I was a reader before I was a writer, and when I started putting together my first collection of short stories, Fairytales For Lost Children, I drew on my rich history as a reader to try and create my voice. I wanted this voice to reflect my Somali background, my Kenyan upbringing and my London home. This voice would be a mashup of all the elements that formed my youth; the sticky-sweet Jamaican patois, the Kenyan street slang, my Somali and Italian linguistic tics, my love of jazz poetics and nineties hip-hop slanguistics. This language would form the bed on which my narratives of love, loss, identity and hope would rest.
Diriye Osman
identity, inspiring, language, loss, reading