Wahab Algarmi: Know and Visualize Your Ending
Wahab Algarmi is a writer and comic artist. He has been creating comics and a community space for other artists in the San Francisco Bay Area for years. Some of his past comic work includes The Society of Unordinary Young Ladies, which has been well reviewed by numerous news outlets, including the Comics Beat, Newsarama, and USA Today. He was also a recent recipient of one the inaugural grants from the city of Oakland’s Cultural Affairs Division, the Akonadi Foundation, and the East Bay Community Foundation for his comic work Town Force 1 and the Battle for East Oakland. For years, he also worked with another arts nonprofit, Kearny Street Workshop, to spotlight emerging Asian American artists. He currently lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and children. Follow him on Instagram.
In this interview, Wahab discusses how he tackles a story as a visual artist first and his middle-grade novel, Almost Sunset, his advice for writers, and more.
Name: Wahab Algarmi
Literary agent: Daniel Lazar at Writers House LLC
Book title: Almost Sunset
Publisher: Harper Alley
Release date: February 18, 2025
Genre/category: Middle-Grade
Elevator pitch: Hassan is a Muslim-American kid in Middle School, trying to make it through a hectic month of fasting, homework, video gaming, and team sport playing! No problem, right?
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What prompted you to write this book?
Dan saw a need for more stories about the Islamic faith and was asking other comic creators if they knew of any Muslim authors. We got connected by a mutual acquaintance and got working on what would become Almost Sunset.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I believe it took a little over three years! The story went from a kid fasting for the very first time to a little older and experienced kid fasting his third year or so. Making the main character older allowed me to ramp up the difficulty and expectations of fasting. Life only gets harder as you get older, and the same is true for Hassan and his issues in the story.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
This was my first major published work, and I wasn’t used to my publisher Harper Alley’s workflow. There was a major miscommunication with the lettering placement that left me scrambling to redo the entire layout of word balloons. I’m still grateful for the team that had to essentially go through my book twice!
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I don’t think there were any real surprises in the writing. Being an artist first, I usually work visually when creating stories. My editors had a need for a written summary first, which is something I’m still getting used to as a creator. But that visual layout helped all of us really see the direction the book was going early on in the process.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
For Muslims and Arab Americans, I hope they enjoy Almost Sunset as a fun and familiar story. I hope it becomes a yearly staple for kids that celebrate Ramadan similar to holiday favorites of other faiths. For people that aren’t Muslim, I hope they find that commonality between the main character and them. A lot of people can relate to stressful holidays, compartmentalizing relationships, and stretching oneself too thin, no matter the person’s background.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Know and visualize your ending, literally. Not just kind of an idea but get that final image as rock solid as possible, then you have an attainable goal to get to.
