Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Hala Elyan (born in 1986) is an American writer and clinical psychologist of Palestinian descent. As part of her work as a psychologist, Hala specializes in the study of psychological trauma, addiction, and psychological behavior across cultures, while her writings and poems revolve around identity and the effects of displacement among Palestinians in the Diaspora. Hala is famous for her first novel, Houses of Salt, which was published in 2017 in English.
her biography
Hala was born in Carbondale, Illinois, in 1986. She and her family lived in Kuwait, but they applied for political asylum in the United States when Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait. Hala holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Rutgers University. She works part-time at the Center for Psychotherapy and Health at New York University, and lives with her husband in Brooklyn.
Achievements and Awards
Awards and written work
Atrium: Poems, a collection of poems in English, received an award from the Arab American National Museum in 2013.
In her famous novel Houses of Salt, Hala describes the life of the Yaqoub family, a wealthy Palestinian family who were forced to leave their home, but after settling in Kuwait, they were forced to flee again during Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. The novel became famous for allowing readers to take a look at the lives of wealthy Palestinians who left their large and spacious homes and were forced to emigrate, instead of the usual stories about poor Palestinian refugees and their lives in exile or in Palestine.
Many of Hala's poems have been published in various literary magazines.
In 2018, Hala was the recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, an award given to authors whose writings are believed to promote peace.
Another collection of Hala's poems, The Nineteen Years, will be published in English in 2019.
source
- Years in active
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