Hala Alyan

Hala Alyan was born in 1986 in Carbondale, Illinois. Her family lived in Kuwait before seeking asylum in the United States after the Iraqi invasion of 1990, and she grew up between Oklahoma, Texas, Maine, and Lebanon, studying at the American University of Beirut, Columbia University, and Rutgers University, where she earned her doctorate in clinical psychology. She works as a clinical psychologist in New York, where she also teaches at New York University.

Alyan is the author of five poetry collections, from Atrium (2012) to The Moon That Turns You Back (2024). Her debut novel, Salt Houses (2017) — the story of a Palestinian family scattered by the Six-Day War and every upheaval since — won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award. She has also published the novel The Arsonists’ City (2021) and the memoir I’ll Tell You When I’m Home (2025), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Selected works

• Hijra (poems, 2016)
• Salt Houses (novel, 2017)
• The Twenty-Ninth Year (poems, 2019)
• The Arsonists’ City (novel, 2021)
• The Moon That Turns You Back (poems, 2024)
• I’ll Tell You When I’m Home (memoir, 2025)

Sources

• Hala Alyan — Poetry Foundation
• “Spoiler” — The New Yorker