Tahereh Mafi’s latest book is a departure for the author of the bestselling dystopian Shatter Me series, and magical middle grade novels including Furthermore. A Very Large Expanse of Sea, set in the months after 9/11, is a semiautobiographical novel centering on flinty, music-loving teen Shirin, a hijabi girl who puts up mile-high walls to protect herself from the attacks of the ignorant and the Islamophobic. It’s a story of bigotry and breakdancing and artistic escape, and is also one of the best depictions of the heady, overwhelming days of first love we have ever read. Mafi stopped by the podcast to talk about drawing inspiration from her own life, the role of books in her childhood, and growing up first-generation in the U.S.