Reading & Writing for the Inner Child: Reflections from YA Authors Liselle Sambury, M.T. Khan, and L. Akhter in Conversation with Iqra Abid
In the spirit of the youth issue, I was reflecting on how we often turn to books to escape reality, especially in our younger years. I spoke with Liselle Sambury, M.T. Khan, and L. Akhter to explore how literature from their youth has impacted their lives today and how literature continues to nurture their inner child.
LISELLE SAMBURY
Blood Like Magic, Margaret K. McElderry Books, June 2021
ABOUT THE BOOK
“A rich, dark urban fantasy debut novel following a teen witch who is given a horrifying task: sacrificing her first love to save her family’s magic. The problem is, she’s never been in love – she’ll have to find the perfect guy before she can kill him.
After years of waiting for her Calling – a trial every witch must pass in order to come into their powers – the one thing Voya Thomas didn’t expect was to fail. When Voya’s ancestor gives her an unprecedented second chance to complete her Calling, she agrees – and then is horrified when her task is to kill her first love. And this time, failure means every Thomas witch will be stripped of their magic.
Voya is determined to save her family’s magic no matter the cost. The problem is, Voya has never been in love, so for her to succeed, she’ll first have to find the perfect guy – and fast. Fortunately, a genetic matchmaking program has just hit the market. Her plan is to join the program, fall in love, and complete her task before the deadline. What she doesn’t count on is being paired with the infuriating Luc – how can she fall in love with a guy who seemingly wants nothing to do with her?
With mounting pressure from her family, Voya is caught between her morality and her duty to her bloodline. If she wants to save their heritage and Luc, she’ll have to find something her ancestor wants more than blood. And in witchcraft, blood is everything.”
Q&A WITH LISELLE SAMBURY
What role did reading play in your childhood? Was it a form of escapism?
As a child, reading was a form of belonging. I volunteered in our school library along with my friends, and participating in that activity and reading was how we interacted with each other. There were books that my peers talked about at a length that I would jump into. I enjoyed what I was consuming, but it was also a way to be involved in those conversations with them. I didn’t want to miss out on what people were talking about. And at a certain point, I came to enjoy reading for its own sake and exploring books that friends hadn’t read yet. I became the person saying “you have to read this!”
How has your childhood relationship with literature influenced your life now?
My love of reading has ebbed and flowed throughout my life, but I’ve always come back to it. That childhood desire for stories never left, especially since I enjoyed telling them, too. I would say that was the biggest impact. I didn’t start writing because of books I was reading, but reading is the reason that I’ve always felt compelled to return to storytelling.
Do you still read for your younger self? What are some books you read recently that you think your younger self would have loved?
I read for myself now, but I do come across books that I know I would have loved when I was a child. Legendborn by Tracy Deonn would have easily become my obsession when I was younger. I would have made it my entire personality. A Black girl with hidden magic and a love triangle would have just blown my little mind. Similarly, my younger self would have been so excited by A Dark and Hollow Star by Ashley Shuttleworth. I can’t remember a single fantasy set in Toronto that I encountered as a child, and it would have been such a delight to see my hometown represented in my favourite genre.
You recently released your debut fantasy book, Blood Like Magic. Can you tell us more about it?
Absolutely! Blood Like Magic follows a young Black witch living in Toronto in the near-future who after failing to come into her powers is forced to choose between losing her family's magic forever, a heritage steeped in centuries of blood and survival, or murdering her first love, a boy who is supposedly her genetic match.
What is something your younger self would love about Blood Like Magic?
This is a book that incorporates so many things my younger self would have loved to read. A fantasy where a Black girl is the hero set in Toronto where I grew up, the representation of Trinidadian-Canadian culture that I hadn’t seen in the YA genre fiction I enjoyed, a family as big and blended as my own, and the darker bits that I would have loved as a horror fan. It is so much the book of my heart and what I wished Black girls like me would have had. In some ways, it’s perfectly crafted for the younger version of me.
