Amal’s 23 lessons from Dumped

You named your debut novel Dumped. Tell me about the decision.

My editors and I went back and forth with the title for quite a while! On one hand, it was risky to put a negative title for a book. But on the other, the idea of having a negative title for a positive book felt like an interesting contradiction to me. Also, it’s a hint about how the story begins.

How much effort did it take to revisit your life in the past decade for all 23 lessons in Dumped?

I’m one of those strange people who writes down anything and everything interesting I see and hear in life, whether it’s a description of a scenario or things people would say. I take my journal almost everywhere with me, and my phone is full with scribbles and anecdotes. So it’s a pretty easy reference for material whenever I want to write about something, whether is fiction or non-fiction.