Dr. Hala Alyan, Clinical Assistant Professor in Steinhardt’s Department of Applied Psychology, has been named a Finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in the category of Memoir or Autobiography for her debut memoir I’ll Tell You When I’m Home: A Memoir.
Dr. Alyan explores how her journey toward motherhood through surrogacy is inextricably connected to the legacy of her family’s exile and displacement from homes in Gaza, Kuwait, and Lebanon. Pulitzer’s announcement lauds how her work “reimagines diaspora and the long consequences of war with literary clarity, in which the author’s experiences with infertility and then motherhood are juxtaposed with an intergenerational family history.”
The Pulitzer Prize is widely recognized as the most prestigious award for journalism, literature and music in the United States. Along with this top honor, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home: A Memoir has been recognized as an NPR Book of the Year, one of TIME’s 100 Must-Read Books of the Year, and has been longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
At IHDSC, we’re proud to have long-recognized and championed Dr. Alyan’s brilliance. IHDSC has sponsored several creative expression workshops that Dr. Alyan has led for students in NYU’s Prison Education Program (PEP). In 2025, she led poetry workshops as part of IHDSC and PEP’s ROOTS initiative, culminating in a poetry reading and student submissions to PEP’s digital publication, Restless.
Read more about Dr. Alyan’s incredible achievement, and join us in extending our heartfelt congratulations on this extraordinary and well-deserved recognition.