Category: personal

I am back in Los Angeles, but only briefly, as I have to be on the road again next week. You can listen to my appearance on BBC Radio 4 here. And my interview with Mark Coles on BBC’s The Strand has been archived here.

Greetings from London, where it’s really chucking it down at the moment. (“Chucking it down” is one of those wonderful Britishisms I’ve been picking up since I got here; it means “raining heavily.”) The event at the University of East Anglia on Tuesday night was a smashing success, with great turnout and wonderful questions from the audience. I had a great time. Then yesterday and today, I did a whole bunch of interviews, including one with the BBC’s Mark Coles for The Strand, which should be archived here. I will also be on Radio 4 on Saturday, so when the link is live I will post it here as well. Because my schedule has been so packed, I haven’t been able to get out much, although I did get a chance to spend some quiet time at the British Library. I highly recommend the Sir John Ritblat Gallery, where you can see some incredible artifacts, including an 8th-century Qur’an that uses the ancient Hijazi script, the Magna Carta, a handwritten page from Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, one of Jane Austen’s notebooks, and so on. Anyway, I have to cut this short, as I still have loads of emails to catch up with. Toodeloo, as the Brits say!

I’m in London this week for the launch of the U.K. edition of my book, Secret Son. I will be doing some interviews (details to come soon) and I will also be reading at the University of East Anglia, as part of their literary festival. Here are the details for the reading:

7:00 PM
Reading and Discussion
Lecture Theatre 1
University of East Anglia
Norwich, England

I don’t know if any readers of the blog are in the area, but it would be lovely to meet you if you are. I will try to post the interviews if/when they go online.

This Thursday, I’ll be reading from my novel, Secret Son, at the 33rd annual Writers’ Week, hosted by the University of California, Riverside. Below are the details:

Thursday, February 11, 2010
4:00 PM
Reading and Discussion
Writers’ Week
CHASS INTS 1128
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, California

Later that evening, Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, will be delivering the Hays Lecture. If you haven’t read The Looming Tower, I highly recommend that you do. That book will not only educate you about Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, it will also make you appreciate more fully all the intelligence failures that led to the attacks of 9/11. And then on Friday, UCR will host the amazing and amazingly talented Dolen Perkins-Valdez and Heidi Durrow, both of whom have recently published first novels, which I am very eager to read.

I’m desperately trying to make some progress on my new book before I have to travel. Next week, for instance, I’ll be taking part in Writers’ Week at UCR. The week after that, the UK edition of my novel, Secret Son, comes out and I will be traveling to London for some promotion. In March, I’ll start the paperback tour for Secret Son in the US. You can find out more about all the events here. If you happen to be in one of the cities I’ll be visiting, please stop by and say hello. I’ll also make sure to post more details as the dates get closer.

I am very happy to report that I have a short story in the newest edition of the journal Callaloo. This special issue was devoted to the Middle East and North Africa and was edited by the novelist Salar Abdoh. It includes poetry by Mahmoud Darwish, Hayan Charara, Nathalie Handal, Fady Joudah, Sholeh Wolpe; nonfiction by D.H. Melhem; fiction by Raja Alem, Ibrahim Al-Koni, Radwa Ashour, Pauline Kaldas, and yours truly. There are also photographs, art, book reviews, and drama selections. You can view the entire table of contents here. The journal is now in its 34th year, and though it was founded at the University of Louisiana at Baton Rouge, it is now primarily supported by Texas A&M University. It is an important forum of African diaspora and African-American arts and culture, and you can support it by subscribing here.