ARM - Not only are you an award-winning author, but you’re also a wife and mom. How do you make time to write? 

ALA - I’m not an early morning person, but I try to be diligent about writing in the morning after I take the kids to school and use the afternoon for social media/admin/meetings. Doesn’t always work that way, but it’s nice when it does. I’m also a night owl, and I typically get struck with an idea at 11:30 pm as I’m trying to go to sleep (exactly what happened with Big Tune!)… then I’m up until about 1 am. 

ARM - I am a night-owl too and I often do my best work at night. I know your debut book The Juneteenth Story: Celebrating the End of Slavery in the United States was sold out. Congratulations on that. How has your marketing background helped you promote your books?

ALA - Thanks, although honestly that problem can also be a double-edged sword, or a “good-bad problem” exacerbated by pandemic supply chain issues. I had book signings with a very limited number of books to sign! Fortunately, it did perform beyond expectations, and my publisher also wisely pivoted to create a paperback option in the absence of hardcover availability. 

I’ve worked for huge multi-million dollar brands, and tiny tiny start-ups - frankly, my startup experience is what has been most helpful so far. I’ve learned how to market creatively (hustle) with basically no budget. Although budgets are very, very helpful!

ARM - What are the top 3 marketing tips you want to share with authors and readers?

ALA -  Think hard about your book’s possible ‘Who’, or target - who will be the biggest champion for your book, and how can you reach them in a meaningful way? While stories can connect to people on a number of different levels, for books that may resonate with historically marginalized audiences, you may better understand them than your publisher does. Your publisher will likely have a better understanding of the levers for traditional literary publicity channels, but don’t be afraid to provide your insight on less traditional ways to reach your audience. 

Talk to everybody about your book- fight through the urge to be shy or not self-promote. You never know who may find interest in your work or may know someone who could be helpful for pitching your book to press, securing a speaking engagement, or even a bulk order of your books.

Be authentic. If you are open to it, share your journey - the peaks and valleys. When people feel invested in your journey, your success feels like their success, so they are emotionally invested in helping you succeed! When you are genuine about your passion for your topic you’re the most magnetic. Do it in your own way. I love writing rhythmically, and I also love music, so I share a lot of playlists to help people connect with my topic and work musically, for instance.

ARM - What books are on your to-be-read list?

ALA - Where to begin?? There is a certain upcoming book about one of my favorite foods- plantain!… Platanos are Love by a certain author named Alyssa Reynoso-Morris (wink). I’m also looking forward to reading Locs not Dreads by Tonya Abari, and Grounded, an upcoming middle grade book by a coalition of incredible authors including Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow. 

ARM - SUCH A GREAT LIST!!! What do you hope readers take away from BIG TUNE: Rise of the Dancehall Prince?

ALA - So much! Persevere, do what you love, and be yourself! It can be hard, but the resulting joy can truly be irreplaceable. 

Although people don’t always read Author’s Notes, I hope they take a minute to read this one. It talks about how in immigrant (and other!) communities, parties and gatherings are more than parties - they can also be safe spaces. Places where you don’t have to explain yourself, a place where “everybody knows the words to the songs”, and an opportunity for muted accents to be amplified. 

Separately, I hope people learn a little bit about the importance of Caribbean-descended artists to the emergence of hip-hop, a global phenomenon which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year!

ARM - Thank you so much for your time Alliah! You are incredible and deserve all the STARS and FLOWERS. To learn more about Alliah read her bio below and visit her website. ​

Asian-American identity encompasses a wide range of experiences and holds space for multiple identities within its larger umbrella. Growing up in a family of Chinese immigrants, I largely saw myself and my story as fitting within that specific mold, but my understanding of what it meant to be of Asian descent in this country changed in college where, for the first time, I had access to classes on the history, literature, and psychology of Asian-Americans as a group. It was a process of awakening to the perspective that Asian-American was above all a political identity. That’s the approach I take to writing Asian-American characters and one I hope to see more of in fiction. 

The aspects of my personal history with all the texture of cultural touchstones like food and language, and the common narrative of assimilation, are still important to me, but there’s a bigger picture to the way people of East Asian, Southeast Asian, and South Asian descent are treated as a collective in this country, and that’s what I wanted to explore most. The rise of anti-Asian hate and violence during the pandemic is a stark example: it doesn’t seem to matter to attackers if someone is Korean-American, Japanese-American, Vietnamese-American, Thai-American, or Chinese-American; as long as someone looks of East Asian descent, they are potential targets. There’s a shared experience of marginalization that transcends different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. 

In my upcoming novel, I Will Find You Again, I used the experiences of Chase and Lia, both characters of primarily East Asian descent, to explore this more. Though they have different cultural and familial backgrounds, they struggle with the same kind of expectations all Asian-Americans face:
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We never talked about it explicitly, but I know it bothered her, the comparisons: two Asians in an overwhelmingly white school, one at the top and one middling. There were things teachers might let slip, like curiosity over a difference in our performance as if I matched their expectations but Lia fell short, seemingly innocent questions from classmates about her adoption like Lia had the genetic goods but was missing some key cultural element. Even little comments from Jo gently admonishing Lia to be more like me, which came off as awkward compliments but probably stung. They were all just small moments of friction that had to grate and grate on her.

