Read and Write with Natasha
This podcast discusses writing life, reviews books, and interviews authors and industry professionals.
Read and Write with Natasha
War's impact on literature: A conversation with Jordan Elgrably
What happens when war disrupts the creative minds of writers?
In this episode, I conversed with Franco-Moroccan-American writer Jordan Elgrably, editor-in-chief of The Markaz Review, where we delved into the intersection of literature and conflict. Here are some of the highlights of our conversation:
- Middle Eastern writers' anthology: We explore Jordan's latest anthology, Stories from the Center of the World, which showcases the diverse voices of Middle Eastern writers navigating the complexities of the current geopolitical landscape.
- Arab American Authors in Focus: We highlight the remarkable journey of Omar El-Akkad and other Arab American authors, examining how trauma and resilience shape their narratives.
- The Editorial Eye: Jordan shares insider tips for aspiring writers, revealing what it takes to make literary submissions stand out in an evolving publishing landscape that's increasingly embracing diverse voices.
Join us for a thought-provoking conversation that celebrates the resilience of creativity in the face of adversity and the promise of more stories to come.
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➡️ 𝗣.𝗦: If you found my content useful, you might want to check out my newsletter, in which I share the ups and downs of the writing journey: https://natashatynes.substack.com/
I feel like people are very distracted by the war and they're not paying attention to a lot of other things that are going on. Of course, our attention is very much. You know, we're all concerned about the starvation and the bombs that continue, so a lot of people have been distracted from their normal daily routine and a lot of the writers in this book have told me themselves that they haven't been able to do a lot of creative work during this period. In fact, I was on a tour in the US, as you know, and the last city that I hit was New York City with Omar El-Akkad, who you know, of course. He wrote the novel American War and what Strange Paradise, and he said that he's been unable to continue working on his third novel because of the war.
Speaker 2:Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have with me today Jordan El Grable. I hope I pronounced this right.
Speaker 2:Jordan is a Franco-American and Moroccan writer and translator whose stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in numerous anthologies and reviews, including Apollé, salama Gandhi and the Paris Review. He is the editor of Stories from the Center of the World New Middle East Fiction, and co-editor with Malu Halasa of Smoot, a new Palestinian reader. And he, el Graby, founded and edits the Marquez Review and divides its time between Montpellier and California. So, jordan, so nice to meet you. And, for full transparency, one of my short stories is included in stories from the center of the world. So, jordan, thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy to have you here today. Joining me today, I'm so happy to have you here today. I think. My first question, jordan, is if you can tell us a bit about the collection of short stories and what inspired you to create this.
Speaker 1:Well, yes, let me just pull my copy down here from the shelf. You know, I've been working in Arab arts and cultures in the US and France for 25 years and there are 25 short stories in here, including one by yourself and one by me and so forth, and these are stories that were originally published in the Marcaz Review. Of course, and there's a diversity among the writers Some of them live in Lebanon or Egypt or other places, some of them are in the UK, some in the US, some in other countries but I think there's a common thread through all of these stories, which is that these writers are speaking in their own terms, or on their own terms, and not trying to be anything that they're not. Now, what they are is typically bicultural or multicultural. These writers often speak two, three, four languages, and quite often they're not American or British, but they are masters of the English language, which I find very interesting.
Speaker 1:Take this Jordanian writer named Natasha Time. She's from Amman and has been in the US since she was, I don't know, 20 or 25. When did you come to the US?
Speaker 2:I was almost 30, like maybe 28.
Speaker 1:Okay, so how is it that you came to write in English? Was that a choice that you made once you came over?
Speaker 2:I already had an audience in English back in Jordan because I had a column in an English newspaper and I used to work for an English newspaper, so it was an easy decision to make.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I have no special claim to fame. My father was an immigrant and I was born in Los Angeles, so I grew up with English as a mother tongue.
Speaker 2:Do you speak Arabic, Jordan?
Speaker 1:La La is the short answer, that's okay.
Speaker 2:So, okay, so Jordan, now there is a lot of, uh, let's say, interest in Arab and, uh, arab, american and Palestinians stories, specifically because of what's happening in the region. And, uh, what was the overall reaction to the book since it came at this, uh, you know very, uh, particular time, um, and you know, in during this conflict, that that's still happening now?
Speaker 1:well, the book just came out, um less than a month ago, and, um, the war on gaza is officially still not over. But this book is almost like a book. It's a cultural collection, it's about the arts. It's not a book about war per se, although a lot of the stories are by people who've been affected by various wars, including the Lebanese civil war, and there's some Palestinian stories that go with the occupation. But I would say, so far the jury is out. We don't know, uh yet what the reaction is. Um, I feel like people are very distracted by the war and they're not paying attention to a lot of other things that are going on. Of course, our attention is, it's very much, uh know, we're all concerned about the starvation and the bombs that continue. So a lot of people have been distracted from their normal daily routine, and a lot of the writers in this book have told me themselves that they haven't been able to do a lot of creative work during this period Interesting.
Speaker 1:In fact, I was on a tour in the US, as you know, and the last city that I hit was New York City with Omar El-Akkad, who you know, of course. He wrote the novel American War and what Strange Paradise, and he said that he's been unable to continue working on his third novel because of the war. And also he felt to express a sense of almost betrayal. His parents are Egyptian. He was raised in Qatar, in Canada, and he made a choice to, you know, become an English language writer. He didn't have to and you know, when he sees, he said, he explained to us that when he saw the way that Palestinian lives were so devalued and dehumanized, he almost felt betrayed. He questioned his devotion and his identity as an English language writer. The countries that host him Canada and the US, you know have basically shown him that his life as an Arab Muslim writer isn't quite as valuable as maybe he thought. Hmm, interesting.
Speaker 2:So you think Arab American writers in general now are too traumatized to put this, you know these thoughts and feelings into creative work.
Speaker 1:It depends. Some people are writing a lot and some are writing not at all. It's different for everyone. I feel more more engaged than ever before and, of course, I'm not ethnically Palestinian. My grandparents were from Morocco. Nonetheless, I can identify with the anxiety, the stress and the drama that's happening there and but I'm not I'm not frozen, I mean, I'm still. I feel like I have as much work to do as I ever did.
Speaker 2:I feel like I have as much work to do as I ever did. So okay, I just want to pivot a bit and ask you about your selection process. So, as an editor, you get a lot of pitches or submissions both to, let's say, to your publication and market review, and also you're now selecting books to be included in an anthology. So let's start first with when people send you a submission, so like, for example, I know you have a deadline coming up soon for your summer edition and I want to submit a story. I guess I have what? 10 days left, and so what would you make me ask? What would you like? What tips would you give me? Now? If I want to submit the story, what should I avoid before you like? Reject me or reject the submission?
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, hurry up, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know, I'll start today.
Speaker 1:You got to get in the groove. Yeah, if you haven't written a story yet, I don't know if you're gonna make it, but uh, uh, come on, of course I can make it, it's all in here yes, well, if it's any of the the stories that you told us uh, in washington, I'm sure that. Uh, yeah, the story about what it was you threw something out in the trash.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. I think writing with humor is helpful. Today I found that when I was on this tour, a lot of the stories in the book are quite serious, but the only ones that I felt like reading were the funny ones, because people were already so earnest and almost, you know, maybe not depressed, but they were not in the best of moods. So the humorous stories worked better. But as far as the submissions goes, I don't have any special advice. If you're serious about writing, you'll write and you'll submit your work for publication, and if you're not serious about it, then you won't. I'm not sure anything I can say can help you.
Speaker 2:So, okay, I'm sure you rejected stories before. Why did you reject them?
Speaker 1:Oh, we have to reject a lot of stories. We feel like they're not complete, they're not finished, or maybe it's the subject matter doesn't interest us, it does has nothing to do with our particular niche, which is, you know, the Middle East, north Africa and those diaspora communities from about Pakistan and Afghanistan to North Africa and Morocco, and sometimes we get stories that have absolutely nothing to do with any of that, so we have to turn them down. We even get, we receive, stories from India and East Asia, and I'm not sure why, but we're not including Indian stories.
Speaker 2:It's just not our thing. Okay, so I want to talk a bit about the, not the Arab literature per se, but the Arab American literature, right. So now there, which is good news there's a push for diversity in publishing, especially in the US. There's oh, they're always looking for diverse writers, own voices, and all of that. Where do we stand when it comes to Arab American literature, and how are agents and publishers responding to submissions by Arab American writers?
Speaker 1:Well, look, let's take the example, the rare example, of Omar al-Akkad in his book American War. He got a tremendous advance for that book. Publishers are always looking for a great novel and although it's harder for somebody with an Arab last name to break through, if the work is really good they can do it. Or you have a name that sounds Muslim or whatever. American agents and publishers are probably going to be a little bit reticent or skeptical. They're not used to finding the diamond in the rough. They're not used to. They think that Salman Rushdie or Omar al-Akkad is like the rare shooting star that they have to catch like the rare shooting star that they have to catch. In other words, there's not very high expectations that writers from our part of the world are going to show up with great works. But that's their blind spot, because there is a lot of work. Some of it has to be translated from Arabic and Persian and other languages. But you're talking about the landscape for Middle Eastern writers in the US. I think it's expanded a lot in the last 20 years since 9-11. Now are those writers making a living at their work and are they highly paid? Honestly, I think those who are. I can name them on two hands. Maybe I would include Omar al-Akkad. Obviously I would include Ayad Akhtar. His family were from Pakistan. His novel was Homeland Elegies. His play was Disgrace, which won the Pulitzer Prize. An Iranian-American playwright, a woman whose name escapes me, won also won a Pulitzer Prize for her play, I think in either this year or last year. So you know, there's a beginning of a movement, almost. There also have been a number of anthologies that talk about bicultural identity. I know that there's been two or three anthologies by Iranian-American writers Persis Kareem edited one of those and there have been a couple of anthologies of Arab American stories and there are a few anthologies of Arab American plays. In fact, our next issue coming out in two days is devoted to theater. We have put together a list of our top you know our picks for the best theater books, which are, you know, plays and short plays and monologues and books about middle eastern theater, and so the there's three or four books already that have come out that include plays by arab, american and iranian american writers. So I I think we're we're closer to the beginning than the middle of this story and I don't really have a crystal ball, but I can say this that Omar al-Aqab's novel American War was so good that it convinced the publishers to really invest in it. He got an enormous advance for that book and then he made royalties afterwards. The book sold a lot of copies and he's still a very humble person, but he's had this incredible success.
Speaker 1:It didn't happen the same quite the same way with the second novel. What strange paradise. But that was also. I thought that was a quite a good novel and, uh, it'll be interesting to see what he does next. But you know there's also um diana abu jabber, who's also a jian-American writer, now lives in Florida. I believe she's had some success. Her first novel was Arab Jazz and she's published several other novels so, and she's been around for 20 years at least.
Speaker 2:You said something that I'd never heard before, which is saying well, I heard it, but not in that context, right? So, yes, there are push for diversity, but there's still worry of Arab last names or Muslim last names. Do you think that's different from, let's say, an Asian American or Hispanic American or like any other minorities, like any other minorities? Do you think other minorities would get a higher chance of publishing than arab americans?
Speaker 1:because you know 9, 11 and and the repercussions of that. Look, I think, um, agents and publishers, um, whether they understand it or not, are a little bit um, biased. They expect great things from white writers. They don't have high expectations for minority writers. And again, I'm journalizing. But I know one Latina writer. Well, she's half Latina and so her last name is Mexican. Last name she wrote a book about a famous New York American woman of the theater and it was the first biography of this person which you would think she was very important in the history of acting in Hollywood and New York theater. That book would have been, you know, gotten a good advance and so forth, but I think, because her last name was Mexican, she didn't get the advance that somebody else would.
Speaker 1:I think there's still a play, there's some racism that people who are in the publishing business don't even really see themselves. They can't see the forest from the trees. However, there's been a whole crop of Asian-American writers who've been very successful. Amy Tan is the best-known one, but there are many others. Just Chen is doing well, obviously. Viet Nguyen, with his novels the Sympathizer and the Committed, he's doing extremely well. He's got a TV series. So there are all these breakthroughs happening.
Speaker 1:I think it's really hard to generalize, but I think you know we discussed this. The New York Times did a survey of almost all of the novels published from the 50s until about five years ago, and they found that something like 97% of them were by white writers. So you know, 3% were by minority writers, and so the publishing industry. It was a wake-up call. This article was published. The survey was published in the New York Times in 2020, so just four years ago. So maybe since that point, you know, editors and readers and agents are a little bit more aware of their bias and are trying to look for other ideas, other kinds of writers try to kind of break the stereotypes or maybe change the appetite of readers so that they can read more Arab American literature.
Speaker 1:Well, we publish the best writers that we can, consistently. So if readers find the Markaz Review, then they're going to find quality writing. Our standard is the New Yorker. We want the quality of what we're publishing to be as good as what you find there. It just so happens that all of the writers are from, you know, an Arab culture, or from Iran, or from Turkey, or from that whole region, but other than that, they write about, you know, whatever they want. We don't dictate subject matter. We publish reviews, we publish fiction and we publish a lot of nonfiction essays.
Speaker 2:So what do you think the future holds for? I mean, I know, you know you can't predict the future, but what do you hope the future would hold for our-Marki's review? Where do you see it going?
Speaker 1:Well, we are already working in a particular direction. You know, we curated this book here, stories from the Center of the World, and we curated the next one, samud, a new Palestinian reader that's coming out in just five months. And we're we've our Arabic editor, mohamed Rabieh, who's Egyptian has four novels out. One of them has been published in a few languages, called Otared O-T-A-R-E-D. It's a dystopian crime novel. He has put together an anthology of the best Arab short stories that he's found in Arabic that we are translating into English. So that's. You know, we're curating different books. So the future for the Marcaz Review is to continue to publish online, but also to publish, you know, anthologies that we curate and we partner with other publishers. So you know, if you're a publisher, if you're an agent, you can look to the Marcaz Review to discover new writers. Maybe you have a collection of short stories that you're editing and that we. You know. Somebody would see one of your stories in the Marcaz Review and go oh well, maybe she's got more of these, you know.
Speaker 2:I do actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm sure you have a lot of stories. An example is our Arabic translator, rana Asfoud, who's also from Jordan and is based again now in Amman. She translated a story. Well, she translated an excerpt from the first novel by a Libyan writer named Muhammad Al-Nasr. And because his story appeared in the Marcaise Review, a French publisher saw the story, liked it and then bought the rights to publish his novel in France.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:And so you know, publishers are beginning to look at our content, you know, look for potential books and deals to make.
Speaker 2:So are you publicizing these success stories? Well, I think the more people read about them, the more you know, they realize that there's an appetite for this.
Speaker 1:Well, yes, in fact, I should tell our publicist. We have a book publicist who's helping with this novel, this novel, this collection of stories and others, and you know I should mention that to her. I don't think I have, but, uh, that's, that's one among a few examples. So you know, we're not really good at publicity, we're not as slick as um, as the New Yorker in terms of marketing. Uh, we don't have the budget. They do. You know, one of the big problems with the Markhauser view is, uh, insufficient, you know, means we have enough money to be able to pay writers for their work when we publish them, but we don't have very much money for, you know, making slick videos and doing, you know, a lot of marketing. So you know, it's almost like to find us is a matter of luck, not a matter of oh. You know we have this TikTok video that went viral. You know we don't have any viral videos as yet. So how do you find out about the Mark Khajiit Review? How did you find out about it?
Speaker 2:Through Rana, through social media, I saw some of Rana's posts. I didn't know Rana before I reached out to her. I told her oh, it looks like we have a lot in common, you know. And that was it. And then she reached out to me and asked me to submit a story. And so for me it was through Instagram, through other people is to partner with Arab or Middle Eastern influencers who have a lot of social media following and they can spread the word. And you know some of them, like Omar Al-Aqad and others. They have, you know, tons of followers. Or like Fadi Zaghmoud and others, and they can really help spread the word. So that would be like you would have an Arab writer with the book talking about it. Or you know a copy of Al-Marki's review. And this is how you can, because people trust names more than brands. So if Fadi says, read this, I would read this. Then suddenly I would see Al-Marki's review and I don't know what it is about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. In fact, there are writers like Yusuf Raha in Cairo, fadi Zaghmoud Mansoura, ezzeldin Salar Abdo. You know, there's a number of writers, iranian and Arab writers who are well-known, have a following, who we have published, we've, we've published the translations, or so, yeah, they, um, they. That's how people find out about us often.
Speaker 2:Did you get any reviews on on this book? Uh, what was the reaction?
Speaker 1:We have only had, uh, what is considered trade reviews. So far, the book has received a uh, like an official review and like one of the literary reviews, such as the Los Angeles Review of Books or the New York Review of Books, and we need those. And the truth is that there are a lot of books that come out and it's not guaranteed that every book is going to be well-reviewed. We try to review as many books as we can. We need more reviewers, we need good reviewers. So the best way to break into the Marcaz review is to write a good book review. A good book review is an essay. It's a review. It's a what I call a review essay, where you know where there's kind of an idea behind it, there's an argument that the writer is making. It isn't just like a book report oh, here's what the book is about. No, we don't. We're not even asking you to tell us so much. You know what's the plot of the book or you know what's the, you know what are the details of the book, but to you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I read somewhere and I interviewed some people on this on the podcast who mentioned that what really moves the needle when it comes to book publishing is no longer a review in the New Yorker or the New York Times. It's, ironically, tiktok or social media. This is what's selling books now, unlike what it used to be. So a review in the New York?
Speaker 1:TikTok Are people making TikTok videos about books?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean, for example, you can say Colleen Hoover, who is a famous romance writer. She's like one of now. I think her books has exceeded Stephen King. It all started because some TikTokers picked up her books and they started making viral videos about them.
Speaker 2:So now what is actually moving the needle when it comes to book sales is no longer those reviews in, because very, it's, it's very niche market for people who are actually willing to pay for the new york times, you know, to pay for the paywall, to go, uh, or the new yorker and others. It's very niche, but it's not moving the needle. And uh, that's my understanding from many authors and publishers I talked to on on on this podcast. So the even the market is is shifting towards how you're selling books these days To the degree that some agents or publishers would not even take you on if you don't as an individual, if you don't have a big social media following, even if you're you know the next Shakespeare, even if your book is amazing. If they look and you see you have five followers on Instagram, it's an offer them immediately. It's not worth investing in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I'm sure that our social media has helped the stories book to move, but we don't. You know, this is news to me the issue about TikTok.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, I've seen it. I've seen I bought so many books from TikTok. I personally and you can see I buy a lot of books and I personally, you know, pulled out my credit card and I bought a book because I saw the review on TikTok To the degree that I haven't even seen it.
Speaker 2:I haven't even seen a TikTok review, so I'm really out of it yeah, and then if now, if you go to, at least in the us, if you go to bars and nobles and books a million and others, there's a whole section called book talk where they dedicating uh, sales of books for the books that are viral on tiktok. So if you now go to bars and noble here in my city, there's a book talk section and it's all the books that are viral on TikTok. So that is what's happening now that it's a viral video of a book on TikTok is worth more than New York Times Book Review.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I'm going to meet the editor of the New York Times Book Review. Okay, well, I'm going to meet. I'm going to meet the editor of the New York Times Book Review tomorrow in London, coincidentally. But I'm going to say you know what, don't review my book. You know it's not going to help at all, so it really doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:No, let I mean you know it's the more the merrier. I'm just saying that you're going to get the New York you know the people who read the New York Times to read your book. But I'm just saying that's a niche market. If you want to be more mainstream, tiktok is the place. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, ok, this is news to me. I had to come on your podcast to find out about this. My goodness, but okay.
Speaker 2:So, jordan, what do you have plans for you in the future? My understanding is you're working on your own novel, correct?
Speaker 1:Yes, Well, first of all, I have an agent and I basically pitched her two nonfiction books, one of which is almost finished. It's a collection of my interviews with novelists over the years.
Speaker 1:And there are I don't know three dozen novelists of all different kinds of, you know, ethnic backgrounds. So that book is almost finished, and the other one I pitched her is called why I don't know what it's called they Kill Writers, don't they? It's a book that's about the history of regimes that kill writers and why they did it, and it includes some very well-known names, but also names of writers that people may not have been aware of. I already have a chapter from that book coming out in the fall in another anthology, so I'm going to finish those first and then I'm going to go back to working on my fiction. Oh, this is great.
Speaker 2:How did you find your agent? Because I talked to a lot of authors, inspiring authors, and landing an agent is pretty difficult. Many of them, you know, query for years and nothing, so how did you find yours?
Speaker 1:Quite simply, I was recommended by one of her clients.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:One of her clients is someone I know who knows the work I do, and he recommended me to her and then she and I, you know, we exchanged some emails and we had a meeting of the minds when we met. So online that is and yeah, so it was really word of mouth.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is great. Okay, so, jordan, before we conclude, what pitching tips would you give for someone who wants to be published in the Marcus Review?
Speaker 1:Well, actually, first I want to share with you a trick that I learned when I was a young wannabe writer. That was taught to me by a journalism professor. He said if you don't have anything published yet or anything important published, you should find a really good angle of story that you want to do and pitch the subject and the editor at the same time. And so I'll give you an example of how that worked. There was a famous writer coming to town when I lived in Paris years ago, and so the writer's name was John Fowles. He wrote the French Lieutenant's Woman, the Magus and other books, and I contacted the Herald Tribune, which was the big paper in English in Paris, and said I'm interviewing this writer, Tribune, I want to do a story with you, Mr Fowles, and he said yes. So you kind of use you play one against the other to be able to break in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and as far as pitching tips for the Markhauser Review, just write a good query so that the editors understand exactly what you're proposing. Make it clear, Don't make us try to figure out what you're talking about. You know, sometimes people say, oh, I might go see this movie, or you want a review of it. I don't know the movie. So I'm like who are you? What do you want to know? I don't have time for that. You have to make it very clear in your query exactly what it is that you're proposing and also why you're the person to write it. You have to have some justification for why you should write XYZ story.
Speaker 2:Do you think only Arab writers should write Arab stories?
Speaker 1:No, I think writers are writers like actors are actors. I mean, obviously, when you have direct experience, you're much more convincing in your work. Direct experience, you're much more convincing in your work. But I think anybody can write about anything, as long as they do the work and you know they connect with the readers. I don't believe in this politically correct. Well, I'm Moroccan and French, so I can only write about Moroccan and French subjects. And you're Jordanian, so don't dare write about any any Arab from any other country except Jordan. I mean, it's just nonsense.
Speaker 2:Well, um any final thoughts before we conclude? Yeah, of course All opinions matter. Yes, it's a safe. It's a safe space here at this podcast.
Speaker 1:So all opinions matter? Yeah, all opinions matter and, uh, everyone has an opinion, but you know what they say about that, right, what I want to keep this clean, so I'm not going to go there. Okay, I appreciate talking with you and I look forward to seeing your next submission. And hopefully your stories will come out in book form next year or the year after.
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you, um and for for anyone who is yeah, yeah, I will, I will. Uh, just give me I'll. I'll be done with the short story for you in like I say, five days, I promise, but, um, okay, so before we conclude, how can people reach you, jordan? What's the best way to reach you?
Speaker 1:Jordan at the Marcosorg.
Speaker 2:Great. Thank you very much for joining me today, jordan, and for anyone who is listening or watching, thank you for joining us today for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha and, until we meet again, thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time, happy reading, happy writing.
