I'm always among the last to know things. We have a 10,000-hit-a-day blogger working right under our noses here in the Rose City. Her name is Laila Lalami (pronounced LAY-la LA-la-mee) and the blog is Moorishgirl.

The blog's been going for years; Lalami moved to Portland from L.A. just last year. Here's her description of her site:

I started Moorishgirl in October 2001, although I've had an online presence of one form or another since 1994. The blog features literary news, commentary, book reviews and author interviews as well as occasional political and cultural links. Moorishgirl has been mentioned in a couple of newspapers, notably The Scotsman, The Washington Post, the Business Standard, L'Opinion, The Los Angeles Times and USA Today. The Complete Review, Best of the Web and WebdelSol included it in their surveys of Best Literary Blogs and The Guardian chose it as a daily pick in June 2004. Moorishgirl was also part of a panel on blogs, which was broadcast on C-SPAN/BookTV.

Lalami was profiled in last Friday's Trib. There's more about her here and here.