Diana Abu-Jaber

Fields: Fiction Writing; Post-Colonial Literature; First Generation Writers; Film Studies

Biography:

Currently the Writer-in-Residence at the Department of English, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of Crescent, which was awarded the 2004 PEN Center USA Award for Literary Fiction and the Before Columbus Foundation's American Book Award and was named one of the twenty best novels of 2003 by The Christian Science Monitor, and Arabian Jazz, which won the 1994 Oregon Book Award and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award.

She is also the author of a memoir, The Language of Baklava, and Origin (2007) the first in a new mystery series staring Lena, a highly gifted, intuitive fingerprint expert.

On PSU faculty since 1996.

Books:

• Arabian Jazz (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993)
• Crescent (W. W. Norton & Company, April 2003)
• The Language of Baklava (Pantheon Books, March 2005)
• Origin (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007)

Articles and Essays:

• The Goddess of Flowers (Washington Post, 7/11/2004)
• This Thanksgiving, This Ramadan (Washington Post, 11/11/2002)
• A World of Difference (Washington Post, 9/6/2002)
• On Recognition and Nation (Washington Post, 9/30/2001)
• $125 For My Thoughts? (Salon.com, 2/10/2000)