Electric Literature has officially unveiled the cover artwork for Hope You Still Love Me, the forthcoming debut memoir by author Rabha Ashry. Scheduled for publication on May 4, 2027, by Santa Fe Writers Project, the memoir represents a raw, searing exploration of identity, psychiatric trauma, seeking political asylum, and the ongoing reconstruction of selfhood. Ashry, a queer, bipolar Arab woman, maps her journey of fleeing an abusive family dynamic in the United Arab Emirates to navigate the disorienting landscape of Chicago’s healthcare system and political asylum apparatus.
The cover design—a collaborative creation by longtime visual artist and designer Laura Waltje, incorporating photography by Elizabeth A Rosales—serves as far more than an aesthetic wrapper. It functions as a tangible visual artifact of Ashry’s lived experience. Built upon a mixed-media collage using original artwork created during Ashry’s first manic episode a decade ago, personal tattoo line art, scanned botanical elements, and intimate portraiture, the cover mirrors the narrative structure of the memoir itself: a meticulous assembly of fragmented memories reassembled to form a sustainable home.
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| PUBLICATION & COVER DATA SUMMARY |
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| Hope You Still Love Me |
| Author: Rabha Ashry |
| Publisher: Santa Fe Writers Project |
| Release Date: May 4, 2027 |
| Cover Designer: Laura Waltje |
| Cover Photography: Elizabeth A Rosales |
| Core Themes: Queer Arab Identity, Bipolar Disorder, Asylum, |
| Chosen Family vs. Biological Family |
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Detailed Chronology of Memoir and Artwork
The Personal and Political Arc of the Narrative
Ashry’s memoir traces an intricate trajectory across geographical borders, medical institutions, and psychological states. The narrative commences with the author’s departure from her childhood home in the United Arab Emirates, where she left behind her sisters to escape a suffocating domestic environment dominated by a narcissistic mother. Seeking refuge in Chicago, Ashry’s quest for safety was immediately compounded by severe psychiatric crises.
In America, her journey became entangled in repetitive cycles of involuntary psychiatric hospitalizations, manic episodes, and an array of ineffective pharmaceutical regimens. Rather than framing mental illness as an isolated clinical condition, Hope You Still Love Me situates Ashry’s experience with bipolar disorder alongside the disorientation of seeking political asylum, creating a complex portrait of exile where geographical displacement and psychological fragmentation mirror one another.
A Thirteen-Year Creative Partnership
The artistic genesis of the book’s cover is rooted in a thirteen-year friendship and creative partnership between Ashry and designer Laura Waltje. The two met as undergraduate students studying creative writing in the United Arab Emirates, residing across the hall from one another in their university dormitory. During this period, their living space functioned as an experimental studio, decorated with raw black scribbled drawings, magazine clippings, and collaged art pieces.
This early collaboration eventually led to the establishment of "Second Draft Press," a self-publishing venture through which Ashry and Waltje created and distributed visual zines. Their shared aesthetic relied heavily on raw, tactile elements: scanned Polaroid prints, torn text fragments from typewriters, dried flowers, and layered fabric. This established visual vocabulary ultimately formed the structural foundation for the cover of Hope You Still Love Me.
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| CHRONOLOGY OF CREATIVE COLLABORATION |
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| ~2014: Ashry and Waltje meet in the UAE; commence mixed-media art |
| experiments in university dorms. |
| ~2017: Ashry experiences her first manic episode, creating the |
| original oil pastel and ink artwork later used on the cover.|
| Interim: Founding of "Second Draft Press"; production of tactile zines |
| using polaroids, scans, and typewriter text. |
| Present: Waltje (now Cover Designer at Sentient Publications) proposes |
| and designs the cover for Santa Fe Writers Project. |
| May 2027: Official publication of *Hope You Still Love Me*. |
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Visual Archaeology of the Cover Components
The cover operates as an archival record of the author’s life, utilizing personal artifacts that correspond directly to milestones within the manuscript:
The Backdrop Canvas: The background art—defined by vivid pink hues, deep black centerpieces, and green oil pastel strokes—was produced directly by Ashry during her initial manic episode ten years ago. It represents what the author describes as her first entry into "the world behind the world."
The Front Cover Photography: Captured by photographer Elizabeth A Rosales, the main cover portrait shows Ashry in her wedding dress. The wedding took place inside Laura Waltje’s home, representing the physical and emotional sanctuary of chosen family.
The Back Cover Imagery: The back of the jacket features a contrasting archival photograph from Ashry’s childhood in the UAE, in which she was dressed up as a miniature bride by her biological mother. Behind this childhood image rest ghostly butterfly wings, derived from one of Ashry’s personal tattoos.
Tactile and Illustrative Overlays: Line drawings reflecting Ashry’s bodily tattoos—including a detailed flower illustration and wisps of smoke drifting from a joint—are woven alongside scanned botanical specimens gathered from Waltje’s garden and semi-translucent tracing paper overlays.
[ COVER ARTWORK ARCHITECTURE ]
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| VISUAL LAYER | BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCE |
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| Pink/Black Oil Pastel Background | Original art from 2017 mania |
| Front Cover Portrait | Wedding photo by Rosales |
| Back Cover Childhood Photo | Curated by biological mother |
| Line Art Overlays | Author's personal tattoos |
| Botanical Specimens | Scanned flora from garden |
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Supporting Context & Structural Themes
Mental Health and Diaspora in Queer Arab Literature
Ashry’s work enters a critical movement within contemporary diaspora literature that dismantles monolithic narratives of the Arab immigrant experience. By explicitly foregrounding her status as a queer, bipolar Arab woman seeking asylum, the memoir addresses intersecting vectors of marginalization that are frequently understated in traditional immigration narratives.
The text interrogates the medicalization of distress within Western psychiatric frameworks, contrasting clinical hospital settings in Chicago with the socio-cultural exile experienced in the Middle East. Rather than presenting asylum as an immediate end to trauma, Hope You Still Love Me examines the frightening limbo of navigating legal and psychological instability simultaneously.
The Reconceptualization of "Home"
A central thematic pillar of the memoir is the radical destabilization of the concept of "home." The narrative rejects the conventional dichotomy that positions home exclusively as a geographical place of origin or a simple physical destination. Instead, Ashry constructs a tripartite framework:
"Home is a story. Home is a trap. Home is a way out."
This framework highlights the tension between the biological family unit—often associated with cultural compliance and trauma—and the chosen family constructed through long-term solidarity and shared creation. The cover’s visual juxtaposition of the child-bride photo enforced by the biological mother against the adult wedding photo taken in a chosen friend’s living room acts as a direct metaphor for this evolution.
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| THE EVOLUTION OF "HOME" IN THE MEMOIR |
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| BIOLOGICAL ORIGIN TRANSITIONAL LIMBO CHOSEN FUTURE
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| * Domestic Cage in UAE * Asylum Process in US * Physical Sanctuary
| * Maternal Expectation * Involuntary Psych Wards * Creative Solidarity
| * Structural Isolation * Pharmaceutical Shifts * Autonomous Identity
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Materiality and Mixed-Media Design in Life Writing
The visual design choices made by Waltje draw upon a rich tradition of mixed-media scrapbooking, zine culture, and assemblage art. In contemporary publishing, book covers are frequently synthesized using generic stock imagery or digital graphics detached from the manuscript’s creation process. In contrast, the cover for Hope You Still Love Me employs an authentic material process.
By utilizing scans of physical paper textures, actual garden flora, and original hand-drawn artwork, the design functions as a continuation of the memoir’s lyrical prose. The raw, collage-style aesthetic aligns directly with the fragmented nature of memory, trauma, and manic episodes, providing readers with a tactile preview of the book’s narrative structure.
Official Statements
Author Perspective: Rabha Ashry
Reflecting on the cover’s reveal, Rabha Ashry emphasized the deep emotional resonance of translating her life’s darkest and most transformative moments into a unified visual piece alongside a lifelong friend:
"Laura and I have been creative collaborators for the 13 years we have known each other. Some of my fondest memories in college are of us running around the mixed arts studio making art, collaging and scanning and printing on different kinds of paper. My favorite thing about the cover is that it captures our style of visual art and the enthusiasm with which we made it.
"When Laura offered to take a shot at the cover, inspiration hit and it came together in a way that reminded me of how exhilarating it feels to work in a medium other than writing. Laura’s skill and artistic vision make this cover stunning. I personally can’t stop looking at it. Every few days I pull up the cover on my phone to gaze at it as though it is a photograph of a beloved child.
