This week, novelists Jane Hamilton and Sahar Mustafah explore their craft. Hamilton discusses her new coming-of-age novel The Phoebe Variations, while Mustafah shares insights into her latest novel The Slightest Green. Moderated by journalist and author Arionne Nettles.
This program was part of the 2026 American Writers Festival, a biennial, free literary event co-presented by the American Writers Museum and Chicago Public Library. It features in depth conversations with diverse writers from across genres and backgrounds. With a range of topics discussed and genres represented, the American Writers Festival honors the past, promotes the present, and inspires the future of American writing.
About The Phoebe Variations by Jane Hamilton:
A stunning coming-of-age novel about friendship, mothers, and finding one’s way in the world. Set in an Oak Park, IL-ish place in the 1970s. By the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World.
About The Slightest Green by Sahar Mustafah:
In the middle of dinner one evening, Intisar Jaber receives a phone call that will upend her quiet life in Chicago: her father is dying and she must go to Palestine to pay her final respects. But Intisar hasn’t seen or heard from Hafez for nearly two decades, ever since he abandoned her and her mother to join the resistance. She will have to face her fierce grandmother Sundus whose battle to save her land is suddenly thrust upon Intisar. Will Intisar claim it, or turn her back as her father had done to her? Powerfully etched in Sahar Mustafah’s honest and lyrical prose, The Slightest Green explores the place—and people—we call home and how far we will go to reach them.
About the writers:
JANE HAMILTON grew up in Oak Park, IL and is the author of seven critically acclaimed and bestselling novels, including The Book of Ruth and A Map of the World, both of which were Oprah’s Book Club selections. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Allure, Elle, and various anthologies. She lives on an apple farm in Wisconsin.
SAHAR MUSTAFAH is an award-winning Palestinian American author of The Slightest Green, The Beauty of Your Face, and Code of the West. Her recent fiction is featured in Stories from the Center of the World: New Middle East Fiction; The View from Gaza published in The Massachusetts Review; and Redline: Chicago Horror Stories. Mustafah writes and teaches outside of Chicago.
ARIONNE NETTLES ​​is a professor, culture reporter, and audio aficionado who serves as the Garth C. Reeves eminent scholar chair and instructor for digital journalism at Florida A&M University. As a journalist, her stories often examine Chicago history, culture, gun violence, policing, and race & class disparities. She’s held editorial roles at WBEZ, The Associated Press, and the Chicago Defender—one of the oldest Black newspapers in the U.S. She is the author of We Are the Culture: Black Chicago’s Influence on Everything and Journalism for Dummies.