Uzma Jalaluddin is my guest for this episode! Uzma is an English teacher in Toronto, a parent of two boys, a columnist for the Toronto star with a regular parenting feature called Samosas and Maple Syrup, and a novelist with her debut work, Ayesha At Last, just having dropped in the US.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from the initial handful of conversations making up this show, it’s that you pursue creativity best when it’s something you believe in with your whole heart. Where your heart goes, so goes your interest, passion, and time.

Uzma first started work on Ayesha At Last in 2007. That’s a dozen years working on getting this story right, working around kids and a job about which she’s passionate, working through a dozen or so drafts, and a lot of patience. And editing.

The passion, care, attention, and heart comes through in the writing of Ayesha At Last. It’s a love story perfect for the summer, with pages that fly by as the novel’s characters work through their arcs, both interwoven and distinct. Ayesha At Last is a modern remix on Pride and Prejudice, but – like me – you don’t need to have read Pride and Prejudice to get a lot out of it.

The template extracted from Jane Austen’s seminal story is apt and works really well for the environment of Ayesha At Last. Uzma’s main characters, Khalid Mirza and Ayesha Shamsi, are observant Muslims living and breathing in the tight-knit Muslim community of the east end of Toronto.

They wear traditional clothing and wrestle with arranged marriage, the trappings of faith, and honoring family, but they also hit those universal coming-of-age notes of simply learning who they are as people, accepting themselves, and figuring out how to love.

#VerseShow comprises conversations that give voice to creators, their process, their struggles, and the celebrations of their work. It's an interview podcast with a bend toward curiosity about the creative process.