How did you become a writer? Out of desperation. In my childhood, it was the only thing I could do. I'd write little stories and my classmates would sign up to take turns reading them. Then, after an undergrad in business in accounting left me miserable, I did a postgrad in journalism and became a news reporter for around 10 years. Then I went into academia, which drove me desperate for creative writing (very different from academic publishing), so I started writing fiction as a guilty pleasure. Now it's all I want to do. 

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). British children's books author Enid Blyton was huge in India, and I was a fan. Her writing was later understood to be problematic and racialized, but as a child growing up in India, I was enchanted by her storytelling. Then I read South Asian authors like Premchand, Mulk Raj Anand, Ismat Chugtai, Manto. Then contemporary authors like Zadie Smith (On Beauty), Vikram Seth (The Golden Gate), Rebecca Solnit (The Faraway Nearby) and Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things) had me dream my way into being a novelist and essayist.

When and where do you write? With a full time job as a professor and associate dean, I have to steal time — two hours twice a week — to sit down at a cafe and write in the company of writer friends. Over the pandemic, I bought myself a new fuchsia velvet sofa with a chaise, and now I sit and write there, with my dog at my feet. I also absolutely love going to writing retreats so I can stay with my story for extended periods of time. 

What are you working on now? A new novel.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? Not quite "writer's block," in that I haven't had a situation where I can't put words on the page. I may suffer from poor writing every now and then, though.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received? Don't wait for the perfect conditions or what you imagine to be "the writer's life." Whatever life you are living as a writer is the writer's life. 

What’s your advice to new writers? Use your anxieties as fuel, but also remember to reward yourself and celebrate every milestone. Read in other genres, read voices dissimilar to your own. 

Sonora Jha is the author of the novels The Laughter (2023) and Foreign (2013) and the memoir How to Raise a Feminist Son (2021). She was formerly a journalist in India and Singapore and is now a professor of journalism at Seattle University and is at work on her next novel. Read more about her at www.sonorajha.com.