NASEEM RAKHA & KAZIM ALI

Naseem Rakha is an award-winning journalist whose stories have been heard on National Public Radiio’s All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Marketplace Radio, Christian Science Monitor, and Living on Earth. Prior to journalism, Naseem taught Holistic Resource Management to farmers, ranchers and tribes throughout the US and Canada. She is a graduate of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where she received her degree in Geology.

As a reporter covering an execution for public radio and then later in interviews with parents of murder victims, Rakha found it baffling how an individual can move from hate to forgiveness, despondency to hope, when dealing with the murderer of their son. She decided to explore what that road looks like and what toll it exacts in her highly successful first novel, The Crying Tree, released in 2009.

“The murder of a child dredges up the most painful emotions,” explained Rakha. “There is no justice in it, no justification, and no way to find solace. Remorse and vengeance become inseparable from the souls of the people left behind. Yet, somehow there are inspirational stories of those who have come to forgiveness.”

The Crying Tree is set in southern Illinois, central Oregon, and Salem's Oregon State Penitentiary.

It was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick; a BookPage debut novel pick; listed as a San Francisco Chronicle BestSeller, a Book Passage First Editions Club pick, and was featured as an Emerging Voice at BookExpo America in 2009.

For more information: http://www.naseemrakha.com/

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Kazim Ali, born in the Croydon, England, received his BA and MA from the University of Albany and a MFA from New York University. He is the author of three books of poetry: The Far Mosque (winner of Alice James Books' New England/New York Award), The Fortieth Day, and most recently Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities. He is also the author of two novels, Quinn's Passage and Disappearance of Seth. Ali is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College and teaches in the low-residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine. He served four years on the liberal arts faculty of The Culinary Institute of America and spent several years dancing with the Cocoon Theatre Modern Dance Company.

He is a founding editor of Nightboat Books. http://www.kazimali.com