Category: personal
And now, some news before I go on summer hiatus!
It was a pleasure to guest-edit the spring issue of the literary magazine Ploughshares, with poems by Mosab Abu Toha, Khaled Mattawa, January Gill O’Neil, Rob Shapiro, Connor Watkins-Xu; excerpts from forthcoming novels by Jane Smiley and Nina McConigley; short fiction from Emily Doyle, Francisco Goldman, Jamila Minnicks, and Tommy Orange; and essays by Hannah Roberts, Tochi Onyebuchi, and Farah Abdessamad, among many others. You can buy a copy of the magazine from the Ploughshares website, or find it in your local library or independent bookstore.
Late last spring, I sat down with Dylan Cuellar and Kassia Osset, hosts of the Unburied Books podcast, to discuss Tayeb Salih’s classic novel Season of Migration to the North, translated from the Arabic by Denys Johnson-Davies. It’s one of those books that gets pressed into new hands by devoted fans like me, and I never tire of talking about it. (Or writing about it! I wrote the introduction for the NYRB Classics edition of the book.) If you like stories of departures and returns, strong narrators, and doomed love affairs, you will love this one.
I also had the great honor to serve on the jury for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize, along with Jen Sookfong Lee, Claire Messud, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, and Eden Robinson. This (newish) prize aims to radically transform the economic circumstances of women and nonbinary writers by awarding a significant amount of money to the winner ($150,000) and a fairly substantial amount to the finalists as well. The jury spent about twelve months reading and discussing hundreds of entries before deciding on the finalists: Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, Daughter by Claudia Dey, Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman-Foote, Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan, and A History of Burning by Janika Oza. The winner, announced at a ceremony in Toronto in May was Brotherless Night by V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthan, a searing novel set during the early years of Sri Lanka’s civil war.
I’m delighted to share that my most recent novel, The Other Americans, is the March selection of the California Book Club. For the occasion, I wrote an essay on belonging and unbelonging for Alta Magazine. In the same issue is a review and recommendation from the magazine’s books editor, David L. Ulin. The book club discussion will take place online, so please join me in conversation with John Freeman on March 21. Register here.
In other news, I contributed to my friend Jami Attenberg’s anthology, 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. The piece is about how writing was my buoy through an ocean of grief after the death of my father; I honestly don’t think I would’ve made it through if I hadn’t been writing. The list of contributors is staggeringly good, with all kinds of advice on how to stay creative. Take a look!
This is a picture of me in my light-filled office at the Radcliffe Institute, where I’ve been working on my new novel these last few months. The weather has started to cool, and we’ve already had a sprinkling of snow, so I’m going to take advantage of the winter break to return to the California desert for a few weeks. But I wanted to post a few updates here before I forget.
I reviewed two books that were recently published in English translation: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s The Most Secret Memory of Men for The Washington Post and Chantal Montellier’s graphic novel Social Fiction for The Nation. I miss writing about books, and I hope to be able to do more of it in the new year.
It was a delight to hear that Time magazine selected The Other Americans as one of its 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time, alongside works by masters of the genre (Patricia Highsmith! Raymond Chandler! Chester Himes!) and contemporary authors, many of them dear friends.
This fall, I was in conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen for the second of his Norton lectures at Harvard, “On Speaking as an Other.” If you’re interested, you can watch the lecture and convo in full here. I also served as a table host for the Words Without Borders annual gala. WWB is a wonderful organization that promotes global literature, and is often the first to publish international writers in the United States. There was a nice write-up about the event in the New York Times.
As always, you can keep up with my work through Instagram and BlueSky (and Twitter, for however long it lasts). You can also check out my events page for public readings and talks.
Friends, I’m delighted to share the news that I’ve been awarded a yearlong fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. I’ll be using the time and space to work on my new novel, The Dream Hotel, which follows a museum archivist who gets detained after an algorithm accuses her of a crime. (That’s a picture of me in the California desert, wondering if I can handle an east coast winter!)
Speaking of California, the New York Times Magazine devoted a special issue to the future of the state, looking at everything from housing to the YIMBY movement. I contributed the opening essay, which uses the history of California’s highways and byways to explore how the past shapes the future. (The stunning illustration is by Benjamin Marra.) Take a look, let me know what you think!
In August, Bloomsbury UK is releasing a new edition of The Moor’s Account, with this gorgeous cover art by Carmen R. Balit. It really is thrilling to see this novel continue to find new readers, and I’m so grateful to all the booksellers, librarians, teachers, and festival curators who’ve embraced it and continue to share it with people. I spoke to NPR affiliate KUNM about it just recently. Have a listen if you’re curious.
In other news, if you find yourself in Berlin this summer, please come see me at the African Book Festival, which takes place August 25-27 and will feature Leila Aboulela, Véronique Tadjo, and your humble servant, among others.
On a less celebratory note, I found out recently that my novel The Other Americans was banned by a school district in Ohio because it included “a sexual intimacy scene.” As you know, book bans are on the rise across the United States. (Often it takes a single complaint by a parent for a book to be removed from a school library or a course reading list!) If you’re in one of these districts, please connect to Books Unbanned, an initiative by the Brooklyn Public Library that allows teens to get a free library card to access their extensive ebook library.
And finally, for those of you in Los Angeles, I’ll be in conversation with the writer, editor, and critic David Ulin about my most recent novel, The Other Americans, on July 13 at 6 pm, at Zibby’s in Santa Monica. Come say hello!
That’s about it for now. For more updates, you can find me on Twitter or Instagram. You can also check out my events page for public readings and talks.