An Afternoon with Mya Guarnieri and Ilene Prusher

***Please note: This event will take place at the Books & Books in Coral Gables at 265 Aragon Avenue. Tickets are FREE and books will be available for purchase at the event. Can't make the event?

In Crossing the Line, journalist and writer Mya Guarnieri recounts the story of a real-life Romeo and Juliet: herself, a Jewish American immigrant to Israel lecturing at a Palestinian university, and Mohamed, a fellow journalist and the son of a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

This timely memoir chronicles how, despite the Israeli-built separation barrier that stood between them, Mya and Mohamed managed to meet, fall in love, and overcome the external and internal obstacles that threatened to keep them apart. With a reporter's eye for detail and a storyteller's knack for nuance, she shares the political, cultural, and family problems the star-crossed lovers faced throughout their courtship. Crossing the Line is not only a reflection on her own story, however; this compelling memoir also offers an intimate look at daily life in Palestinian areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank; it explores the complexity of loving one's "enemy"; and it serves as a tortured love letter to the land and the people who call the place home.

In a dark moment in the long history of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Crossing the Line is a spot of light that imagines a different future for the two peoples. It is also a universal story about the challenges of overcoming our innermost emotional barriers and making ourselves vulnerable to love.

Mya Guarnieri is a writer and award-winning journalist who spent almost a decade on the ground in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Her byline has appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, Foreign Policy, Politico, The Guardian, and Al Jazeera English among many other international outlets. She is currently a regular contributor to The New York Times and a visiting instructor at Florida Atlantic University. She holds a MA in Journalism with a focus in politics and global affairs, from Columbia University, where she was an international reporting fellow, and a MFA in Creative Writing from Florida State University. Her essays and short fiction have been published in Narrative Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Guardian, Slate, and Guernica. Her first book, The Unchosen: The Lives of Israel's New Others, was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize.

Ilene Prusher is an award-winning journalist and author who has covered more than 40 countries in her career as a foreign correspondent. She spent many years covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and she served as The Christian Science Monitor’s bureau chief in Israel, Japan, Turkey, Afghanistan and Iraq. Prusher also reported from many other countries in the Middle East and Africa, including Lebanon, Kuwait, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan. Her work has appeared in TIME, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Haaretz, The Forward, Moment, FiveThirtyEight, The Miami Herald, NBC NewsThink, CNN Opinion and Ms. She is the author of Baghdad Fixer, a novel about the Iraq war. She taught for Florida Atlantic University for the past decade, and is now a professor of journalism practice at the University of Miami.

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