Dream, Believe, and You Shall Succeed; says Young Emirati Author

Alia Al Hazami, a literature student at Al Ma’arifa International Private School, had her first novel, Alatash, published last November at the age of 17.

She is now a columnist for Sail eMagazine, a monthly online magazine for Emiratis, and is head of reporters for the Hear My Echo website. She is also an active member of the Twitter community.

Weyana met up with Alia recently and asked her what inspires her to write and what advice she has for other young Emirati writers.

• When did you first become interested in writing?

I was nine years old, when I started writing little poems. My interest kept on growing and when I reached 14 I started to write articles. I submitted my first article to an online platform – it was about forgiveness. It was very short but I was so proud of it because it was the first thing I ever got published. Looking back, it was then that I decided I’d like to one day be an author.

• When did you decide you wanted to write a published novel?

I got the idea for Alatash when I was 14, wrote the first chapter, then stopped. I thought ‘this is just mindless dreaming – I’m never going to be an author! I should just stop and not get my hopes up’. I wrote the second chapter when I was 16; I had a bucket list before graduation, and publishing a book was on it. I believed the story had potential. It took me six months to write, then I talked to the publisher at Kuttab Publishing, and they approved the manuscript. I submitted the manuscript in July and got a response mid-September.

• What is the book about and where did the idea come from?

Alatash is a tragic story of an African woman and the life experiences she went through. One of the main themes is that maturity isn’t determined by age. I met this African lady and she told me her story, and I felt like her story needed to be heard. But I didn’t want my first novel to be a biography so I just took five percent of the incidents she told me and put it in the book. The other 95 percent is completely from my imagination.

Continue reading at Weyana:

Dream, Believe, and You Shall Succeed; says Young Emirati Author

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