Niv: Let’s lay some groundwork, some worldbuilding, if we can borrow the term—we’ve been friends for over twenty years. I have a distinct memory of you at a party with a glittery spell book trying to convince me to help you cast a spell, much to my mother’s horror. We grew up together in overlap: neighborhood, high school, Indian parties. And yet we haven’t lived in the same state since 2009. I have to admit I haven’t been able to sustain many of my friendships from high school. I have a theory of our closeness that I think will be interesting to readers and writers—not only were we avid book trading friends for so long, but we’ve always been bonded in our shared creativity. We’ve fed our friendship on our own artistic lives!
Rosh: I remember that spellbook! I brought it with me everywhere. I was so determined to try a love spell, but I think one of the ingredients demanded the toe clippings of one’s beloved and that shit is hard to find. It’s funny you mention the worldbuilding of our friendship. Highschool was such a beast, but we hung onto one another. Our childhood—and our time in the same neighborhood—has a very distinct texture to me. Our neighborhood was so odd. Elitist, southern, gated, country clubbish with manicured golf courses… but also full of wild trees, fearless deer, a secret lake no one seemed to remember and the stickiest of evenings. When we used to ride our bikes or walk around the neighborhood, I never remember it reaching full dark. I think the dusk liked us and hovered. When I think of you, I remember being struck by how wildly talented you’ve always been. I think I wanted to be a painter, but then I saw your paintings when I was ten and legitimately thought “Well fuck me, I better find something else to be good at.” I was writing before I realized I wanted to. It isn’t without some degree of pain that I remember the hours we spent sitting in your basement writing stories on that behemoth of a desktop. Why did we write? WHAT were we writing? Do you remember?
Niv: Now that I’m up north I can say that there is actually more daylight in the South, in any season, not just summer. It’s funny, I don’t remember much about my own writing from that time, but I do remember you writing us into your own fiction, a genre we’re now familiar with: girl (in this case, girls) falls into fairyland and finds herself. In a time where what we call representation was so hard to come by, there you were, determined to make us all into main characters. You know it took me until well after college to write and draw an Indian-American character? It just didn’t occur to me. I still admire your boldness—where did that impulse come from, to write us into your stories?
Rosh: To be fair, I think I still renamed myself Olivia or Hailey in those self-insert stories. Although I was always taken by the name Araminta… I longed for my name to be something other than what it was. It’s both freeing and disturbing to see how much we contributed to our own erasure. We just took it for granted that those stories could never hold us. And now here we are, swashbuckling our way through the abyss. What were you writing then?
Niv: I was probably writing fanfic around then, though I never did finish any of it. Terrible, angsty poetry. I wanted to make comics. I drew a lot of horses. I think that many kids turn to art for comfort, in some ways, and I wasn’t any different, I was lonely and in denial about many things. Drawing was like a small little world I was in charge of, even if I often failed at making what I wanted to make. Plus, I was obsessed with manga and anime. Sailor Moon, Ghost in the Shell, these were some of my earliest exposures to fantasy and sci-fi.
Rosh: A small little world you were in charge of! YES! That’s a feeling I find so addictive in worldbuilding. Let me make these trees just so… let me make an orchard full of poem plums. Let me explore the world as I see it, as I hate it, as I long for it to be. Often when I’m asked about what made me create at a young age, I fall back on scruffy answers like “boredom!” but as we’re writing this out, I realize I was able to create because of safety. Safety in love. Safety in family. Safety in friendship. And you are a monumental part of that! What makes you feel safe enough to create?
Niv: Safety is a fraught word, but I do think there is something to the idea of safety creating more room for making things—it makes me think about how continuing to make art has to do with becoming comfortable (or at least tolerant) of risk and failure. There is so much to learn, so many badly written sentences, so many rough drafts. So much rejection!
Rosh: So much rejection….
Niv: You really can’t create in a silo all the time. You must find a way to share your work with other people, and often they will be strangers, all of you brought together in a workshop or class or some shared online space. It’s funny, I wouldn’t say that if we met as adults and only knew each other by our work that we would naturally think, ah, this person will be a great reader for me.
Rosh: I agree! Ha! Our adult reading tastes are so different. You have a capacity to linger in discomfort and challenging texts and I… do not. But I think because we’ve known each other for twenty years or so, we’ve developed a mutual trust and respect for each other’s tastes. Which feels….
Niv: Magical.
Rosh: Yes!
Niv: It makes me feel more hopeful about finding other people who get my work, finding readers who are open to a range of writing. I know it’s hard to divide from our friendship, but what do you think makes you a good reader, someone who knows how to give feedback for many different kinds of work and also receive it from many different types of readers?
Rosh: I think what makes a good reader, not just in someone who you may exchange work with but someone we might imagine for our audience, is a person who is open to wonder. More and more, artists are at the mercy of bad faith readings. Text is flayed open like entrails and everyone is scrying to make judgments on whether or not you are a good person. I find that very disturbing. I think that’s why I feel safest when you read my work. You know me. I don’t have to justify myself first. You meet me where the words are. I can only hope others are given that chance
Niv: Yes. I think about this all the time with art and with people. It’s understandable, even, living in this deeply challenging time, to meet the world with suspicion; we live in a time of mass surveillance, heightened insecurity, climate change, fascism, there is much to be angry about, much to be wary of, and arguably, it’s not specific to this time period, we’re wired to assess threat, to be on alert. But I do think stories, art, music, at every age—all of it asks me to be open to someone else’s experience and so gives me a chance to be truer to myself. It is such a gift to be given people’s art, at any stage in the process, and to maybe just be human together. When I wonder why I am spending time making art, I often return to this Lynda Barry comic—not for an answer, really, but as a reminder that art has this kind of ineffable ability to hold many things, even conflicting things, for us. Those four simple squares make me think about reflection, curiosity, confusion, touch. We’re wired for connection too. And if I have any real hopes for my artistic life, it’s that it provides me that in lots of ways, big and small. Thank you for being one of the big ones.
Roshani Chokshi is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestselling series The Star-Touched Queen, The Gilded Wolves and Aru Shah and The End of Time, which Time Magazine named one of the Top 100 Fantasy Books of All Time. Chokshi’s adult debut, The Last Tale of The Flower Bride, was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller. Her novels have been translated into more than two dozen languages and often draw upon world mythology and folklore. Chokshi is a member of the National Leadership Board for the Michael C. Carlos Museum and lives in Georgia with her family. Visit her online at roshanichokshi.com and on Instagram at @roshanichokshi.
Niv Sekar is an artist and writer. She grew up in the South and now resides in New York, watching the winters grow warmer. She is interested in time, queerness, boundaries, and the speculative. She is grateful to have been supported by Tin House, Clarion, MacDowell, and the Center for Fiction. Her work, written or drawn, is often occupied with queer brown girls navigating strange and familiar worlds.
