Literary Partners Program: Kweli International Literary Festival

Author Rajia Hassib reads from A Pure Heart and has a conversation with writer Susan Muaddi Darraj.

A Pure Heart is “[a] captivating novel about family, love, and home. Hassib masterfully excavates the secret loyalties that drive women to make fateful choices and, in so doing, explores important themes of guilt and responsibility, shame and forgiveness.”
—Laila Lalami, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist The Moor’s Account.

This event is made possible through the Poets House Literary Partners program.

Rajia Hassib was born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt, before moving to the US at age twenty-three. A decade later, she returned to college to study English Writing and Literature and to pursue my life-long dream of becoming a writer. Hassib holds a BA and an MA in English, both from Marshall University. After graduation,she worked briefly as a part-time Instructor of English at Marshall University, teaching an Introduction to Creative Writing class as well as a class on Postcolonial Literature. Hassib lives in Charleston, WV with my husband and two children.