Reviewers & Critics

MICHAEL TAECKENS has worked in the publishing business since 1995. He is a cofounder of Broadside: Expert Literary PR (broadsidepr.com).

LAILA Lalami is well known for her extraordinary fiction; she is the author of the novels (Algonquin Books, 2005), (Algonquin Books, 2009), and (Pantheon, 2014), the most recent of which appeared on the longlist for the 2015 Man Booker Prize and was named a finalist for that year’s Pulitzer Prize. But she is equally well known for her sagacious literary criticism and writings on politics and culture. Over the past thirteen years she has written book reviews for a wide array of outlets, including the , the , the , and the . Lalami reviewed fiction and nonfiction for the from 2005 to 2016, at which point, where she writes mostly about the literary life. Lalami, who was born in Rabat, Morocco, and educated there as well as in Great Britain and the United States, is likewise highly regarded because of her popular literary blog, Moorish Girl, which she launched in 2001 and, after the publication of , folded into her website, . She currently teaches creative writing at the University of California in Riverside. You can follow her on Twitter, @LailaLalami.