Congratulations again to all my awe-inspiring co-contributors and our fantastic editors, Maria and Zahra!

There are several misprints in the story, which Cathy Grossman (the author) has assured me will be fixed online soon. Sorry to anyone who picked up the print edition!

You can listen live on the website or find me in the archives!

And don’t forget–if you’re in Portland tonight, please stop by Powell’s to say hello! I’ll be reading from I Speak for Myself, signing books, and monkeying around.

Update: Here’s the link to the KBOO archive with my interview.

From left: Samantha Matsumoto, me, and Kiersi Coleman at the Oregonian's Newspaper Institute. Image from Cathy Noah.

This is the result of a week-long journalism camp for underrepresented students. The articles are wonderfully put together, including links and video. I hope the newspaper industry can stick around long enough to scoop up these promising young journalists.

Check out the wonderful story of I Speak for Myself by Kiersi Coleman, and a great  in-depth profile of me by Samantha Matsumoto. It was a pleasure to meet these inspiring young women and read their excellent work–meeting ladies like them makes me feel alright about the kids these days.

My favorite analysis came from KABOBfest, who provides a great breakdown of why MacMaster’s hoax is a serious issue and deconstructs the problematic stuff behind it:

In a queer turn of events it has been exposed that Amina Arraf, known to most as the “Gay Girl in Damascus” is no more than a contrived Orientalist avatar of one 40-year-old white man from Georgia, Tom MacMaster. The first words that came to mind upon hearing the news, were “ILAAN KOS…” but we’re trying to refrain from wasting our indignation on curses (albeit justified) and re-orient the conversation into a productive analysis of what MacMaster’s hoax means for the position of Arabs in western media.

I talk with the International Business Times on Tom MacMaster’s blogging hoax, along with a host of other awesome thinkers, such as May Alhassen and Najla Said. Definitely check it out!

Fakhraie’s piece,  “Roots,” appears in “I Speak for Myself: American Women on Being Muslim.” The collection of writing by 40 American Muslim women under the age of 40 was published this month by Ashland’s White Cloud Press. Each entry breaks open the life of a young woman who is at once ordinary and exceptional, who lives her life of faith under a spotlight that is often harsh.

Fakhraie, 27, lives a life in Corvallis that is littered with broken stereotypes, but she chose an essay for “I Speak for Myself” that makes her sound like any young adult, religious or not, who dreads going home.

“Underneath it all, we Muslims aren’t that different,” she says. “Our experience is the American experience.”

Give the whole thing a read and learn all about me. There are some pretty cool photos in there, too!

Check out the announcement from OSU: “Fatemeh Fakhraie, a graduate and employee of OSU, will give a talk and reading from her new anthology on the experience of being an American Muslim woman on Monday, May 23 in downtown Corvallis.”

The Corvallis Gazette-Times has a hilariously titled announcement, as well: “American Muslim woman to Speak Monday in Corvallis.”

Trust me, folks, you don’t want to miss an American Muslim woman speaking! It’s the event of the decade. So stop by and see me–not just speaking, but reading and signing books, too!

There is nothing too provocative in her essay, nothing that furrows the brow and causes one to say, “Gee, that’s odd.” That’s the objective, Fakhraie said — giving readers an opportunity to become better acquainted with a culture commonly mischaracterized.

“Somewhere I read that 60 percent of Americans said they’ve never interacted with a Muslim. That’s really hard to believe because there’s kind of a lot of us,” she said with a laugh.