BOOKS
Diana Abu-Jaber
Called "outstanding" by the Washington Post, Diana's latest work, Fencing With the King, a novel of Middle Eastern intrigue and adventure, was featured by Apple books, Goodreads.com, and The Millions as one of this spring’s most-anticipated novels.
Diana was born in Syracuse, New York to an American mother and a Jordanian father. Her family moved to Jordan a few times throughout her childhood, and elements of both her American and Jordanian experiences, as well as cross-cultural issues, especially culinary reflections, appear in her work.
Diana Abu-Jaber’s culinary memoir, Life Without A Recipe, has been described as “a book of love, death, and cake.” Ruth Reichl calls it “bold and luscious” and “indispensable to anyone trying to forge their own truer path.”
Her young-adult novel, Silverworld, a fantasy with an Arab-American girl at its heart, was published last spring from Crown Books / Random House.
Her novel, Birds Of Paradise, won the 2012 Arab-American National Book Award. It was also named one of the top books of the year by National Public Radio, the Washington Post, and the Oregonian.
Her novel, Origin was named one of the best books of the year by the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post. Her second novel, Crescent, won the PEN Center Award for Literary fiction and the American Book Award. Her first novel, Arabian Jazz won the Oregon Book award for Literary Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award.
The Language of Baklava, her first memoir, won the Northwest Booksellers’ Award, and has been translated into many languages.
Diana teaches writing and literature at Portland State University and divides her time between South Florida and Portland, Oregon.
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