"I don’t actually remember ever not wanting to be a writer. I have this thing where you get those security questions that are like, “What was your dream job as a child?” I always put in “writer” and it makes me ridiculously happy. It was always the thing that was expected of me. I wrote a lot of stories and poems when I was a little kid, and my parents encouraged that. It was just a given that I would do that. Then I had this brief period where I decided I would be a professional footballer, but then I decided instead that I would write a novel about a professional footballer.

"My brother and I used to play this game with the neighbors, where two of us were criminals and two of us were detectives. My job was to write the character profiles. I basically gave them to my brother and these two friends and we would act out these character profiles. I was 7. I also started writing a novel about a professional female footballer when I was 10. I wrote terrible poetry for these really bad anthologies that my mother would submit to. I was in a bunch of Christian anthologies with poetry about grandmothers. If they ever resurface, it’ll be really embarrassing."

 

photo by Holly Feral