We are so excited to share our good news! The UW Tacoma Center for Equity and Inclusion (CEI) and UW Tacoma Library’s Real Lit[erature]: Reading for Social Justice will be hosting a author talk with Zeyn Joukhadar on Thursday, June 1st, 2023, via Zoom. Staff, faculty, and students from all three campuses AND community members are invited to attend!

Zeyn is the author of The Map of Salt and Stars:

“This powerful and lyrical debut novel is to Syria what The Kite Runner was to Afghanistan; the story of two girls living eight hundred years apart—a modern-day Syrian refugee seeking safety and an adventurous mapmaker’s apprentice—“perfectly aligns with the cultural moment” (The Providence Journal) and “shows how interconnected two supposedly opposing worlds can be” (The New York Times Book Review).

This “beguiling” (Seattle Times) and stunning novel begins in the summer of 2011. Nour has just lost her father to cancer, and her mother moves Nour and her sisters from New York City back to Syria to be closer to their family. In order to keep her father’s spirit alive as she adjusts to her new home, Nour tells herself their favorite story—the tale of Rawiya, a twelfth-century girl who disguised herself as a boy in order to apprentice herself to a famous mapmaker.” – Simon and Schuster, Publisher’s Website

This book has truly been one of the most beautiful we have read. The words flow like honey and magic. Please register in advance to attend the author talk with Zeyn Joukhadar. The Zoom link will be sent to all registered attendees the day prior.

Thursday, June 1st, 2023

12:30-1:30 PM Pacific via Zoom

A little bit more about Zeyn: Zeyn Joukhadar is the author of the Lambda Literary- and Stonewall Book Award-winning novel The Thirty Names of Night as well as The Map of Salt and Stars, which won the Middle East Book Award and was a Goodreads Choice Awards and Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize finalist. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Electric Literature, Salon, The Paris Review, [PANK], and elsewhere and has been included in anthologies such as Letters to a Writer of Color, This Arab Is Queer, Kink, and others. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Joukhadar serves on the board of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI) and mentors emerging writers of color with the Periplus Collective.

Questions? Please email Alaina, Erin or Johanna at alainac, ecousins and jmjk at uw.edu! Thank you!