Ever wondered what the President’s daughter will be reading this summer? Well, Sasha Obama who attends Sidwell Friends charter school, which has been dubbed “The Harvard of Washington’s Private Schools”, has a long holiday reading list ahead of her. She’ll be working her way through titles such as Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Lesléa Newman’s re-telling of the torture and death of a gay man in October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard, and Anna Perera’s story about a fifteen year-old Muslim boy held captive, interrogated, waterboarded and isolated for two years in Guantanamo Boy.
We were delighted to see Anna’s thought-provoking book getting the recognition it deserved. And when we asked her to write a blog piece for us her pen carried her back to the places her stories began . . .
“When thinking about the books I’ve written, pictures of an old, wooden desk, a small,
white table, cream sofa, gorgeous dog, Munchak deer and a stray parrot, all
spring to mind, along with mixed emotions of the good and bad stuff that was
happening at the time.
The first three books I wrote for 7-9 year olds and my only picture book, were
crafted in a lovely, big white house in Hampshire where a misty, early morning
glimpse of deer wandering through the apple trees and glittering grass was an
exhilarating sight. The dog chased them every chance he got, and with wasps’
nests in the eaves of the roof every year and endless, dark winter evenings, it
may not have been heaven on earth, but it was an idyllic place to write. Sweet
smelling roses hugged the walls and my small, upstairs study with fireplace,
had a stunning view of the fields beyond. There was peace, beauty and shelves
full of inspiration, but being a city girl at heart, when my life changed and I
moved home three times in quick succession, it turned out to be just as
exciting. Though most of the furniture and books went into storage, the ideas
kept coming.
I had the idea for my first YA novel, Guantanamo
Boy while living in one house, did the synopsis and outline in another and wrote, feet up on a cream sofa (no book lined study or deer by this time), in a place I lived for less than two years, and where a stray parrot used to knock
his beak on a small, round window above my head at one o’clock every day.
I then moved to a flat in London, having given up on the desk and cream sofa in the country. The apples, deer and best dog in the world had gone, and so had the stray parrot and misty mornings.
I wrote The Glass Collector beside a small, white table under a window where the late night passers by often made more noise than the nearby building work and constant traffic. It was all so different but despite the racket and petrol fumes I loved every minute and
joined The London Library to discover another kind of peace and beauty in the middle of the best city in the world.
Though I wrote another novel in the noisy flat, I ditched it before moving again to the present one, where I sometimes write curled up on a new sofa, in the new bed or at a library desk, because the truth is, I don’t really need a special
place to write, a beautiful view or even peace. Not a dog, deer or parrot
either. I simply need to open a page and begin, and if I do move again, which I
probably will, I’ll look back on this time and place and the pictures, sounds
and ways that I worked will return like the magic that stirs when the right
words appear in the meant-to-be story being summoned to the page. I’ll tell you
about the peacocks and cats another time.”
Anna Perera, Author
Anna’s piece is all about where she writes but this month we’ve just started a new project called #’WhereIRead. Send us your favourite reading locations to curl up with a book and you could win our monthly prize.
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