Annie Wilkes is standing at the foot of the bed, sledgehammer in her hand. From certain angles, the hammer looks like an axe. From certain angles, she reminds you of your mother. When she speaks, you hear the voice of your dealer. When she looks down at you, she’s every undeniable mouth-breather who’s ever trapped you in a conversation you could not escape.

I fell in love with AfroSurrealism when I was drafting the stories for my forthcoming debut short story collection Drinking from Graveyard Wells (University Press of Kentucky, 2023). So many absurd things have happened in my life. I bought a loaf of bread for ten million dollars when hyperinflation hit my country, Zimbabwe, which means that I’ve been a penniless billionaire; I’m only twenty-six and have lived under two dictatorships.

As writers, we’re commonly asked which authors have influenced our work. As a follow-up question, we may be prompted to discuss movies, TV series, media properties, etc. that have been impactful in shaping our writing. These are valid questions that shed light on our creative impetus, style, and tastes. That said, such questions often give me pause. In responding, I must make the decision to provide what I perceive as the expected answer, or challenge the assumption that the major influence on my writing has been my consumption of narratives in a physical or visually recorded form.

(Note: this essay contains major spoilers for The Wicked + The Divine.) I am a first-generation Indian-American. I did well in school. I am a “model citizen,” not even a current speeding ticket on my record. In The Wicked + The Divine (WicDiv) by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, every 90 years, twelve young adults are told they’re gods from various pantheons. They will be loved. They will be hated. They will be brilliant.

Stephen King hates fat people. Like all fat people, but especially fat women, I have to accept that most of the creators I admire and respect have intractable issues with my body. They feel perfectly entitled to use it as a joke, or as the site of horror and degradation, or a proof of failure, or a metaphor for avarice, sexlessness, and/or evil. I must also prepare myself for interactions where my body is in danger (hospitals, doctors offices, interactions with the law) for the derision and devaluation my body will be afforded, because that hatred seeps through fiction to fact, from joke into policy, and is obvious at every level of public interaction.

I was a lonely kid. As a nerdy, quiet child with big glasses and braces, I was at the bottom of the social pecking order. Books—fantasy books in particular—were my escape. I gravitated toward stories where the underdog gets what they want through sheer determination or discovers they have magical powers, or both.