Laila Halaby is the author of two novels, Once in a Promised Land (Washington Post top 100 works of fiction for 2007; Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers) and West of the Jordan (PEN Beyond Margins award winner), as well as two collections of poetry, why an author writes to a guy holding a fish and my name on his tongue. Laila has two master’s degrees (UCLA and LMU), was a Fulbright recipient, and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona where she works as a counselor, museum educator, and creative writing teacher.