Take a Novel Writing Class from Masha 

Masha Hamilton is the author of three novels: Staircase of a Thousand Steps, (2001) a Booksense pick by independent booksellers and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection; The Distance Between Us, (2004) named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal, and The Camel Bookmobile, (2007) also a Booksense pick. Booksense called the latest novel an excellent book club selection, Booklist called it “a poignant, ennobling, and buoyant tale of risks and rewards, surrender and sacrifice,” and the New York Times said: “Hamilton makes us see how much is really at stake in a poverty-stricken place where every possession carries the weight of significance.” 

She worked as a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press for five years in the Middle East, where she covered the intefadeh, the peace process and the partial Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Then she spent five years in Moscow, where she was a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, wrote a newspaper column, “Postcard from Moscow,” and reported for NBC/Mutual Radio. She wrote about Kremlin politics as well as life for average Russians under Gorbachev and Yeltsin during the coup and collapse of the Soviet Union. She reported from Afghanistan in 2004, and in 2006 she traveled in Kenya to research The Camel Bookmobile and to interview street kids in Nairobi and drought and famine victims in the isolated northeast.