Zakiya Dalila Harris Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Zakiya Dalila Harris talks about her influences, her writing process and her inspiration for writing The Other Black Girl

When and how did you first become interested in writing?

I first fell in love with writing when I fell in love with books at the age of six or seven. I was really into series novels, like Goosebumps and Animorphs and The Series of Unfortunate Events. I'd spend hours curled up in an empty laundry basket filling notebook upon notebook with stories of my own—scary stories, stories about superheroes, stories about girls like me.

I'd also be remiss not to say that my father teaches journalism and had an op-ed column in a Connecticut newspaper for nearly twenty years, so he was often reading my stories, commending and critiquing them, and telling me to keep writing. He also encouraged me by example. I often saw him sit down and write whenever he wasn't teaching, and heard him talk with my mom about the reception of his latest piece at the dinner table. Through him, I had the good fortune of learning early on that it was possible to make a career out of loving what you do.

But perhaps the most tangible turning point for my love of writing was when I came across a writing contest in American Girl magazine at age twelve. I wasn't a particularly competitive or confident kid when it came to most things, but when I saw the ...