Khorram writes and publishes at a feverish pace to correct that narrative he grew up with, putting his own truth on the shelf for the next generation. Morris Award, honoring a book written for young adults by a previously unpublished author. "Darius the Great is Not Okay," his breakout debut, won the American Library Association's William C. Khorram has published three books in the last four years - two YA novels and an illustrated children's book. KCUR 89.3 Adib Khorram displays pages from his children's book "Seven Special Somethings." The book is about an Iranian family celebrating Nowruz, the first day of spring. "I grew up thinking that being gay meant that I was going to live a sad life and then die of AIDS." I didn't see media with Iranians, except as terrorists," Khorram says.
"I grew up not knowing that I could even be an author. After the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, which occurred when Khorram was in high school, that neutral feeling of difference became more politically charged.
Khorram remembers feeling like he stood out, despite his white-passing appearance, because what his classmates perceived as a foreign-sounding name. The two got married and considered moving to Iran to start a family, but, as Khorram told me in 2018: "When the Islamic Revolution happened, they kind of put the kibosh on that and raised me and my sister here." While in school, he met Khorram's mother, an American student. Khorram grew up in Gladstone, Missouri, in the 1990s. "Being queer, being Iranian, in post-9/11 America, the kind of books I read, that were in our curricula, that teachers talked about and librarians encouraged - they all erased people like me." "It's really hard to tease out how it affects me as an author from how it kind of affects me as a reader, and especially the reader I used to be," he explains. It may be part of life for authors, but Khorram doesn't take book bans - or threatened book sweeps - lightly. What caught my attention, though, was how casually he confessed that he didn't know whether these books remain permissible in American schools. Yesterday I discovered that DARIUS THE GREAT IS NOT OKAY has a wikipedia entry?!?!?!!?!?- Adib Khorram February 6, 2022
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