SK Ali Books in Order

S. K. Ali was born in South India and came to Canada with her parents when she was three. She spent her early years in Montreal before her family moved to Toronto, the city she still calls home. Her father was studying comparative religion at McGill, while her home life was full of stories and books.

Long before she had a publishing plan, she was listening.

Ali has described family evenings when her mother retold South Indian fables and legends, with everyone gathered around to listen. At school, French was the first language she learned. In seventh grade, a teacher praised a story she had written, a small but important moment that made writing feel like something she might actually be allowed to do.

She went on to earn a Creative Writing degree from York University and trained as a teacher. For roughly two decades, she taught elementary school while raising a family, keeping the idea of writing books close even when daily life left little room for it.

She kept going, one page at a time.

Her 2017 debut, Saints and Misfits, introduced Janna Yusuf, an Egyptian and Indian American Muslim teen trying to make sense of family, faith, friendship, a crush, and a frightening betrayal within her community. The book was a finalist for the William C. Morris Award and received honors from the Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature and the Middle East Book Awards. Readers meet a narrator who is observant, angry, funny, and still figuring out whom she can trust.

Ali returned to Janna's world in Misfit in Love, set around Janna's brother's wedding and the unsettled summer before college. The book gives Janna more room to consider romance, family expectations, healing, and the difficult conversations that can happen inside a community. Across both novels, Ali writes about Muslim teens as full people, not symbols, with ordinary worries alongside serious ones.

In Love from A to Z, Ali shifts to the alternating viewpoints of Zayneb Malik and Adam Chen, who meet in Doha during spring break. Zayneb is dealing with Islamophobia and the fallout from speaking up at school, while Adam is living with multiple sclerosis and grief. Their relationship continues in Love from Mecca to Medina, which brings them together for an Umrah pilgrimage and asks what happens when love has to survive distance, anxiety, and real-life pressure.

Her books often make room for faith, family, illness, prejudice, friendship, and first love in the same conversation. They can be tender and playful, but they don't dodge uncomfortable questions.

Ali has also used her platform to encourage wider recognition for books by Muslim writers, including through the #MuslimShelfSpace campaign. She lives in Toronto with her family, and she continues to write across age categories and genres.