Hala Alyan

Hala Alyan
Alyan in 2019
Born (1986-07-27) July 27, 1986
Carbondale, Illinois, U.S.
Alma mater
Occupations
Notable work
Awards
Websitewww.halaalyan.com

Hala Alyan (Arabic: حَلَا عَلْيَان, romanized: Ḥalā ʿAlyān; born July 27, 1986) is a Palestinian-American[1][2] writer, poet, and clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma, addiction, and cross-cultural behavior.[3] She is the author of the novels Salt Houses (2017) and The Arsonists' City (2021), and the memoir I'll Tell You When I'm Home (2025).[4]

Her honors include an Arab American Book Award (2013), the Dayton Literary Peace Prize (2018), and the GLCA New Writers Award for Creative Non-Fiction (2026); her memoir was longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography (2025).[5][6][7][8]

Biography

Hala Alyan was born in Carbondale, Illinois, on July 27, 1986. Her family lived in Kuwait after her birth but sought political asylum in the United States when Iraqi forces invaded the country.[9]

She graduated from the American University of Beirut and from Columbia University.[10] She received her doctorate in clinical psychology at Rutgers University and is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University.[11] She and her husband live in Brooklyn, New York.[12]

Awards and works

Alyan's work has been published in a range of journals and literary magazines, including The New Yorker, the Academy of American Poets, Guernica, and Jewish Currents, among others.[13][14][15] Examples of her poems published online include "Meals" (The Missouri Review) and "Honeymoon" (Poetry).[16][17][18][19]

In her first novel, Salt Houses, Alyan follows multiple generations of the fictional Yacoub family, tracing their lives across decades and major regional upheavals, including displacement following the Six-Day War of 1967 and later disruption during the 1990 Gulf War.[20][21]

In 2018, Alyan's novel Salt Houses won the Arab American Book Award (Adult fiction) presented by the Arab American National Museum.[22] That year, she also won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and in the fall she was a visiting fellow at the American Library in Paris.[6][23][24]

Her second novel, The Arsonists' City, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on March 9, 2021,[25] and received positive reviews.[26][27][28]

In 2026, Alyan won the GLCA New Writers Award for Creative Non-Fiction for her memoir I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, which was longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography in 2025.[7][8]

Bibliography

Novels

Memoir

  • I'll Tell You When I'm Home. New York: Simon and Schuster. June 3, 2025. ISBN 978-1-9821-8258-8. [29][30][31]

Poetry

Collections
  • Atrium (2005)
  • Four Cities (2015)
  • Hijra (2016)
  • The Twenty-Ninth Year (2019)
  • The Moon That Turns You Back (2024) [32]
Anthologies
  • We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage (2023) edited by Hala Alyan & Zeina Hashem Beck

Essays

  • "'I am not there and I am not here': a Palestinian American poet on bearing witness to atrocity" in The Guardian (January 28, 2024)[33]
  • "The Power of Changing Your Mind" in TIME (January 17, 2024)[34]
  • "What a Palestinian-American Wants You To Know about Dehumanization" in Teen Vogue (December 20, 2023)[35]
  • If Palestinian Freedom Makes You Uneasy, Ask Yourself Why" in The New York Times (November 1, 2023)[36]
  • "The Palestine Double Standard" in The New York Times (October 25, 2023)[37]
  • A Letter to My Husband" in Emergency Magazine (January 21, 2019)[38]
  • "In Dust," essay appearing in Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora, edited by Yasir Suleiman (2016)[19]