"Hope You Still Love Me is a book about madness and healing, and this cover features relics of my madness, and evidence of my healing. It is deeply personal and intimate. The backdrop art piece is one that I created during my first manic episode 10 years ago, my first venture into the world beyond the world. The photograph was taken by Elizabeth A Rosales for my wedding, which took place in Laura’s house. The cover also features line art Laura created out of my tattoos, and scanned flowers I collected from Laura’s garden, as well as tracing paper in the same style of the scanned collages we made in college. Laura combined the different elements so seamlessly, and each part of the cover is directly tied to an event that takes place in the book. I love that this cover speaks to our years of friendship, as much evidence of my chosen family as it is a product of my life experiences."
Designer Perspective: Laura Waltje
Laura Waltje, who serves professionally as the in-house Cover Designer and Production Editor for Sentient Publications, provided insight into the technical and thematic methodology behind translating Ashry’s manuscript into visual art:
"I am a longtime friend and collaborator of Rabha Ashry. We met in college in the UAE about a decade ago where we both studied creative writing and lived across the hall from each other. Our friend group covered Rabha’s dorm room walls in wild black scribbled drawings and collaged pornographic and artistic images of naked women on Rabha’s coffee table. Rabha and I further developed our shared visual language when we created and published a series of zines as ‘Second Draft Press.’ We used a lot of scans of polaroids, printed and torn images, magazines, typewritten text, and fabric and flowers. The visual language we developed parallels Rabha’s writing: highly energetic, using fragments/vignettes, confessional in its rawness, but very intentional in its placement, arrangement, and elements.
"I work as the in-house Cover Designer and Production Editor for Sentient Publications, so as Rabha wrote the book, I could not help but start dreaming about a cover that captured her striking writing style and her narrative arc. Santa Fe Writers Project kindly allowed me to take a stab at creating a cover for Hope You Still Love Me and ultimately accepted the cover I proposed.
"In order to create the cover, I wanted to pull from that visual language Rabha and I had developed together and draw on elements that mapped Rabha’s journey in this book. The pink background, with the black central image, and the green oil pastels comes directly from an artist book Rabha created during the time of the first manic episode in the book. The front cover features a picture of Rabha in her wedding dress (she got married in my living room) while the back cover features a small image of Rabha dressed up like a doll by her mother in a little wedding dress. The ghostly butterfly wings behind her on the back cover, the flower illustration on the front cover, and the smoke drifting from her joint are three of Rabha’s tattoos.
"By using the picture of Rabha as a small child, the art Rabha created during that first manic episode, the tattoos that she grounded herself with, and the photograph from her wedding, the cover mirrors the journey of the book from biological to chosen family in a visual style that captures the searing, lyrical energy of Rabha’s writing. I am honored not only to be able to continue to collaborate artistically with Rabha, but also to be a part of the chosen family that she creates in the book."
Future Outlook
Publication Timeline and Market Expectations
The publication of Hope You Still Love Me on May 4, 2027, marks a significant addition to the catalog of the Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP), an independent publisher known for championing singular voices in contemporary memoir and fiction. Advance pre-orders have officially opened through the publisher’s platform, signaling early interest from literary critics, mental health advocates, and readers of Arab diaspora literature.
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| PUBLICATION MILESTONES & ROADMAP |
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| [Cover Reveal] --------> [Pre-Order Period] --------> [May 4, 2027] |
| Electric Literature Direct via Santa Fe Official Trade |
| Exclusive Feature Writers Project Release Date |
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Broader Impact on Literary and Visual Arts
By embedding authentic personal artifacts directly into the commercial cover design, Ashry and Waltje set a precedent for author-designer collaborations in independent publishing. The project demonstrates how graphic design can transcend marketing utility, acting instead as a primary medium for storytelling that directly mirrors the emotional arch of a memoir.
As the publishing industry increasingly seeks out authentic, complex narratives surrounding queer identity, mental health, and the global displacement crisis, Hope You Still Love Me stands poised to offer a fresh perspective. Its unique synthesis of prose, personal history, and collaborative visual art challenges conventional boundaries, affirming that home is not merely an inherited space, but an artistic and personal reclamation.
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