In another moment, Chase experiences internalized racism when she feels she must prove her athleticism beyond the standards of her White classmates, mostly because of the stereotype that Asians don’t excel at sports:

I felt awful, light-headed and dizzy with the beginnings of a migraine. And worse, he was right—these were new coaches who’d never seen me run before, and I was the only Asian kid there. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, but I felt this pressure, like I had to be the fastest to prove I belonged on the team.

The most important aspect I wanted to address was the idea that the pressure to perform academically that Chase’s father puts on her wasn’t rooted in an oversimplified view of Asian/Asian-American culture—her father’s drive and ambition, which he pushes onto Chase, is an artifact of his past trauma, not something he’d inherited from his own father. The engine behind everything he’s achieved and everything he hopes his children will achieve comes from a deep fear of scarcity because he grew up hungry. It was important for me to explore how this scarcity mindset had mutated with time within the family—how for Chase, it became about power and control because that was the effect her father’s demands had on her. 

My passion for depicting Asian-American as a political identity is ultimately rooted in a desire to challenge stereotypes and humanize us in a world that insists on oversimplification over complexity. That said, it’s not the main goal. The best way to humanize characters is to let them find their own away in the world, for them to be part of every kind of story imaginable. 


For more information and to purchase the book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/I-Will-Find-You-Again/Sarah-Lyu/9781534465152

Sarah Lyu grew up outside of Atlanta, Georgia, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She loves a good hike and can often be found with a paintbrush in one hand and a cup of milky tea in the other. Sarah is the author of The Best Lies and I Will Find You Again. You can visit her at SarahLyu.com.
 
Headshot credit: Anna Shih

In the fall of 2021, I learned that my debut picture book, The Arabic Quilt was on a banned book list at Central York District. It was taken off of shelves and children were not allowed to read them. The book that took years to write and find a publisher. The book I was receiving dozens of emails and messages about how kids’ eyes lit up when they saw an Arab or Muslim character on the cover. The book that I had stayed hours at the library to research. The book I devoted a lot of time to learning about the publishing industry for. The book I met up with critique partners for, and stayed up late to revise and edit, long after I had put my young kids to bed. 
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 Some people say I’m lucky that the book is now a banned book because of the attention it would get. But I disagree; there are only a few picture books by Arab Muslim American authors. For a period of time, students weren’t able to check out The Arabic Quilt from their libraries, and this picture book could have been the only book with a positive portrayal of an Arab Muslim. The censorship and ban were upsetting and another hurdle as an author of color. It’s a privilege not to have to worry about whether or not your book will be banned because of who the characters of the book are and the theme of the book. The book ban reminded me why I was so adamant, and so persistent about publishing The Arabic Quilt in the first place. Navigating the world as a Muslim and an Arab is challenging in its own right but these challenges are multiplied further in the world of publishing, something I believe many BIPOC authors can relate to. 

The microaggressions I, as well as many other BIPOCs face on a daily basis and within the publishing industry itself, is partly because we never got to tell our side of the story or our stories weren’t heard or we were rarely ever the heroes of stories. In fact, we were always the villains, or the victims. Growing up in the U.S. I never saw characters who looked like me, a Muslim, Arab American in TV, movies, or in books with positive portrayal. I am 35 years old and the first time I saw a character with my name, Aya, in mainstream media in the U.S. was when I was 34. It was a powerful moment and I almost couldn’t believe it. 

I didn’t want BIPOC children to have to wait as long as I did to feel seen and to feel proud of the way they were being portrayed. In 2005 after I graduated high school I told my parents I would not go into medicine, law, or engineering like most of my friends around me from my Islamic High School. I would go on to study communication and English literature and use the power of my words to control the narrative. To tell our stories. To tell my story. 

Years passed with this dream in mind. I worked as a freelance journalist for a decade and earned my master’s degree in Education but it was only when I had my own children and became a teacher that I started turning this dream of telling our stories into a reality I was surprised at how the bookshelves in the classrooms I was working in didn’t reflect the demographics of the students I was teaching. Most of the books had white children on the cover, but the majority of the students were BIPOC. 

I came across a few self-published picture books by Muslim authors that had Muslim characters. There were only a few out there but it was still hard to find them at libraries or to come across them at bookstores. A few picture books were getting published by traditional publishers around the same time and it was mind blowing to me that Muslim kids could casually find these books at bookstores and the library. Books with characters that looked like them: unapologetic Muslims living their everyday life and being the heroes of their stories. 

After seeing a call out to Muslim authors from a literary agent around the same time former President Trump announced a Muslim ban in 2017, I decided it was time for me to tell my stories through children’s books.

