BOOKS : THE future is written

THREE AUTHORS MOVING THE CONVERSATION FORWARD WITH THEIR POWERFUL PERSPECTIVES AND WORDS OF CHANGE

- Elle McClure; Roxanne Fequiere; Pema Bakshi.

Fariha róisín

Canadian-Australian writer Fariha Róisín says of her early, voracious reading habits: “I was a hugely horny child… my sister is seven years older, so I read a lot of things I probably shouldn’t have quite young.” But it was formative: “I read White Teeth by Zadie Smith when I was 11. I met Zadie last year and told her it was moving to me to read that book at such a young age because I had never seen a fully formed Bangladeshi person in anything in the West before that.”

Now 30, Brooklyn-based Róisín is a writer and editor whose words have appeared in The New York Times and The Guardian, as well as a visual artist, podcast host and even a casual astrologist. Her work has a distinct focus on the ways race, faith and queer identity intersect. Last year’s poetry book How To Cure A Ghost covered heavy issues such as the racism she encountered in the fallout of 9/11, but also had wryly comical takes on misogyny (such as in “All The Things We’re Actually Thinking When Men Think We’re Staring”).

This September, Róisín is set to release her first novel, Like A Bird, which she started writing as a 12-year-old living in Sydney. To her, the greatest privilege of writing is: “To speak truth; to actualise your truth onto the page.”