Age 13. New York. 2005. I was in the house that saw my passion rise, and my world fall. I read book after book looking for solace in those many delicate pages. Breathing in the antique pages of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, I read to escape.

Age 18. Ohio. 2010. I came to realize how narrow my reading habits actually were. I began reading Murakami, Gao Xingjian, Mat Johnson. My ideas of literature and writing expanded to encompass the possibility of growing from reading.

Now. 8 years later. I believe writing is to depict one’s view of the human condition. The beauty of literature is seeing another person’s view point and being able to respond to it. One has to be ready to hear and respond to the vast diversity of views.

However, over my journey, I’ve developed a sort of fear. A fear of being. A fear of existence. A fear to live fully and know myself fully. A fear of responding. That fear, like all fears, must, and will submit to an inner will. It will submit through the continuous, and never-ending efforts of reading literature.

“Our problem is not to be rid of fear but rather to harness and master it.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.