Salaam, friends!
It’s been a while but I’m back with another author spotlight. This interview is part of the blog tour for Boy, Everywhere by A. M. Dassu, which was published by Old Barn Books earlier this month.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A. M. Dassu is a writer based in the East Midlands. She is the Deputy Editor of SCBWI-BI’s Words and Pictures magazine and a Director of Inclusive Minds, a unique organisation for people who are passionate about inclusion, diversity, equality and accessibility in children’s literature, and are committed to changing the face of children’s books.
She won the international We Need Diverse Books mentorship award in 2017, and has used her publishing advances for her debut middle grade novel Boy, Everywhere to assist Syrian refugees in her city and set up a grant to support an unpublished refugee/recently immigrated writer.
You can follow her on Twitter @a_reflective.
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Born in Bangladesh, raised in Newcastle and currently residing in the outskirts of Manchester, Burhana Islam is a storyteller who is passionate about exploring themes of heritage, belonging, identity and faith in both her children’s and young adult works. She studied English Literature at Newcastle University before deciding to become a secondary school teacher, sharing her love for stories with a new generation of curious, young minds.
Hena Khan is a Pakistani-American writer. She is the author of the middle grade novels Amina’s Voice, Amina’s Song, and More To The Story and picture books Golden Domes And Silver Lanterns, Under My Hijab, and It’s Ramadan, Curious George, among others.
Rabiah York Lumbard is an award-winning author of the picture book, The Conference Of The Birds. Her latest picture book, The Gift Of Ramadan was highly recommended by SLJ as “a perfect addition to holiday book collections,” while her deeply personal debut novel, No True Believers draws on her experience as an American Muslim at home and abroad.
Ayesha Mattu’s two groundbreaking anthologies – Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of Muslim Women and Salaam, Love: Muslim Men on Love, Sex, and Intimacy – were featured globally by media from the New York Times to the BBC to the Jakarta Post. She was selected a “Muslim Leader of Tomorrow” by the UN Alliance of Civilizations, and is an alumna of Voices of Our Nations writers’ workshop.
Huda Al-Marashi is the author of First Comes Marriage: My Not-So-Typical American Love Story, a memoir the Washington Post called “a charming, funny, heartbreaking memoir of faith, family, and the journey to love.”
Saadia Faruqi is a Pakistani American author, essayist and interfaith activist. She writes the children’s early reader series Yasmin published by Capstone and other books for children, including middle grade novels A Place At The Table (HMH/Clarion 2020) co-written with Laura Shovan, and A Thousand Questions (Harper Collins 2020).
Hanna Alkaf graduated with a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and spent over ten years writing everything from B2B marketing emails to investigative feature articles, from non-profit press releases to corporate brochures. She now spends her time making it up as she goes along, both as an author of fiction and as a mom.
Adiba Jaigirdar was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and has been living in Dublin, Ireland from the age of ten. She has a BA in English and History, and an MA in Postcolonial Studies. She is a contributor for Bookriot. All of her writing is aided by tea, and a healthy dose of Janelle Monáe and Hayley Kiyoko.
Ashley Franklin is an African-American Muslim writer, mother, and adjunct college professor. She received her M.A. from the University of Delaware and B.A. from Albright College, both in English Literature.
headscarves & hardbacks 