Authors Sumbul Ali-Karamali and G. Willow Wilson will be interviewed by Mercury News columnist Mike Cassidy onstage at the Campbell Heritage Theatre on January 25 at 7:30pm. The event is free and is a kick-off to Silcon Valley Reads 2012. Silicon Valley Reads is designed to promote reading and literacy, broaden the exposure to and appreciation of good literature, and build community.

The Silicon Valley Reads 2012 featured books are The Muslim Next Door: The Qur'an, the Media, and that Veil Thing, by Sumbul Ali-Karamali and The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Women's Journey to Love and Islam by G. Willow Wilson.

The Muslim Next Door is a unique combination of personal anecdotes about growing up Muslim in suburban Southern California and an easy-to-read scholarly overview of Islam. Sumbul Ali-Karamali answers the many of the questions about Islam readers in the Western world are curious about, and delves into complicated issues such as the status of women in Islam and Islamic fundamentalism.

The Butterfly Mosque is a lyrical memoir of Willow Wilson's experience as a convert to Islam who travels to Egypt at the age of 21 to teach in an English-language high school in Cairo. She has to learn how to exist in a totally different culture – everything from how to buy food and how to interact with men, to learning how her new religion is woven into the daily fabric of life. She falls in love and marries an Egyptian physics teacher and becomes an unexpected champion for the segregated, protected status of Arab women.