References

  1. ^ Shearn, Amy (July 6, 2017). "How to Recreate Palestine: Researching Salt Houses". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  2. ^ Alyan, Hala (January 28, 2024). "'I am not there and I am not here': a Palestinian American poet on bearing witness to atrocity". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved March 11, 2026.
  3. ^ "Hala Nafez Alyan | NYU Steinhardt". steinhardt.nyu.edu. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
  4. ^ "Hala Alyan". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved July 13, 2025.
  5. ^ "2013 Arab American Book Award Winners". Arab American National Museum. Archived from the original on November 3, 2018. Retrieved November 3, 2018.
  6. ^ a b Hemley, Robin. "2018 Fiction Winner - Salt Houses". Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The Ohio Public Library Network. Archived from the original on November 4, 2018. Retrieved November 3, 2018.
  7. ^ a b "GLCA Announces 2026 Winners of the New Writers Award". Great Lakes Colleges Association. Retrieved March 4, 2026.
  8. ^ a b "2025 NBCC Awards Longlist: Autobiography". National Book Critics Circle. December 16, 2025. Retrieved March 4, 2026.
  9. ^ Keyes, Claire. "'Ink Knows No Borders' tells story of immigrant and refugee experience through poetry". North of Boston. Archived from the original on July 11, 2019. Retrieved July 11, 2019.
  10. ^ "Hala Alyan". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved July 13, 2025.
  11. ^ "Hala Nafez Alyan | NYU Steinhardt". steinhardt.nyu.edu. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
  12. ^ Masad, Ilana (May 3, 2017). "Middle East, Middle Class: Pain and Privilege in Hala Alyan's 'Salt Houses'". Los Angeles. Retrieved November 3, 2018.
  13. ^ "Hala Alyan". Lannan Foundation. Retrieved March 4, 2026.
  14. ^ "Hala Alyan". Poetry Center (University of Arizona). Retrieved March 4, 2026.
  15. ^ "Hala Alyan". Jewish Currents. Retrieved March 4, 2026.
  16. ^ Alyan, Hala (December 1, 2014). "Meals". Missouri Review. University of Missouri. Retrieved November 3, 2018.
  17. ^ Magazine, Poetry (March 4, 2019). "Honeymoon by Hala Alyan". Poetry Foundation.
  18. ^ LaBerge, Peter; Biggs, Garrett (August 2017). "CAN I APOLOGIZE NOW". The Adroit Journal (22). Retrieved November 3, 2018.
  19. ^ a b Being Palestinian : personal reflections on Palestinian identity in the diaspora. Yasir Suleiman. Edinburgh. 2016. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-7486-3403-3. OCLC 963672141.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  20. ^ Maslin, Janet (May 5, 2017). "Review: In Hala Alyan's 'Salt Houses,' a Palestinian Family's History Is a Chronicle of Displacement". The New York Times. Retrieved March 4, 2026.
  21. ^ "Code Switch Book Club, Summer 2019". NPR.org.
  22. ^ "2018 Arab American Book Award Winners". Arab American National Museum. Retrieved March 4, 2026.
  23. ^ "Hala Alyan, Ta-Nehisi Coates win Dayton Literary Peace Prize". AP NEWS. September 19, 2018.
  24. ^ "Hala Alyan". The American Library in Paris. Retrieved March 4, 2026.
  25. ^ "The Arsonists' City". Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved March 20, 2021.
  26. ^ "Fiction Book Review: The Arsonists' City by Hala Alyan. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26 (464p) ISBN 978-0-358-12655-3". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved October 16, 2021.
  27. ^ Salam, Maya (March 9, 2021). "A Family Reunites in Beirut, Where the Past Is Never Past". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 16, 2021.
  28. ^ THE ARSONISTS' CITY | Kirkus Reviews.
  29. ^ Sinclair, Safiya (June 3, 2025). "A Palestinian American Memoir of Motherhood, War and Exile". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 13, 2025.
  30. ^ Fadel, Leila (July 3, 2025). "Palestinian American writer Hala Alyan finds home and motherhood in a new memoir". NPR. Retrieved July 13, 2025.
  31. ^ Farah |, Summer. "In and Out of the Dark: PW Talks with Hala Alyan". PublishersWeekly.com. Retrieved July 13, 2025.
  32. ^ Chrusciel, Ewa (July 24, 2024). "Grief at the Verge of Revelation: A Conversation with Hala Alyan". The Rumpus. Retrieved July 13, 2025.
  33. ^ Alyan, Hala (January 28, 2024). "'I am not there and I am not here': a Palestinian American poet on bearing witness to atrocity". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
  34. ^ "The Power of Changing Your Mind". TIME. January 17, 2024. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
  35. ^ "What a Palestinian-American Wants You To Know About Dehumanization". Teen Vogue. December 20, 2023. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
  36. ^ Alyan, Hala; Darbha, Vishakha (November 1, 2023). "Opinion | If Palestinian Freedom Makes You Uneasy, Ask Yourself Why". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
  37. ^ Alyan, Hala (October 25, 2023). "Opinion | The Palestine Double Standard". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
  38. ^ "A Letter to my Husband – Hala Alyan". Emergence Magazine. January 21, 2019. Retrieved March 3, 2024.

Further reading

Wael Salam. (2022) The Burden of the Past: Memories, Resistance and Existence in Susan Abulhawa's Mornings in Jenin and Hala Alyan's Salt Houses. Interventions 24:1, pages 31–48. doi:10.1080/1369801X.2020.1863840

Wael Salam. (2022) The Palestinian Re-experience of Historical Violence: “A Wound Never Completely Scabbed Over”. English Studies 103:1, pages 94–112. doi:10.1080/0013838X.2021.1997469

Salam, Wael J., and Safi Mahfouz. “Claims of memory: Transgenerational traumas,: fluid identities, and resistance in Hala Alyan’s Salt Houses.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 56, no. 3 (2020): 296–309. doi:10.1080/17449855.2020.1755718

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