Writer, poet and psychologist Hala Alyan joins this episode to discuss her newest poetry collection The Moon That Turns You Back. We hear about how she thinks about form, and cultivating empathy in art. Hala also talks about her experience promoting a book during the ongoing violence attacks on Gaza, and what it’s like for her therapy patients to read her work.

The Stacks Book Club selection for April is The January Children by Safia Elhillo. We will discuss the book on April 24th with Hala Alyan.

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon

• The Moon That Turns You Back by Hala Alyan
• New York University (New York, NY)
• “Naturalized” by Hala Alyan
• “Revision” by Hala Alyan, Josh Begley and Hamed Sinno (IG)
• The January Children by Safia Elhillo
• There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib
• Modge Podge
• The Twenty-Ninth Year by Hala Alyan
• “If Palestinian Freedom Makes You Uncomfortable, Ask Yourself Why” (Hala Alyan, The New York Times)
• Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
• The Arsonist’s City by Hala Alyan
• Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
• American Mermaid by Julia Langbein
• People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry
• Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
• Everest, Inc. by Will Cockrell
• Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
• Ernest Hemingway
• What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo
• Grey’s Anatomy (ABC)
• Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley
• Splinters by Leslie Jamison
• The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
• The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey
• Inside Out by Demi Moore
• Finding Me by Viola Davis
• Rememberings by Sinéad O’Connor
• I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
• Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
• The Quiet Tenant by Clémence Michallon
• Mahmoud Darwish
• Greenlight Bookstore (Brooklyn, NY)
• Books are Magic (Brooklyn, NY)
• Word Bookstores (Brooklyn, NY)
• The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
• Bint by Ghinwa Jawhari
• Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong
• The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo
• Rashid Khalidi

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