Member Spotlight: Naomi Danis

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? On the importance of writing, I think of what Rudine Sims Bishop taught, that books can be mirrors, windows or sliding doors.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? Reading. Not reading. Walking. Going to sleep with the intention of dreaming a solution to a writing problem.

What is your favorite time to write? Any time an idea occurs to me. Especially when it means ignoring to-do lists and mental or physical clutter that are calling out to distract me.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? Be yourself. Don’t try to be anyone else. No one else can tell the story you want to tell the way you can.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? I feel so lucky to be writing during a golden age of picture books, which, these days, have so much variety and originality and have to be beautiful objects to justify their existence.

Naomi Danis’s Bye, Car, illustrated by Daniel Rieley is out now with Childs Play Intl Ltd.