i was ten years old when i knew i wanted to be a writer, and it was at ten years old
that i became one. i didn't know it then. i was in denial about it for years: to
be a writer, i thought, means to have a book on the shelves, your name on shortlists.
i am twenty-one years old and have lost sight of what i was so certain of at ten. i
thought that literary validation and traditional publishing was what i wanted, but
why would a ten year old ever want those things? what i wanted was this: to create worlds
and sprawling casts of characters that someone, somewhere in the world, somewhere in the universe,
might love as much as i do. what i wanted was that often gentle, always brutal
connection between reader and author: unspoken, empathetic, and devastating. i wanted
to tell stories. i forgot that, somewhere along the way.
take your time here. tell me if you read anything on this page, anything at all - it would
mean the world to me. it's frightening to share my works, especially on my own, without the
security and validation of institutions i put my faith in and no longer think i can trust, but
it is precisely that fear that has stopped me from sharing my worlds and stories, that has
prevented me from having what i have always wanted more than anything in the world. because
it's not literary institutions that determine what good writing is, especially not in the age
of the internet. i'm not the one who decides that about my own writing, either: it's you all
that do. it's the reader that gives life to stories. writers lay the groundwork, but the reader
is a story's soul.
thank you for reading. thank you for being here :)