About
William Mark Habeeb was born and raised in Alabama, the son of a Lebanese immigrant father and a Cuban-American mother. He earned degrees in international relations at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities, read literature and philosophy at the University of Sussex and studied psychoanalytic theory with the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis. He teaches in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and lives in Virginia. He is a member of the board of Virginia Humanities, the state’s humanities council. Habeeb has published over a dozen non-fiction books for scholarly, general public and young adult audiences. His short fiction has appeared in the Berkeley Fiction Review and Broken Pencil. His debut novel, Venice Beach, will be released in August 2021.
Featured Work
Venice Beach: A Novel
It’s 1968. A thirteen-year-old loner flees his abusive father and alcoholic mother for the lure of sunny California. He barely survives alone on the streets of Los Angeles, conversing with the ghost of his beloved dog and trying to avoid the police, until a fateful encounter leads him to the bohemian community of Venice Beach, known at the time as the “Slum-by-the-Sea.” He renames himself Moon, symbolizing his quest for something that will shine light on him, just as the sun illumines the moon.
Over the next two years he struggles with first loves, confusion over his sexual identity, painful rejections, drug use, and haunting flashbacks from his childhood. As cultural upheaval over the Vietnam War rages, Moon assembles a new family of his own making, only to make a shocking and unexpected discovery that upends who he thought he was.
Venice Beach is a moving tale of the resilience of youth and the importance of reflecting on our stories.
