Through the Thousand Stories Writing competition we wanted to recognise and encourage children’s writers of colour at the very start of their career. Our winner, Zahra Thandi, has written a fantastic creative reflection about what winning meant to her! Sincere thanks to ALCS for sponsoring the conference and making this possible.
“I walked away from the conference feeling, Yes, I am a writer and to trust in my voice”
“Orogenesis is the process of mountain formation and perhaps it can be likened to the process of becoming a writer. The origins of which I can trace back to a time when I would fold-up my limbs and snuggle up to my mother and listen, enchanted by fictional tales filled with pumpkins, portals and frogs puckering up for a kiss! I knew that one day, I too, wanted to create worlds which invited young readers in.
But through the decades, the excuses not to write piled up high, until the serendipitous moment when I came across the announcement for the inaugural ‘A Thousand Stories’ conference. The organisers offered all those who entered the writing competition an incredible opportunity to speak with a published author or an editor (regardless of the competition’s outcome) and it compelled me to write and submit the first 2,000 words of my children’s story.
A few months later, when I walked into the beautiful Birmingham venue, imbued with historical significance and fizzing with excitement, I was drawn into the conversations and camaraderie from fellow emerging writers. Listening to Serena Patel speak candidly about her journey to writing the bestselling Anita detective series, I could feel my non-writerly Before-World collide with the promise of the New-World.
In the ‘Stories inspired by childhood and heritage’ session, authors spoke about ‘home’. The haunts of their native lands, where street sellers showcased their colourful wares on dusty verges and the air was dense with the fragrance from ripe mango trees resonated with my own childhood experiences. I frequently found myself nodding in recognition, and looking around others were too. That was the beauty of this conference… how it acknowledged and validated the rich experiences of the different diaspora communities we belonged to and challenged the dominant Western views of ‘belonging’, ‘us’ and ’them’. Here, we were not othered, we were a Tribe. Our stories mattered and that was a very powerful place to be.
Alongside creating this vibrant conference where we felt nurtured and seen, Leila Rasheed and Stephanie King shared a wealth of incredible ways to stay connected and competitions and programmes we could enter. Without this information I would never have applied to the ‘Golden Egg Writing for Children and Young Adults’ course (on which I have now been accepted) nor written a further 8,000 words of my children’s story…and started another one involving a mischief of mice! The strata has crumpled and a young mountain is purposefully advancing.
I walked away from the conference feeling, Yes, I am a writer and to trust in my voice. It was incredibly valuable to be with everyone in person and I hope that even more aspiring children’s writers of colour get to be a part of this unique and special conference in the future. Side note, I am still dreaming about the delicious onion bhaji sandwich which was part of our delicious lunch spread…because a girl’s gotta eat!”
– by Zahra Thandi