Tanwi Nandini Islam

With a hit first novel (plus a second on the way) and a cult-fave fragrance brand, this Brooklyn-based author and perfumer uses literature and scents to explore the concept of home.

- Molly Beauchemin

Perched on a couch in her Williamsburg apartment, Tanwi Nandini Islam reflects on the poetry of how she got here. “I’ve lived a very transient life, so I was never in one place very long,” she recalls, itemizing her many homes like bullet points on a grocery list (“Illinois, Alabama, Texas, Missouri, Bangladesh…,” she recounts). “As a kid I would watch Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? and think about where I would choose to live if I got to be on the show. I would always choose New York,” she says. “Funnily enough, I did move to New York and I did go to that show—but before moving to Brooklyn I totally had this experience of craving one home that had history, a place where I could set down roots.”

The experience of yearning for home—real or imagined—inspired Islam’s critically acclaimed first novel,