Etaf Rum was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants. She has a Masters of Arts in American and British Literature as well as undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and English Composition and teaches undergraduate courses in North Carolina. Rum also owns a coffee shop and bookstore called Books and Beans. Her novels include Evil Eye and A Woman is No Man, which was a New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna Today Show book club pick.

We talked about trauma, a Palestinian-American woman's journey to finding her voice, writing the prologue once the novel was finished, her writing process, and finding words where it seemed there were none.

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