At long last, I have an author website. Please check it out: UzmaAslamKhan
I started 16 months ago but abandoned it as 1. I hate how stupid technology makes me feel 2. Looking back on a 20-year career of five novels and several other works demanded things of me that I wasn't expecting.
For starters, it required me to acknowledge myself. I looked through new and old reviews and interviews, book launches and photographs. All that I've done. Not easy. I always think I haven't done much. There's a sloughing off of self, inevitable for any artist, but since I write slowly, that self-obliteration in the service of rebirth can be very prolonged, and go very, very deep.
Yet, I'm still the same person, too--the one for whom writing is an act of faith, often blind and fully immersive. The one who, long before my first book's release in March 2001, had to come out of that trance-like state to contend with the racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and misogyny of the book industry. It took 4 years to find that first one a home, and one rejection was explained thus: I didn't have a Jemima Khan-like character, aka white woman bridge character, and my novels would never find an audience till I did that. Well, you all know I never did. Never occurred to me to listen, or care. I'm the one who's always centered brown bodies not meant to exist, lovingly. So there!
In putting together this site, mostly I've been amazed by all the folks who took the time to read my books and amplify them. Some have come and gone. Others have stayed. I am full with gratitude for your labor of love. Thank you.
It allows me to give me love. I click on each tab--for each novel, for short fiction and non-fiction, interview and events--as though scrolling through the pages of someone else's life. It's not a bad one.
I hope you visit. And let me know what you think. No doubt there are glitches and ways to improve. Also, I'm told it looks better on a computer (not phone).
Thank you.
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| UzmaAslamKhan |
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