Book News, London, & Welcome 👋🏽

I sold a book to Simon & Schuster!

It’s been a minute. And it’s also been just over a year since I started this cute little writing corner on Substack, where my friends and therapist act as though they are receiving something genuinely interesting in their inbox. So thanks for giving me a year of joyful writing time that I can turn to whenever the world is especially grim 🥳 🙏🏽

Also! Welcome to the new folks who found their way here through my lovely mentor

Ijeoma Oluo

. I tend to use this space to rant about Palestine, share updates about my writing process, talk about the best and worst romance novels I’ve consumed, my knitting projects, or why the show “Younger” was ahead of its time.

Sidenote, for those of you who may not be acquainted with Ijeoma’s work, she is the bestselling author of So You Want to Talk About Race and a leading voice on social justice, race, and identity. She is also a courageous advocate for Palestine and the interconnected fights for freedom and has a new substack focused solely on this work!

Okk, for some really exciting news that has kept me away from this cute little corner — I officially sold my memoir, They Told Me Back Home Would Be Beautiful, at the end of 2024 to One Signal at Simon and Schuster!

Last year, I spent six months working on the proposal, which included a detailed outline of the thirty or so chapters that would ultimately go into the final product, five sample chapters, as well as a full marketing plan as to why I was the person to write this story. If any writers are reading this who have not yet gone through the submission process, I would be more than happy to share my experience with you privately. A word that comes to mind when I think about being on submission: feral. I was — feral the entire time.

I started working on this book in 2019. There are sentences that made their way into the proposal that had been written five years prior, and it was terrifying to release those to an anonymous body of editors who decide if these words and stories should live outside of my Google Docs.

There are so many stories from the Palestinian diaspora that deserve attention and a platform. And yet, like most spaces, publishing often makes it feel as though there is room for only one Palestinian voice at a time—one voice deemed “unique” enough to be made legible to a wider audience. I’m not certain I am that voice, but I’m honored to be among the few Palestinians breaking into the memoir space without being bound to write a history book that exists only to reassure readers of a certain set of facts.

Parts of this memoir were written during my time at Columbia University, where I was repeatedly told that my family’s experiences were not enough to justify the ways I criticized Israel and its occupation. That insistence now feels even more absurd in the face of ongoing genocide and the ways Columbia’s administration has continued, unabashedly, to suppress pro-Palestinian voices. While I was a graduate student. Columbia, ironically, demanded “facts”—but only facts that matched their pre-approved understanding of the occupation: a two-sided narrative that required me to constantly explain and prove that Palestinians were worthy of attention at all.

All of that’s to say — YAY — this book found a home, one that encourages me to write without censoring my voice or the truths I choose to tell. I left Columbia so emotionally drained I no longer believed my writing would ever find a home, let alone be championed by a major publishing house. Don’t let anyone tell you what’s possible. Those invented rules were never meant for us to follow anyway…

The book is set to be published in fall 2026! Mark it on your calendars! Share with friends! Buy a copy for everyone in your family!

Until then, I shall be writing away in my new home in London! I moved here in January, and now the trees outside of my windows are blooming.

Below is a random list of things I’ve enjoyed since my move to London!

• Lola Young’s songs “Conceited” and “Messy” have been on repeat. She is British and funky, and I’ve been bopping to her on the (ch)ube.

• I saw the artist Ruthven live and he was a gem, but more importantly, his music slaps and his song “Itch” pretty much brings Prince back from the grave.

• The movie Flow — a wordless animated film about a solitary black cat navigating a post-apocalyptic world submerged by a great flood — made me cry. I saw it in theatres and you should too!

• I’ve mastered making chicken cutlets since moving to London. In this precise moment, I am too lazy to write down my very secret recipe for success. So I’ll tease it instead with a photo below and some key ingredients and descriptive language: Orange Zest — Fennel — Crunch — Yum

• I finished the audiobook Empire of Pain about the opioid crisis in the United States and the Sackler family. I pretty much had no personality for a month, outside of talking about the three generations of this family. I suggest you also listen to or read Patrick Radden Keefe’s masterpiece (not a word used lightly here, I teared up when I finished the book because it was so beautifully crafted) and watch the documentary, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, after.

• I also lost my personality after I read the book All Fours, which made me reexamine all of my life’s choices, including but not limited to my sexuality and, like, other easy things to think through.

• I wrote an article about my friend Bunny White who also happens to be an amazing musician. Please go listen to her new single here and read my article in Autostraddle about her latest album coming out this summer <3

• ALSO! Sarah Aziza’s memoir, The Hollow Half, just came out! Daughter and granddaughter of Gazan refugees—Aziza is hospitalized for an eating disorder, a near-death rupture that pulls her personal and ancestral pasts into vivid presence. I believe, believe, this is one of the first Palestinian-American memoirs ever published.

Below is some news coming out of Palestine that I’ve been watching…

• Sky News: Two hours of terror: Sky News investigation reveals how Israel's deadly attack on aid workers unfolded (+ Al Jazeera, USA Today, The Guardian, CNN)

• New York Times: Mahmoud Khalil’s Wife Gives Birth as ICE Bars Him From Being There (+ NPR)

• Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian American Teen In Occupied West Bank

• Here’s a cool one — How our US Tax Dollars have armed Israel’s military just this year alone!