Carla Power
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Carla Power

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After a childhood spent split between the Midwest and the Middle East and Asia, I grew up interested in the relationship of Muslim societies and the West. I went on to study and write about Islam and Muslim issues as a journalist. But it wasn't until I sat down with my old friend Sheikh Muhammad Akram Nadwi to read the Quran that I found myself really engaging with the surprising ways they converged and diverged. My friendship and studies with him became If The Oceans Were Ink, which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and for the National Book Award. In 2022, my second book, Home, Land, Security, was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. Investigating journeys into—and out of--violent extremist groups from ISIS to the Taliban to neo-Nazi groups, it asked why people join, and why, sometimes, they leave terror groups behind. In June, 2026, I'll be publishing The Lady Imam, about the life and work of American Muslim thinker and movement-leader amina wadud. Having been raised moving around, I'm happy to continue doing so. I now live in London with my British husband and occasionally, when they circle back home, my twenty-something Brit-American kids, though I get back to the Midwest--and the Mid-East and Asia--as much as I can.
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If the Oceans Were Ink

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