Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a writer based in London, UK. Rowan’s second novel, Starling Days, is a beautiful story about the complex love between the book’s two protagonists, Mina and Oscar, and their respective challenges in the wake of Mina’s suicide attempt. Starling Days explores family and love in many forms, and how people both connect and separate. In our conversation, Rowan and I discussed the depiction of mental illness in her book, how she approached writing the multifaceted relationships between the book’s characters, and why it was important to her to include multiracial characters. Then in the second segment, we talked about faith and how we make and find meaning.

(Conversation recorded March 30, 2021.)

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Show Notes:

• Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
• Purchase Starling Days: Pages of Hackney (London, UK) | Greenlight Bookstore (NYC) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Rowan Hisayo Buchanan - “The Woman Scared of Her Own Kimono”
• Ruth Ozeki - A Tale for the Time Being
• Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You
• Violet Kupersmith
• Violet Kupersmith - Build Your House Around My Body

Transcript Episode Credits

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo