Aug
24
11:00pm
Sahar Mustafah on The Beauty of Your Face with Susan Muaddi Darraj
By Kweli Journal
“The indelible story of a Palestinian American woman whose life is torn apart by loss, finds solace in her faith, and faces a violent threat that tests how far she has come. Sahar Mustafah writes about family and community with compassion and sensitivity. The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah is a gift to readers.”
- Laila Lalami, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Other Americans
“The Beauty of Your Face is a striking and stirring debut, one that reaches its hands straight into the fire. Sahar Mustafah writes with wisdom and grace about the unthinkable, the unspeakable, and the unspoken.”
- Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Great Believers
“Sahar Mustafah writes with a grace and precision that shows a deep understanding for the ways trauma can distort a life. The Beauty of Your Face is a richly empathetic work about the power of faith, family, and love.”
- Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of We Cast a Shadow
* * *
Sahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, an inheritance she explores in her fiction. The Beauty of Your Face, her first novel, was named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and one of Marie Claire Magazine’s 2020 Best Fiction by Women. Her short story collection Code of the West was the winner of the 2016 Willow Books Fiction Award. Her stories have earned a Distinguished Story citation from Best American Short Stories 2016, and three Pushcart Prize nominations. She writes and teaches outside of Chicago.
Susan Muaddi Darraj’s short story collection, A Curious Land: Stories from Home, was named the winner of the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, judged by Jaime Manrique. It also won the 2016 Arab American Book Award, a 2016 American Book Award, and was shortlisted for a Palestine Book Award. Her previous short story collection, The Inheritance of Exile, was published in 2007 by University of Notre Dame Press.
In 2018, she was named a Ford Fellow by USA Artists. Susan also is a two-time recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. She has also been awarded a Ruby’s Artist Grant from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance and a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation.
In January 2020, Capstone Books launched her debut children’s chapter book series, Farah Rocks, about a smart, brave Palestinian American girl named Farah Hajjar.
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