What do you hope your readers will take away from Blood Like Magic?
I hope that readers come away feeling seen in some way. When I was a child, even though I didn’t see representations of Black girls that spoke to me, finding the bits and pieces where I could see myself and my experiences meant the world to me. It’s my wish that my book does the same.
M.T. KHAN
Nura and the Immortal Palace, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Summer 2022
ABOUT THE BOOK
“Nura longs for the simple pleasure of many things—to wear a beautiful red dupatta or to bite into a sweet gulab. But with her mom hard at work in a run-down sweatshop and three younger siblings to feed, Nura must spend her days earning money by mica mining. But it’s not just the extra rupees in her pocket Nura is after. Local rumor says there’s buried treasure in the mine, and Nura knows that finding it could change the course of her family’s life forever.
Her plan backfires when the mines collapse and four kids, including her best friend, Faisal, are claimed dead. Nura refuses to believe it and shovels her way through the dirt hoping to find him. Instead, she finds herself at the entrance to a strange world of purple skies and pink seas—a portal to the opulent realm of jinn, inhabited by the trickster creatures from her mother’s cautionary tales. Yet they aren’t nearly as treacherous as her mother made them out to be, because Nura is invited to a luxury jinn hotel, where she’s given everything she could ever imagine and more.
But there’s a dark truth lurking beneath all that glitter and gold, and when Nura crosses the owner’s son and is banished to the working quarters, she realizes she isn’t the only human who’s ended up in the hotel’s clutches. Faisal and the other missing children are there, too, and if Nura can’t find a way to help them all escape, they’ll be bound to work for the hotel forever.
Set in a rural industrial town in Pakistan and full of hope, heart, and humor, Nura and the Immortal Palace is inspired by M.T. Khan’s own Pakistani Muslim heritage.”
Q&A WITH M.T. KHAN
What role did reading play in your childhood? Was it a form of escapism?
As a kid, I read no matter where I was. During class when I’d sneak glances at books hidden in my desk, at the dinner table where my parents had to pry them out of my hands, and even in the dark hours of the night, the lamp on and book cracked open. I sought out books because reality happened to be too mundane for my liking. Reading was the one time I could pretend to be someone else, live somewhere else, and feel something else.
How has your childhood relationship with literature influenced your life now?
As a speculative fiction author, it comes to no surprise that the books I’d always reached for in the library were fantastical adventures or magical mysteries. Even when I read so much to the point my parents scolded me, I was kind to books, and in return, they were kind to me. Literature showed me that everyone had a story and that it was a great place to explore complex thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Because of the way I trusted books and their characters, I found writing my own stories to be a method of healing. Of taking unspoken parts of my life and navigating through them in the form of a book.
Do you still read for your younger self? What are some books you read recently that you think your younger self would have loved?
I think everyone still has an inner child. I love children’s movies, such as Up, Coco, and How to Train your Dragon. Some books that I’ve read recently and know my younger self would’ve loved just as much are Amari and the Night Brothers, Iron Widow, and Legendborn.
You recently announced your upcoming book, Nura and The Immortal Palace. Can you tell us more about it?
Nura and the Immortal Palace is my love letter to Desi culture. It’s Spirited Away meets Aru Shah in a cinematic and lush tale of family, greed, magic, and the vicious cycle of poverty. It follows Pakistani twelve-year-old Nura, who works as a mica miner to help her sweatshop worker mother. But when the mines collapse and her best friend is ruled dead, Nura digs deeper to find a portal world of jinn, and that the kids aren’t dead – they’ve been stolen.
This story is set in my home country and takes inspiration from the creepy jinn tales my mother used to tell me as a child.
What is something your younger self would love about Nura and The Immortal Palace?
There aren’t many books, or media in general, that show Islam in a positive light. I tried breaking the harmful stereotypes people have of Muslims, and just showing Muslim kids in their everyday lives, proving that they can be main characters too. I have already gotten so many heartfelt messages from Muslim readers who tell me they’ve loved seeing themselves in my book, and that they can’t wait to share it with friends and family.
