S.K. Ali: Hi. This is S. K. Ali, and I'm the author of Saints and Misfits. I'm going to tell you a bit about how I came to write this book, and then I'll share an excerpt with you. I started Saints and Misfits with the character of Janna Yusuf. She's fifteen, she's discovering things about herself, and she's grappling with something difficult that she feels she can't tell anyone about. She's also a misfit. Her parents are divorced, and she's the only one at her mosque who has divorced parents. She's one of the few Muslims at her high school. She has a crush on this non-Muslim guy, which her Muslim friend doesn't approve of. And meanwhile, her non-Muslim best friend doesn't understand why she's can't just plunge into a dating relationship.

While all this is going on, she's trying to process having been assaulted by a guy who everyone at her mosque thinks is just perfect, a saint. My story grew from Janna figuring out how she claims and saves herself in the midst of this whirlwind that her life becomes. To find the story, I spent two years blogging in Janna's voice before making it into book form. And now I will read an excerpt to you.

I first noticed him in the spring, when I took pictures of the track meet for the yearbook. My telephoto lens caught the requisite shots of warmups and victory sets before it noticed someone packing away audio equipment at the announcers' table. Windbreaker jacket, a short no-nonsense haircut, relaxed movements. I took some pictures, ignoring the little voice inside that said, "Paparazzi. Stalker," over and over as I zoomed in on a remarkable forehead. This is going to sound strange, but I found out through careful study that good looking guys always have the right forehead, high foreheads.

Maybe it's because they balance the jawlines just so. Anyway, foreheads count a lot in my mind.

Later I found out his name is Jeremy. He's the guy who runs the lights for assemblies, the go-to guy for anything technical. After a month I developed this uncanny ability to sense his presence before I even saw him. That's how I became aware that he strolls through the sophomore hallways to get to some of his classes. That's also how I noticed he's a good friend of the monster. This should have stopped me in my tracks, this and the ways we don't fit. He's a senior; I'm a sophomore. He's white, of Irish background, and I'm brown, a mix of my Egyptian mother and my Indian father.

He's Christian. I'm Muslim. The non-casual dating kind. But it didn't stop in me the Jeremy fixation. I told Tats, one of the only two people who knows about him, that my brain, muscles, and eyes are starting to hurt from numbingly pretending I don't notice that he's less than four feet away from me like twice a day. Tats told me he's in her drama club tech crew. They meet Thursdays after school.