For me, almost always, the answer was cake..

Dad says that everyone invented baklava.” It occurs to me now to wonder what that means. Aunt Aya rolls her eyes. “Your father? He is the worst of th….

Here is something you have to understand about stories: They point you in the right direction but they can't take you all the way there. Stories are ….

I'm constantly at war with myself to quit goofing around, and the internet hasn't helped that any. I've learned that I have to be sort of exploitive ….

If you only write for 15 minutes at a time, you can write a book and still have time for Legos..

Consider the difference between the first and third person in poetry [...] It's like the difference between looking at a person and looking through t….

The daily writing practice is something I used to hear batted around a lot in writing workshops - which is probably why I dropped out of all the writ….

If you silence yourself, if you try to be good, if you try to be polite, or toe a party line, you end up paying for that in the long run. You pay for….

My heritage will always be an element in my work but as I've written, traveled, and lived more, I've found that the questions and the search - for me….

The question of identity has always been a murky issue in my own life and my writing bounces that right back. My father was adamant that my sisters a….

Love and prayer are intimately related..

The obsession with food filled my childhood - that's what happens when your parents are from a place or time where people really might starve. In Ame….

Cultural identity is of course connected to this issue. When I was younger, it was inspiring to write about the people that raised me, especially the….

As a literary device, sugar and pastry carried so many nuances - the sweetness of the past, the danger of overeating and addiction, the political and….

I heard friends and strangers saying, "You don't look Arab - what are you supposed to be?" It really is a tired old problem for children of immigrant….

I honestly never intended food to occupy so much of my creative work. Food-writing often seems about to plummet straight into sentimentality. I think….

Every day I try to do some small thing connected to writing. Or I'll station myself at a café and try to hold myself captive with chocolate. I find t….