Tomi Adeyemi is a speculative novelist, best known for Children of Blood and Bone. Adeyemi is a Hugo and Nebula award winning author and was listed as one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2020.

W Magazine interviewed her this past November:

I’ve always felt close to this genre, because it’s really emotional in a way that adult books aren’t. Adult books always feel to me like they’re told from a distance, which means I really never get into them. The characters in YA books let you into their hearts. You care about them, you care about what they’re feeling, what they’re struggling with. I’ve been working on a lot of things this year; I always have a big master plan. When it comes to the book and the series, I wrote books one and two at a very accelerated pace, and that always left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. You want to feel that you got to do everything you possibly could with a piece of art. When I’m done with something, I’m done with it. My stories are like my exes—we dated, it was passionate, it was fun, I’m over it.

Read more and check out her work.