DUBAI: Palestinian American novelist, poet and Arab American Book Award recipient Hala Alyan is making her debut at the 2024 edition of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature with a Feb. 4 panel talk and she told Arab News it feels like a full-circle moment.
“My parents lived in Abu Dhabi for a long time, and I actually spent my eighth grade in Al-Ain,” Alyan, who lives in New York, said. “This is my first literary festival in the Arab region however, and I am really honored and heartened to be presenting alongside so many wonderful artists.”
Hailing from a family of Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese heritage, Alyan, who also lived in Kuwait as a child, says that she developed an interest writing from an early age. “My interest in writing coincided with my learning of the English language, and I’ve written for as long as I can remember,” she said.
There is a personal element in Alyan's writings, which are for the most part informed by the painful Arab experience. In 2017, her first novel “Salt Houses” came out, telling the narrative of how a Palestinian family was forced to leave their home due to the Six-Day, Arab-Israeli war of 1967. “Salt Houses was definitely inspired by my own family's immigration and displacement story,” she said. A few years later, she released another novel “The Arsonists' City,” which Alyan has described as a “love letter” to Beirut, where she was formerly a student.
In her poetry, she delves into themes of motherhood, identity, diaspora and immigration. “I love poetry because I think it allows the writer to get into the minutia of life, to dip in and out of scenes, to really immerse yourself in a particular moment, thought, memory,” she said. Like many Palestinians around the world, the violence in Gaza has impacted her. “It’s been devastating for so many of us with a direct lineage and connection to the land … the sheer level of destruction is incomprehensible,” she said. “But I believe strongly in the role of the witness, and the power of bearing witness, and using that to fuel the ways that we show up for those on the ground.”
In March, Alyan will be publishing a new collection of poems titled “The Moon That Turns You Back.” As for what piece of advice she would offer to aspiring authors, she had this to say: “Remember that it’s about the process … find something you love about the creative process, the act of making, and keep replenishing that relationship — it matters more than any result.”
Ayan will participate in a Feb. 4 talk titled “It's Complicated: Tales Of Family And Home.” She will be joined by authors Mai Al-Nakib (“An Unlasting Home”) and Awais Khan (“Someone Like Her”) and the trio will discuss their novels in which characters navigate complicated personal, political and cultural milieu.
