SABAA TAHIR

Honesty and truth in writing is so important, and I think that YA writing above all is honest, and I think that appeals to anyone of any age.

As a teenager, I felt so hemmed in and trapped, both by the place I lived and the expectations others had about school, college, and a future career.

Reading about people who were so truly voiceless and powerless - Liberian child soldiers, Sudanese refugees, and, especially, Kashmiri women whose husbands or sons were imprisoned by the army with no hope of release - made me think about how I would feel if someone took my brothers from me.

'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' is one of my all-time top YA fantasy trilogies, so I was a little nervous about reading 'Strange the Dreamer.' Of course, I shouldn't have been worried because Laini Taylor immediately grabbed me by the proverbial lapels and refused to let me go.

My dad was very strict. He was absolutely the Tiger Dad. You know, 'You got a 98% on this test? Why didn't you get 100?' That was normal life for my brothers and I.

What is a nightstand without Mindy Kaling? I dip into her 'Why Not Me?' when I've had a particularly rough day. Her hilarious observations and anecdotes never fail to cheer me up.

I felt like an outcast and turned to books, fantasy in particular, to find a place for myself. Reading took me away from this world, which I needed.

I was 5 when I got the speech about how I would have to work harder and longer than everyone else because I was brown.

For a while, gently bumping into my nightstand meant a pile of 50 books clattering onto my head and the floor. After the 10th time this happened, I moved most of the books to a shelf in the spare room. Now, my nightstand is sort of like a bookish country club. And not all books get in.

When I was a kid, I worked as a clerk at my parent's motel. From when I was eight or nine, I rented rooms, helped with laundry, folding tons of towels. And then I also worked at my dad's gas station more as a young adult and as an adult.

Evil comes in many forms, and whether you are male or female, that doesn't matter as much as what lurks in your mind.

I grew up in an isolated town, out in the middle of the Mojave Desert in the middle of a naval base. My family was one of the only South Asian families in this town. We felt it. We knew.

As a kid living in an isolated desert town, the most diversity I saw in my media was Claudia Kishi, the Japanese American girl from 'The Baby-Sitters Club.'

It was hard to feel hated as a child.

I don't go on social media with a mercenary intent to promote. That's just wrong. I go to learn, to listen, to have fun, to find people who love what I love and who introduce me to new things. That's where the joy is: in the interactions.

How far do you go in following orders? So many people use it as an excuse, right? 'I was following orders.' But what does that mean?

My parents worked harder than anyone I have ever met. They had so many businesses. There was the motel, but throughout my childhood, they also had a drive-through dairy, a gas station, a clothing store, a computer reselling business.

I wanted to write something that reflected the violence and horror of the world, but I also wanted to reflect the way people fight to survive, even when society wants to crush them.

I've loved mountains since I was a girl, and when I discovered mountaineering fiction after college, I was hooked.

Like so many other young South Asians in America, I am the product of two cultures whose conflicting values pull at me with equal urgency. Never have I felt as torn between the two as I do about the question of marriage.

I love my characters like family and cannot wait to share more of their story with readers.

My mother and father were born and raised in Pakistan, where religion is entrenched in the culture and the culture is explicitly unyielding.

When I was growing up, I didn't feel strong. I felt weak. I felt like a scared little kid. So I naturally turned to books to deal with that feeling, and I really turned to fantasy. That's really what influenced my decision to write a fantasy novel.

If I refused to get married, my parents would be brokenhearted and confused. Like any child close to her parents, I could not watch them suffer.

Even as a little kid, I told lots of stories, and I wrote them down, and I loved reading fiction and fantasy.