Writing About Place, featuring Hala Alyan

Whether you’re writing about where you’re from, or a place you know well, or a place you’ve researched in order to portray it in all its nuance on the page, place itself is often a character in fiction and creative writing. This week’s episode with Hala Alyan might inspire you to add more details of place to your work, or consider the role place has in your experience and understanding of the world. Place invites readers to journey to places they may know and love—or not. We hope you’re inspired this week to consider the role of place in your own work.

ABOUT HALA ALYAN

Hala Alyan is the author of the novel Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, as well as the forthcoming novel The Arsonists’ City and four award-winning collections of poetry, most recently The Twenty-Ninth Year. Her work has been published by The New Yorker, the Academy of American Poets, LitHub, the New York Times Book Review, and Guernica.