Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor's Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was on the longlist for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her essays appear regularly in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, Harper's, Guardian, and New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She is currently Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California at Riverside. She lives in Los Angeles.