Susan Muaddi Darraj: BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA (With Carla Du Pree)
We are thrilled to host award-winning author, Susan Muaddi Darraj, in celebration of her debut novel! BEHIND YOU IS THE SEA gives voice to the diverse residents of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore—from young activists in conflict with their traditional parents to the poor who clean for the rich—lives which intersect across divides of class, generation, and religion. We hope you will join us to hear from and discuss what Naomi Shihab Nye calls a “necessary, beautiful work.” We are thrilled that the inimitable literary force Carla Du Pree will join Susan in conversation.
Susan Muaddi Darraj is the author of A Curious Land, a novel in stories which earned an American Book Award and was a finalist for a Palestine Book Award. In 2018, she was named a Ford Fellow by USA Artists. A past winner of the Maryland State Art Council’s Independent Artist Award, she is also the author of Farah Rocks, the first children’s book series to feature a Palestinian-American character. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and teaches at Johns Hopkins University.
Carla Du Pree is a fiction writer, a state and national arts advocate, a literary consultant, and the executive director of the literary nonprofit, CityLit Project, which holds an annual award-winning CityLit Festival. As part of her work with CityLit, she co-founded Scribente Maternum, (a fancy way of saying Writing Mamas) which holds an annual Write Like A Mother Retreat. Her fiction appears in several literary journals. She is the recipient of fiction fellowships from the Peter Bullough Foundation, Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts (founded by Jacqueline Woodson), Rhode Island Writers Colony for Writers of Color (directed by Jason Reynolds), Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2x), Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and Poetry Foundation through Furious Flower Poetry Center. She is a Rubys and MSAC grantee. She was awarded the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies’ inaugural Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Individual Award and the Maryland State Department of Education’s Arts Leader for April 2020. She is a member of the Wintergreen Women Writers’ Collective and serves on executive committees of several local, state, and national boards, all relating to the arts and with the intention of magnifying diversity and inclusion work. She holds a Master’s from Johns Hopkins University’s Writing Seminars, has three adult children, one grandson, and a beau of 45 years.
