As an aspiring writer, I have been deeply influenced by Dona’s rise to stardom.
Like all writers, Dona knew she was different when stories came to her everyday, in class, in her sleep, in the shower…finally, she said, “oh, what the heck” and wrote one of them down …
Dona was born in Kathmandu, Nepal then moved to the U.S. at a young age, where she was raised in the inner-city Detroit downtown until teenage-hood.
She should have known she’d become a writer when during college, she was scribbling stories about Indian vampires converting innocent bystanders to Hinduism instead of taking notes during Intro to Computer Science.
She did the standard South Asian thing of getting a “real” job and began taking writing classes in 2003 in her new home of Seattle, Washington.
Her life changed that second day of class when she was propelled to read one of my chapters aloud. The support she got during that class forced me to finish that book…and the next…and the next.
Four books and four years later, she got THE CALL, fittingly, during a trip to India in late 2006. After a breathless, middle-of-the-night phone call to her agent, it was official. She was going to be a published author. HOW TO SALSA IN A SARI is her first YA novel from the Kimani-Tru line. SHRINK TO FIT followed in August 2008.
I hope to emulate Dona and also become a published author.
See below some of my own aspiring works: