Outlook Mixtape: Putting pen to paper

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During her teens, the British-Asian writer Nina Bhadreshwar felt alone and disconnected from the world around her. Then, as a young adult in the early 1990s, she discovered a world of graffiti art and rave music. This new passion inspired her to create a self-funded magazine highlighting the work of the underground artists that made her feel most alive. She called it The Real State, and it soon became her passport to the world - taking her from Yorkshire to the bright lights of New York City and introducing her to rap superstar Tupac Shakur. When Tererai Trent was growing up in a village in rural North of Zimbabwe in the 1970s, the future looked bleak. She seemed set to repeat the pattern followed by her female ancestors - marrying young, mothering many children and living a life of poverty. But Tererai was determined to break that cycle. She wrote down her dreams on a piece of paper and buried them in a tin can. Then she went about making each dream a reality. This interview was first broadcast in 2017. Becoming a writer was not the most straightforward journey for Nnedi Okorafor. Before her literary success she was a talented tennis player and dreamt of turning pro. However following a diagnosis of scoliosis, routine surgery to her spine left her temporarily paralysed. Confined to her hospital bed, Nnedi found solace in her vivid imagination and began writing for the first time. It was the start of a highly successful career as an author and led to a request from Marvel to write some of their comics. Over the years she has written characters including Spiderman, the X-Men and the Avengers. Nnedi is also the first woman to write the character of T'Challa - the Black Panther, as well as his tech-loving sister, Shuri. Presenter: Asya Fouks Producer: Thomas Harding Assinder Get in touch: [email protected] or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707