I went through the hurdle of querying literary agents. After struggling for some time with rejections I reached out to other authors who gave me feedback on my manuscript and I joined a local picture book critique group and took book-writing classes. 
When I was offered representation by a wonderful literary agent, Brent Taylor, who somehow believed in my picture book manuscript, I thought all the hard work was finally over. Boy was I wrong. Months went on and we were getting rejection after rejection. Some rejections were more courteous and even came  with feedback. Other rejections, however, made it  clear that some publishers weren’t willing to risk publishing a story about a Muslim, immigrant child, and by an unknown debut author no less. I told myself it was okay to set this to the side and forget about it. Maybe I should just stick to non-fiction; to journalism and continue to blog and pitch pieces to magazines and newspapers. 

Then one hot summer day in 2018 when I was walking my kids to Arabic school, I opened my email and was shocked to see that a small independent publisher was interested in The Arabic Quilt. I was ecstatic, as they had published one of my favorite picture books, Laila’s Lunchbox a few years earlier and it was what inspired me to write a picture book and traditionally publish it. I couldn’t believe it at first but I will never forget how at that moment, I thought, I think this is it. My words are going to be out there for kids to read. 

In 2020, in February, right before the pandemic hit the U.S., my debut was published, and it was beautifully illustrated by Anait Semirdhzyan. My publisher emailed me a few days later saying it was flying off the shelves and it was getting sold out quickly in a lot of places. This was surprising to me, as I wondered how many people would be interested in reading a picture book about an immigrant Muslim girl named Kanzi. Moreover, I was still thinking (and upset to be honest) about the mixed review from a popular trade review magazine that said the dialogue in the book was “stilted” and the message was “outdated.” I felt this was unfair, as the book was based on my real experiences as an immigrant and Egyptian child, but I was also reminded that these reviews were subjective. After a few more weeks, we learned our book earned a starred review from the School Library Journal and  later had won numerous  prestigious awards. 

The best part though, was getting messages from Muslim and/or Arab parents saying their children’s eyes lit up when they found the book at the library or bookstore or when their teachers read the book to them in their classroom. They felt seen. How I wished I had this book, and other books with positive Muslim portrayal growing up. It is their positive feedback that encouraged me to continue writing and as of 2022, I have another book that was published this fall, Our World: Egypt, a board book filled with love and joy between an Egyptian dad and his daughter, something rarely portrayed in the media. In 2023, I have three books coming out: The Night Before Eid, illustrated by Rashin Kheiriyeh out on March 7th and The Great Banned Books Bake Sale, illustrated by Anait, out on August 1st, which is loosely based on the true story of when The Arabic Quilt was banned. 

Fortunately, the ban against my book was also lifted shortly after thanks to student protests at the district and an outcry from around the country. Around the same time, I also learned that two districts across the country had purchased tens of thousands of copies of The Arabic Quilt for their curriculum. Despite these achievements, there’s still work to be done. Arab authored books are still underrepresented. In 2019, 1.2 percent of books had a Muslim diversity subject, although the accuracy and quality weren’t evaluated. I am often put on book lists during Asian American Heritage Month or not put on book lists for Arab American Heritage Month while Asian authors are put on there. In 2023, I hope more people support books by Arab authors. I hope editors buy more of these books and agents take on more Arab. 

However, despite the regular challenges of any author who is querying agents and going on submission to editors, BIPOC authors have an additional struggle during this arduous process. When editors or agents tell us they already have “a Muslim author” on their list or “an Arab author” client, but their lists are filled with white authors and animal characters. Moreover, another heartbreaking type of rejection BIPOC creatives get is being told that publishers already have enough of a certain type of story on their list and it’s already oversaturated, although we never had the chance to tell that story with our voice. It’s also worth mentioning that going into this industry, you will be doing a lot of educating. Educating illustrators, editors, copyeditors about things that must stay or be removed in the story or illustrations. It can get exhausting at times, but it’s important information for our stories to stay authentic and true as possible and educating is a key part in that. 

At the Muslim Storytellers Fellow Highlights Retreat, I found myself sitting alongside talented Muslim authors, writers and illustrators. We shared our struggles about navigating the publishing industry, but reminded one another about the importance of storytelling. 
Our readers keep us going. Our children keep us going. Our teachers and librarians keep us going. Our families and friends keep us going. Rejections are part of this journey, and we will continue to face microaggressions and struggles along the way, but the love and passion we have for publishing our stories keeps us motivated. 

Being a marginalized author in this industry is no easy feat, but it is worth it when you know you’re making a difference in children’s lives and normalize unapologetic Muslim stories. It’s time we continue to reclaim our narrative and continue to be the heroes of our stories because our stories have been here for a long time and they’re here to stay. I hope readers will continue to see themselves in my books and I hope they love The Night Before Eid, which can be purchased here on March 7th. 


Aya Khalil, M.Ed, is the award-winning author of The Arabic Quilt: An Immigrant Story, which is an NCTE’s Charlotte Huck Award Recommended Book and the winner of the Arab American Book Award, among other honors. She's also the author of Our World: Egypt and The Night Before Eid. Aya holds a master’s degree in education and her articles have been in The Huffington Post and We Need Diverse Books, among other publications. She immigrated from Egypt to the United States when she was one and lives with her husband and children in Northwest Ohio. Her website is www.ayakhalil.com