9 Questions with Award- Winning Author Aaliyah Bilal

By David Hawkins, Adult Services Librarian

We were excited to ask author Aaliyah Bilal questions about her award-winning book, Temple Folk, and her writing process.

Ms. Bilal will speak in person at the Amelia Branch on Tuesday, June 16, at 4:30 p.m. Save your spot at her talk.

Writing fiction and nonfiction, she focuses on the Black American Muslim experience and stories that connect Chinese and Afro-Diasporic peoples.

9 Questions With Aaliyah Bilal

What inspired you to write the book of short stories, Temple Folk?

I was inspired to write Temple Folk primarily to capture what I knew of the Black Muslim movement, not through the lens of figureheads like Malcolm X or Muhammad Ali, but through the lives of ordinary people.

What do you hope readers will take away from Temple Folk?

I hope readers can see aspects of themselves in these characters. As different as they may appear on the surface, their lives touch upon universal themes.

What do readers need to know before reading Temple Folk?

It helps to have a general familiarity with the history of the Nation of Islam, its dissolution in 1975 and restoration in 1981, the book is written in a way that readers who are unfamiliar with this history can still take pleasure in the text.

The plot of "Due North" is based on Hamlet. What spurred this choice?

This is an interesting connection— one that I’d never considered, though on reflection I can see how the stories are similar. Honestly, I hadn’t consciously considered Hamlet when writing “Due North”. Many of the stories are written in conversation with writers I admire— writers I was reading at the time— though I wasn’t reading any Shakespeare the summer I wrote this story.

A follow-up question. You said, "Many of the stories are written in conversation with writers I admire— writers I was reading at the time." Which writers do you admire? Which writers were you reading at the time? 

 While writing Temple Folk I was reading my favorite author, Edward P. Jones and I was also reading a lot of Flannery O’Connor. Other writers as well, but these two in particular.

Which story gave you the most trouble or took the most time to edit? Which one gave you the least trouble?

“Janaza” was the hardest story to write. First, it was the third story I’d ever written and I was teaching myself how to write men. It took a lot of stretching to occupy a convincingly male perspective. The easiest and most fun was probably “the Spider” which I scribbled in two days.

What did you learn from writing the stories and compiling them into a book?

I learned so much. First, that we are capable of great things. Why settle to do something easy when excellence is within your grasp? As Tolstoy writes in War and Peace, every is just a matter of patience and time.

The Clermont County Public Library has a short story contest every January. What advice would you give to aspiring authors of short stories?

Try to meet your own bar. Don’t worry about what the next person is doing. You may have entered a contest, but in a writing life there’s no competition at all. The point of all of this is to declare “I was here. I mattered. I saw things my own way.”

What is your writing process?

Mostly thinking. That takes the most time. When everything is thought through the physical act of writing can go quickly.

Are you writing another book? If so, when do we expect to see it?

I tend not to let on about my works in progress, except to say that I’m hard at work on something that means a great deal to me.

Temple Folk was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize. She also received the 2024 Whiting Award.  In May 2024, the book received the 17th annual Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.

Check out Temple Folk.