On today’s show, our guest is Ramiza Shamoun Koya, author of the new novel The Royal Abduls, from Portland’s Forest Avenue Press, in conversation with Joanna Rose, Portland-based writer and teacher, and author of the award-winning novel Little Miss Strange.
Ramiza’s fiction and nonfiction has appeared in publications such as Lumina, Washington Square Review, Catamaran, and Mutha magazine, and she’s been a fellow at both the MacDowell Colony and Blue Mountain Center. Ramiza has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and has lived and taught in Spain, the Czech Republic, and Morocco. Ramiza now lives here in Portland.
In addition to the novel Little Miss Strange, which was an Oregon Book Award finalist, and won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Fiction Prize, Joanna Rose’s work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Story Magazine, Artisan Journal, High Desert Journal, Oregon Humanities, Cream City Review, and Northern Lights. She teaches youth and adults around Portland for Literary Arts Writers in the Schools, the Portland Book Festival, and Young Musicians and Artists. Her novel A Small Crowd of Strangers is forthcoming in Fall 2020 from Forest Avenue Press.
Jenny Forrester has this to say about The Royal Abduls: “Koya has crafted a tender-hearted story with a sharp knife edge. She’s cut to the heart of the devastating effects of colonialism and white supremacy on multi-generational American immigrant families.”
And in the words of Carol Zoref: “The Royal Abduls is a novel for our times. It is a novel of struggle and a reminder of the hope that we once felt and that, hopefully, we will feel again soon.”
You can join Ramiza for the official book launch of The Royal Abduls, at Powell’s City of Books in downtown Portland, on Sunday, March 15th at 2pm. And you’re all invited to the after-party at Literary Arts, located at 925 SW Washington, just a few blocks south of Powell’s.
- KBOO