Laila Lalami

After four and a half years of writing, several months of research, a brief stay at a writer’s colony, and countless hours of travel, I am done with my novel. I’m elated and exhausted; I’m happy to be finished, and sad to have to let go; but, mostly, I’m just relieved. I was taking so long with this book that I was embarrassed whenever someone asked me about it. Often, I’d mention whatever new short story or essay or book review I was writing, just to avoid having to talk about “The Novel.”

But now it’s done, done, done. It’s called Secret Son. And it will be published in April 2009, so please look for it then. Next week I will be launching a brand-new website, with some information about the book, the tour, and more.

feel suddenly relieved that UCR is on the quarter system. While my friends in other schools are making last-minute changes to their syllabi, I just started working on mine. I’m teaching two courses: a survey in contemporary fiction and a non-fiction workshop. Should be fun.

My trip back from Asheville was as hellish as my trip to: A major flight delay, rude gate agents, bad food, airport “routine” checks, and an overnight stay in an airport hotel. But not even that dreadful flight experience could take away from what was a very invigorating and thought-provoking residency at Warren Wilson. I co-taught three workshops: one with Stacey D’Erasmo, one with Charlie Baxter, and one with Mac McIlvoy. I gave a reading from my new book (this was only the second time that I read material from this new novel, so it was very helpful for me to hear it out loud.) And I gave a craft class, focusing on language use in situations where there are discrepancies between the language of the characters and the language of the text. I enjoyed the lectures given by the other instructors and learned a lot from them. And the students were a joy–talented, hard-working, motivated. So it was a great experience, though I’m happy to be back.

Here are some photos from Warren Wilson. This is the bridge I take every day to go to the workshop or library:

The campus is pretty green:

There’s a somewhat threatening wood sculpture near the dorms:

And plenty of insects everywhere:

My trip to Asheville took longer than I expected. After boarding the plane in Los Angeles, after all the passengers had their seat belts on, after babies had been quieted and put to sleep, the pilot told us that the plane had been loaded with the wrong cargo, which had to be unloaded before we could push back from the gate.

The overhead lights on the aircraft didn’t work, and after a while I gave up trying to read the novel I had brought with me.

I missed my connection in Atlanta, and had to spend the night in a Holiday Inn near the airport. The airline refused to pay for the hotel, under the pretext that the flight delay was the fault of the FAA, not theirs. Annoyingly, they held my luggage overnight, giving me instead a ridiculous zipper bag that contained a white T-shirt in a too-large size, and a few basic toiletries.

I rode the shuttle van to the hotel with a man who was on his way to Moscow (for a vacation, he said, but something about his demeanor screamed ’sex tourist’); three flight attendants; two pilots; one couple from Arizona; and five soldiers on leave from Iraq, one of whom stood up to give me his seat.

While waiting to register at the hotel, I had to fend off the attentions of the tourist headed to Moscow (making me think that, perhaps, I had been right in my estimation.)

The next day, my flight to Asheville was one hour late, and when I arrived in North Carolina, it took 40 minutes for the luggage to be brought out. But at last, at last, I am here.

I’ve had no time to write anything for the last couple of days. I’ll try to post something from Asheville.

In about ten days, I’ll be going to Asheville, North Carolina to teach in Warren Wilson’s MFA program. I know nothing about Asheville, but apparently F. Scott Fitzgerald once lived there (!), its minor league baseball team is called the “Asheville Tourists” (!!), and the average high temperature in July is 84 degrees (!!!).

I’ve been asked to do a signing at BEA, for an anthology to which I contributed a story. Here are the details:

May 31, 2008
2:00 PM
A Stranger Among Us signing
With Stacy Bierlein, Aimee Luu, and Laila Lalami
University of Illinois Press Booth
Book Expo America
LA Convention Center
Los Angeles, California

If you are in Los Angeles this weekend, please stop by to say hello.

I was interviewed by Gabriela Jauregui for KCET’s ArtsBlock. For the curious, here’s the podcast.

The Moroccan Cultural Studies Center in Fes has published an English-language edition of Hope. My book has been used in college courses in Morocco for a while, but this edition (priced at 50 Dirhams) will make it easier for college students to get their hands on it. (Previously, they had to order it on Amazon or–gasp!–photocopy it.) The cover art is by Mohamed Mrabet. I’m thrilled!