This Q&A between a Library staffer and the author originally appeared in the October 2025 issue of Kansas City Magazine.

Adib Khorram’s two most recent publications are diabolically opposed, but in a good way. Bijan Always Wins is an award-winning picture book about a child Khorram says has a “tenuous grip on reality,” and I’ll Have What He’s Having is a very sex-forward adult romance. 

The author, who lives in Kansas City and grew up in Gladstone, rose to literary fame for a novel in yet another category: young adult. Darius the Great is Not Okay is about a teenager who visits Iran for the first time; Khorram is Iranian American. 

Khorram set two of his books in Kansas City, seizing an opportunity to show off places like Loose Park and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. And this month, Kansas City has a chance to show off the wide-ranging Khorram a little, too. 

He’ll be at the third annual Heartland Book Festival at the Kansas City Public Library on October 11 in conversation with bestselling novelist Taylor Jenkins Reid, whose notable books include Daisy Jones & the Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. He’ll also read Bijan Always Wins one of Missouri's 2025 picks for Great Reads from Great Places, a national initiative organized by the Library of Congress Center for the Book. 

For a complete list of events and to RSVP for free, visit HeartlandBookFest.org. 

It’s pretty exciting you were chosen to interview Taylor Jenkins Reid. How did that come about? 

Her new book, Atmosphere, isn't a love story, but I think there's a queer love story in it. Both of our works explore queerness in the modern world, and it seemed like a good partnership. Also, if I do say so myself, I am very charming, and I was a theater kid in high school, so I have very little shame. 

Why did you start writing adult fiction? 

In January of 2020, I told myself it was going to be my year of dating and putting myself out there. And so, of course, we decided to have a pandemic instead. I couldn't date, and I was really depressed and lonely. So, I started reading a lot of romance novels. I think I read like 60 of them in two months, and it reminded me of what a fun, thriving, exciting genre it is. 

In the last five to 10 years, contemporary romance has broadened so much in the kind of stories it includes and the types of people that are allowed to be heroes, and I wanted to try my hand at my own kind of love story about queer, Brown people, about the Iranian diaspora, and about Kansas City. 

How did you decide what local spots to fictionalize? 

Generally, if it was a well-known public landmark, I was quite content to use its regular name. And if it was a business, I sort of shaved the serial number off. So, a lot of the action in I'll Have What He's Having happens at a wine bar at 15th and Walnut, Aspire, which just happens to be the exact same location as my favorite wine bar, Tannin. 

Readers of I’ll Have What He’s Having will want to know where to find the best fries in town. 

That would be at Tannin Wine Bar & Kitchen. 

When you order them do you call them pommes frites? 

I do say pommes frites. Or if I'm feeling spicy, I'll just say frites. 

Your website gives Star Trek a lot of attention. Do we need to do that here? 

I love Star Trek. I've been watching it since I was 8 years old. I think the vision it presents of the future is an important one, and one worth striving for. Growing up, one of my most important role models was Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who was moral and empathetic and thoughtful and led by example, never by shouting. It also taught me from an early age that it was okay to be bald. I’m very bald.