We had the good fortune of connecting with Yasser El-Sayed and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Yasser, do you have some perspective or insight you can share with us on the question of when someone should give up versus when they should keep going?
I try to pursue activities for which I have genuine passion and commitment, and not get derailed by perceptions of success or failure, both of which can be highly subjective and fluid. This makes the idea of simply giving up untenable and unnecessary. Having said that, I think it is also important to have a very disciplined approach and set realistic goals and expectations around these activities. As long as I am pursuing a passion–whether it is writing or medicine or music–in as thoughtful and dedicated a manner as possible, then that is in itself a success. Why would I ever give up?

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am a doctor. I specialize in high risk obstetrics–caring for women with pregnancies complicated by medical or surgical disorders or fetal abnormalities. I am on the faculty at Stanford University where I care for my patients, teach medical students and residents, and do research. It is a profoundly rewarding profession and one I am grateful for every day. I learn resilience and courage from my patients. My residents and medical students help keep alive the excitement of learning and discovery. I have been writing stories since I came to the United States as a teenager. I started to publish these stories in various magazines. Several were nominated for Best American Short Stories and the Pushcart Prize, and in 2016 I was a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. In 2019 Red Dirt Press published my collection of short stories, The Alexandria You Are Losing. It was selected as the December 2019 Read of the month by Southern Literary Review, and by the Arabic Book Program for translation into Arabic by the SEFSAFA Publishing House in Cairo, Egypt. I am currently doing some final edits on a novel. I keep my daily writing goals very modest. A page a day–frequently 7 lines in the morning, 7 lines squeezed into working hours and seven lines at night. It doesn’t have to be very good, but something on paper is better than nothing–at least there is substrate to refine and develop. The rest of the time I am the drummer in the Bay Area band Midnight Rounds.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would take a friend to a small town called Half Moon Bay. This has to be one of the most peaceful and beautiful places on earth. A short drive from Silicon Valley but a world away. I first heard about it in college in a poem by Larry Levis called Edward Hopper: Hotel Room, 1931 . . . 

You think of curves, of the slow, mild arcs
Of harbors in California: Half Moon Bay,
Malibu, names that seem to undress
When you say them, beaches that stay white
Until you get there. 

After that, the Northern California wine country. A weekend visiting the fabulous wineries and restaurants in Napa, Calistoga and Saint Helena. 


The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’d like to dedicate my Shoutout to my publisher at Red Dirt Press, Amy Susan Wilson. Amy believed enough in my writing to publish my first collection of short stories, The Alexandria You Are Losing.

Website: https://www.el-sayedliterature.com/

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