoying Paper Cuts, the book blog started by the NYT’s Dwight Garner. It’s varied, it’s well written, and it’s got a point of view. Now it looks like the Chicago Tribune has also joined the blogging world through Trib Books. Nice to see newspapers’ book sections trying to reach readers via this medium instead of sitting back and accusing blogs of stealing their readership/lowering standards/putting them out of business/etc.

I’m finally back home, and have access once again to my laptop and (semi-reliable) Internet connection. Over the last four weeks, Alex and I went to Ifrane, Azrou, Meknes, Fez, Tetuan, Ceuta, Tangier, and villages along the Mediterranean coast. We read books, we saw movies, we took friends to see sights, we bargained over souvenirs (it was generally agreed that I was worse at bargaining than even tourists), we swam in the sea.

And everywhere we went, I was the party pooper. “That beach sounds fantastic,” I’d sigh, “but, really, I should go back to the apartment and edit Chapter 12.” Or “I’ll catch up with you in the medina later, I’ll just rewrite this one scene I have in mind first.” Or “Can we get back on the early side? I have some work to finish?” It went like this for our entire vacation, and although I felt terrible for Alex and our friends, at least I did manage to finish another draft of my novel. Now my plan is to do some fine-tuning before my return to the U.S. in mid-August.

Almost done with all the travel! We were up north for a few days. Here’s a picture from the very cool American Legation museum in Tangier:

And a view from the city walls in Ceuta. We didn’t cross the border until about 12, so by the time we got downtown, nearly everything was closed for siesta.

I am still running around, packing and unpacking travel bags. I don’t have any photos of the Fez conference, but here’s a shot of Bab Boujeloud:

The famous tanneries:

Around the corner from the historic Ibn Danan synagogue: