YI-HWA BAYAR HANNA

Can I tell you a secret?

I possess the ability to travel to other worlds. I have travelled to lands with sorcerers, witches, and dragons; alien planets with technology beyond my wildest dreams; and to far-flung towns in this world. Along the way, I’ve made new friends who taught me about love, loyalty, friendship, betrayal, conflict, and everything in between - and I did it all with the flick of a page and the turn of a hand: through the pages of books filled with powerful stories.

And you can do it too. 

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Each time I delve into a new story, I become Digory Kirke from C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, who discovered a "Wood between the Worlds" filled with pool upon pool, each leading to a separate universe. Except in my case, instead of the trees in a wood, I had the pages of a book; and instead of pools, I had the worlds created through the words within them. When I was a child, whenever things around me felt like too much to handle, it was my favourite way to escape. As I grew older, it became more than just a refuge: it was where I'd travel to when I needed to be inspired, or when I craved new ways of making sense of the world around me, or my ever-changing self - and it still is to this day.

I think that's why I became a writer.

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I love stories that encourage us to ponder: "What if...?"

When I began writing my first novel, I promised myself that I would do my very best to write books that would be worthy of enrapturing my younger self, and anyone else who is gracious enough to read them - and that promise still stands true today.