Hala Alyan is a Palestinian American writer and clinical psychologist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Guernica, and elsewhere. Her poetry collections have won the Arab American Book Award and the Crab Orchard Series. Her debut novel, Salt Houses, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2017, and was the winner of the Arab American Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her newest poetry collection, The Twenty-Ninth Year, was recently published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Nothing’s Freudian anymore. A cigar’s a cigar. I want to love something. / I want to love something without having to apologize for it. Please don’t tell.