How is the landscape of Arab-American and Arab writers shifting?
I am finishing a book which should be out next year, Inshallah [God Willing]. It’s an anthology entitled Arab American and Arab Anglophone Literature. It’s the first collection of its kind, which includes all genres—poetry, short stories, excerpts from plays, novels, and creative nonfiction—by Arab Americans and Arab writers of English expression. I started doing research for this book more than five years ago, and had I published it just a few years ago it would have been a completely different book. In the past five years alone, there have been incredible changes in our writing community… more young Arab and Arab Americans are writing and encouraged to write. And the publishing houses are somewhat more open to Arab voices. CP: How is writing a way to master one’s own narrative, especially for Arab women? When we write, we have to be brave…. after all, powerful writing is honest, true. You have to put yourself aside and let your pen do what it is meant to: write… Tell. And from there,
