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Hala Alyan

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Hala Alyan


Born
in Carbondale, IL, The United States
July 27, 1986

Website

Twitter
@halanalyan

Genre
Poetry, Literature & Fiction, Psychology


Hala Alyan was born in Carbondale, Illinois, and grew up in Kuwait, Oklahoma, Texas, Maine, and Lebanon. She earned a BA from the American University of Beirut and an MA from Columbia University. While completing her doctorate in clinical psychology from Rutgers University, she specialized in trauma and addiction work with various populations.

Her memoir, I'll Tell You When I'm Home is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster in June 2025.

She has published two novels, her debut Salt Houses (2017), is the winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize, and her second novel, The Arsonists' City (2021).

Alyan's poetry collections include Atrium (2012), winner of the 2013 Arab America ...more

Combine Editions

Average rating: 4.1 · 32,896 ratings · 4,896 reviews · 18 distinct works • Similar authors
Salt Houses
4.01 avg rating — 20,119 ratings — published 2017 — 18 editions
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The Arsonists' City
4.31 avg rating — 8,060 ratings — published 2021 — 11 editions
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The Moon That Turns You Bac...
4.17 avg rating — 1,337 ratings — published 2024 — 6 editions
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The Twenty-Ninth Year: Poems
3.90 avg rating — 1,116 ratings — published 2019 — 7 editions
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I'll Tell You When I'm Home...
4.39 avg rating — 912 ratings — published 2025 — 7 editions
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You're Not a Girl in a Movie
4.01 avg rating — 980 ratings — published 2020 — 2 editions
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Hijra (Crab Orchard Series ...
4.38 avg rating — 82 ratings — published 2016 — 2 editions
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We Call to the Eye & the Ni...
by
4.54 avg rating — 65 ratings
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Atrium: Poems
4.15 avg rating — 60 ratings — published 2012
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Four Cities
4.59 avg rating — 44 ratings — published 2015 — 2 editions
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More books by Hala Alyan…

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Quotes by Hala Alyan  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“What is a life? A series of yeses and noes, photographs you shove in a drawer somewhere, loves you think will save you but that cannot. Continuing to move, enduring, not stopping even when there is pain. That's all life is, he wants to tell her. It's continuing.”
― Hala Alyan, Salt Houses
49 likes
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“Nostalgia is an affliction. Life a fever or a cancer, the longing for what had vanished wasting a person away. Not just the unbearable losses, but the small things as well.”
― Hala Alyan, Salt Houses
18 likes
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“She still loves him. This is the fact she wakes up to each morning. She checks it, sometimes, a tongue probing an aching tooth, making sure it still hurts.”
― Hala Alyan, Salt Houses
tags: heartbreak, love, unrequited-love
16 likes
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Topics Mentioning This Author

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Reading with Style: This topic has been closed to new comments. SU 2017 Completed Tasks 1335 129 Aug 31, 2017 09:00PM  
Fiction Fanatics: October EXTRA Challenge 2017 29 33 Oct 30, 2017 09:46PM  
Fiction Fanatics: * October POINTS Challenge 44 32 Nov 22, 2017 04:35PM  
The Seasonal Read...: This topic has been closed to new comments. Completed Tasks: PLEASE DO NOT DELETE ANY POST IN THIS THREAD 2639 791 Nov 30, 2017 09:01PM  
Retro Chapter Chi...: April 2018: Historical Book Spring Edition Suggestions 23 27 Mar 15, 2018 03:23PM  
Retro Chapter Chi...: April 2018: Newsletter 11 22 Mar 31, 2018 06:20PM  


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