Laila Lalami is the author of the novels Hope And Other Dangerous Pursuits, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; Secret Son, on the Orange Prize longlist, and 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 Man Booker Prize longlist and was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in theLos Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, the Guardian, the New York Times, and in many anthologies. She is the recipient of a British Council Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship and is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside.