Diana Abu-Jaber was born in Upstate New York and grew up between America and Jordan. Her father is Jordanian and her mother is American--of both Palestinian and American Irish heritage. She received her doctorate in English literature from the State University of New York. She has taught literature and creative writing at the University of Michigan, the University of Oregon, and UCLA. Currently she is a writer-in-Residence at Portland State University Her first novel, "Arabian Jazz", came out in 1993 from Harcourt Brace. It won the Oregon Book Award and was a finalist for the national PEN/Hemingway award, and is being republished by W.W. Norton this spring. Her new novel, "Crescent", which won a National Endowment for the Arts award, will also be published by W.W. Norton in April 2003. Diana Abu-Jaber has published several short stories in literary magazines, including Ploughshares, The North American Review, and Story. She writes regularly for the Oregonian, The Washington Post, and other newspapers. She recently returned from Amman where she was on a Fulbright research grant award, conducting interviews with Jordanian and Palestinian women about their lives to develop background for her next novel, "Memories of Birth". She won a National Endowment for the Arts grant for this manuscript.
|
