April 14, 2025
Susan Muaddi Darraj, an award-winning Palestinian American novelist and essayist, will read from her latest book, Behind You Is The Sea
Susan Muaddi Darraj, an award-winning Palestinian American novelist and essayist, will read from her latest book, Behind You Is The Sea (Harper Collins), named a Best Book of 2024 by The Washington Post, NPR, Ms. Magazine and The New Yorker. She will discuss Palestinian American immigrant life in the United States as part of the inspiration for her fiction and will read a selection of excerpts from the novel. A Q&A and a book signing will follow.
Darraj lives in Baltimore, Md., and teaches English and creative writing at Harford Community College and the Johns Hopkins University. She won an American Book Award, two Arab American Book Awards and a Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artists Award. In 2018, she was named a USA Artists Ford Fellow. Her short story collection, A Curious Land: Stories from Home, was named the winner of the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, judged by Jaime Manrique. It also won the 2016 Arab American Book Award and a 2016 American Book Award and was shortlisted for a Palestine Book Award. Her previous short story collection, The Inheritance of Exile, was published in 2007 by University of Notre Dame Press. Darraj also has written numerous YA biographies, as well as the Farah Rocks chapter book series, the first to feature an Arab American protagonist. She was also head writer of the Spotify Original podcast Arabian Nights for young listeners.
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Further information
- Location: ATS-B
- Time: 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
- Cost: $0.00