What do you hope your readers will take away from Nura and The Immortal Palace?
When I first began writing Nura and the Immortal Palace, I knew I wanted to veil my critique of child labour behind a twisted adventure and colourful magic. But what I didn’t realize until finishing the book was that it was very much tied to education – not as a phase of life, but as a method of escape, to break out of the cycle that traps so many impoverished families. Education can feel like a tedious, time-consuming affair, but for many people, it’s their only way up.
L. AKHTER
The Misfortunes of Lolita, Self-Published, January 2022
ABOUT THE BOOK
“Frank Novak has a plan after his parents upturn his life and move to the F@*#ing Middle of Nowhere – keep his head down, work to support his mother, and graduate high school on time. He does not have time to soothe the ache in his chest when he watches Lolita Abri. He does not have time to daydream about her river hair, her petal-soft smile, how she seems like a haphazardly put-together string of contradictions…
Nope. He definitely does not, not when his own family is falling apart, along with his life and mental health.
And yet, as Lolita and Frank’s paths keep crossing, the cruelty of their peers against Lolita escalates, and painful truths are unleashed – inevitable as death, the two fall headfirst into a love that neither might be ready for.”
Q&A WITH L. AKHTER
What role did reading play in your childhood? Was it a form of escapism?
It was a way to look into the mirror and see someone else – I read constantly when I was younger. I’d have a book open at the table when I ate, and in my early years I read Bengali novels and detective serials (mostly by Rakib Hasan, a legend), sometimes this encyclopaedia my dad had bought from India. I grew up very sheltered, and reading was a way to see a world beyond my own. Once I started reading English books, I absolutely inhaled the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. I was a demigod, a protagonist, someone who’d sacrifice everything for those they love.
How has your childhood relationship with literature influenced your life now?
There was a period in my life after high school where I stopped reading altogether. Where before I was borrowing 3-4 books every week from the library, I couldn’t even finish one. My brain was tired, wouldn’t do what I wanted it to do, and I developed a kind of fear of trying to read new books because it felt like a piece of my childhood self I’d lost. Then a few years ago, I finished The Autobiography of Red, which is a fairly short book, but it felt so good to finish. I said: this chapter of my life will be called my return to self.
Do you still read for your younger self? What are some books you read recently that you think your younger self would have loved?
Yes! A YA/SFF book my younger self would have loved is Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko. My heart wrung itself out reading this! I can’t spoil it, but I cried several times reading the book not because it was sad, but because it was so good. An adult rom-com I read recently, The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun, would also make my 19-year-old self so happy. I love seeing South Asian main characters in nuanced but also cutesy, trope-y, fun stories.
You recently announced your first young adult novel, The Misfortunes of Lolita. Can you tell us more about it?
It’s about a boy who loves a girl who loves too much and not enough. It’s about being in love as a teenager and how wonderful and devastating it is.
What is something your younger self would love about The Misfortunes of Lolita?
I wrote it for her. When I’d first written it in 2013, there weren’t many brown girls being pined after in YA romances I’d read. I was in high school and I wanted to be seen so badly – The Misfortunes of Lolita is about that. Or, it was about that. It started as a love letter to brown-skinned girls and became a way for me to also explore queer desire as a closeted teenager. A lot of the novel is about Frank Novak’s gaze, the way he views the girl he loves, and how he views himself. I think my younger self would hopefully feel proud of how the novel has evolved since she wrote it.
What do you hope your readers will take away from The Misfortunes of Lolita?
I hope they feel held and loved and remembered.
Iqra Abid (she/her) is a young, Pakistani, Muslim writer based in Ontario, Canada. She is currently an undergraduate student studying Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour. She is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Kiwi Collective Magazine. Her work can be found in various publications such as Crossed Paths, Scorpion Magazine, Tiny Spoon Lit Magazine, and more.