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.
Maureen Seaton sits down to discuss queering poetry, collaborating on collections, vacillating between literary genres, and why Audre Lorde's "Uses of the Erotic" is at the top of her credos.
John Dufresne writes his characters so well, renders them in such a vivid, three-dimensional way, because of [his] genuine affection for people. He is fascinated by human beings—who we are, what we do, and why...