BookPeople Presents: Austin SWANA Writers Panel

Please welcome local Southwest Asian and North African authors Dalia Azim, Maurice Chammah, Sarah Cypher, and Lilas Taha for an Austin SWANA Writers Panel!

This event is free and open to the public.

• Start time: 7:00 P.M.
• Run time: 45-60 minutes, followed by a signing line.
• Location: The second floor of BookPeople.

The authors will be signing and personalizing copies of their books after the speaking portion of the event.

• To get a book signed, a copy of the event book or an item of equal value must be purchased from BookPeople.

Guidelines:

• Seating will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

• If you have any other questions, please visit our Eventbrite FAQ. If your question isn't covered in the FAQ, feel free to email us at [email protected].
• All event guidelines are subject to change.
• BookPeople reserves the right to cancel or postpone this event if necessary.
• There will not be a live stream or recording available.

About the books:

Country of Origin is a multigenerational family saga that cuts between political revolution in 1950s Egypt and the personal revolutions of four family members whose lives intersect around the disappearance of one of their own.

Let the Lord Sort Them is a nonfiction book about the death penalty in Texas through the lives of people it has touched, exploring what the institution tells us about crime and punishment in America. Chammah's forthcoming Arab/Jew is a memoir that investigates the lives of the author's father and his extended family, Jews from the Arab world whose lives were transformed by Zionism and colonialism after centuries of living alongside Muslims and Christians in Aleppo, Syria.

In The Skin and Its Girl, a young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great aunt's secrets in this sweeping debut, a family saga confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage.

In Bitter Almonds, Omar is an orphaned Palestinian born into chaos, displaced by violence and holding on to an impossible love that gives him hope. Nadia is maturing into womanhood in a refugee community in Damascus, confronted with a cruel load thrust upon her by a selfish brother. Will she break out of her traditional social mold to create her own destiny?

About the authors:

Dalia Azim’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, American Short Fiction, Aperture, Poets & Writers, Glimmer Train, and Other Voices, among other places. Her first novel, Country of Origin, was published in 2022. She is the Texas Book Festival’s COO.
Maurice Chammah is a journalist and staff writer at The Marshall Project, where he reports on the U.S. criminal justice system, and was on a team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. He was the host of the podcast Just Say You're Sorry, and an upcoming podcast project with Serial Productions. He has also published essays about his family history in the Middle East and is working on a book titled Arab/Jew.
Sarah Cypher's debut novel was a Stonewall Honor Book also shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, the Washington Post, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Mizna, the North American Review, and others. Currently serving on the board of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), she grew up in a Lebanese family near Pittsburgh and now lives in Austin with her wife.
Lilas Taha is a writer at heart, an electrical engineer by education and training, and an advocate for domestic abuse victims by choice. She was born in Kuwait to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother and immigrated to the U.S. because of the Gulf War in 1990. Lilas won the 2019 Best Book Awards of the American Book-Fest for her novel Lost in Thyme, followed by its sequel, Found in Thyme. She also won the 2017 International Book Awards for her novel Bitter Almonds.

By purchasing a book from BookPeople, you are not only supporting a local, independent business – you’re showing publishers that they should continue sending authors to BookPeople.

Thank you for supporting Dalia Azim, Maurice Chammah, Sarah Cypher, Lilas Taha, and your local independent bookstore!

Host or Publisher BookPeople