Laila Lalami of the University of California, Riverside Wins an American Book Award

Laila Lalami, a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, won an American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation. Professor Lalami was honored for her latest novel The Moor’s Account (Pantheon, 2014). The book was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

The novel is written as the memoir of the first Black slave in America, Estebanico who was on the ill-fated 1527 expedition of Spanish explorer Panfilo de Narvaez. The voyage began with a crew of 600 men. Only four survived.

Professor Lalami is a native of Morocco. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Morocco and a master’s degree in linguistics from University College London. Dr. Lalami holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Southern California. She joined the faculty at the University of California, Riverside in 2007.