‘I Wanted to Explore the Thrill That Comes with First Loves’

First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.

Our questions are italicized.

I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. As a kid, I had this box set of fairy tales, Aesop’s fables and stories from the Brothers Grimm. That soon evolved into Enid Blyton’s adventures, Judy Blume’s coming-of-age tales, and the slightly darker worlds of V. C. Andrews. But then came a phase where I ran out of books, and in my desperation, I turned to anything with words—Encyclopaedia Britannica (the big brown leather-bound volumes) and my mom’s midwifery textbooks. Our family friends had a subscription for this magazine called Awake! and that was all I read whenever we paid them a visit, so much so that whenever they visited our house, they would bring copies for me. One weekend, I devoured My Book of Bible Stories—the one with the yellow cover and those gorgeous illustrations—which I got that from a neighbour. Then my older cousin’s stash of Pacesetters books came to the rescue, and I was hooked. Mohammed Sule’s The Undesirable Element was my favourite. But the real game-changer was the moment I discovered Harry Potter at thirteen years old—suddenly, books were not just stories; they were entire worlds I could live in. By my teenage years, I was deep into Sidney Sheldon’s twists and Nora Roberts’ romances. For school, I remember reading Chukwuemeka Ike’s The Bottled Leopard, J. P. Clark’s The Wives’ Revolt and Eddie Iroh’s Without a Silver Spoon.

I would say Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart. It is every single emotion I have experienced put into words.

I have been questioning things a lot, in a very mindful way, since I read Adam Grant’s Think Again.