LIVES Catching up with author Jasbinder Bilan

“Lockdown has made me more grateful for my circumstances”

JASBINDER BILAN The COSTA Children’s Book Awardwinning author of Asha & The Spirit Bird returns with her second novel, Tamarind & The Star of Ishta

The Bath Spa MA Writing for Young People is such a wonderful course and if I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have started my journey to becoming a published writer. I knew that I would have to make a commitment to myself, so I gave up my teaching job for a year to do the course. It was the first time I ever shared my writing even though I’ve written stories since I was a little girl – this was nerve racking! But I needn’t have worried because everyone is in the same boat.

It’s amazing how easily you can see things not working in other people’s writing and this helps you to be critical of your own work. The mantra ‘write your story one word at a time’ helped me to complete 55,000 words of my story, Song Of The Mountain which became my debut Asha & The Spirit Bird.

When you start writing your first novel there are so many unknowns. You don’t know if you will find an agent or a publisher so you have to just focus on writing the best story you can. This is what I did with Asha & The Spirit Bird. Entering The Times Chickenhouse Fiction Competition was a game changer for me.

Winning it was a total shock but incredibly exciting. At this stage I had the total pleasure of working with a wonderful editor, Kesia Lupo and the whole team at Chickenhouse. They have such a wealth of experience and are all really passionate about children’s books. Having won a prize for it meant that when it was published there was already some noise around it which meant booksellers, librarians and teachers knew about it. It’s really with their support as well as that of the writing community and my publishers that Asha & The Spirit Bird was able to enjoy such success and go on to win the COSTA 2019.

My second book, Tamarind & The Star Of Ishta is another magical realist story set again in the Himalaya. It’s about a girl called Tamarind who travels from her home in Bristol to stay with her mum’s family at their grand ancestral home in the Himalaya. While there she discovers a secret garden, befriends a mysterious mountain girl and her monkey Hanu and begins to uncover the family secrets surrounding her mother’s death when Tamarind was a baby.

The story is inspired by my mum. Her mother died when she was a baby and she would often talk about her sense of loss and I think she really missed her even though she never knew her. I also wanted to explore what it’s like to return to a home that you’ve never known and to grow up in two cultures like I did.

In 2017 CLPE commissioned a study into the lack of representation in children’s literature. It found that only one per cent of main characters were from a diverse background. Since then things have improved slightly but before this study took place it was felt that there was not really a problem. Until you start looking you don’t recognise it – just go into your bookshop and count what’s on the shelves – whose stories are being told and regarded as important?

Growing up I never found any characters like myself in books and although this didn’t stop me from entering the magical worlds, subconsciously it made me feel like my stories and a life like mine didn’t matter. This is why we need more books that mirror classrooms up and down the country.

We have to shake things up. All children need to see themselves in books and be made to feel that they matter, that they could be an author, an illustrator, a publisher, anything they want to be. It’s about taking their place in shaping the future. It’s good for everyone to have diversity in children’s literature, it’s a strength for our society and it’s something worth fighting for.

Lockdown has made me more grateful for my circumstances. I have a deadline for book three, and in some ways being able to retreat into my imaginary world has helped to block out some of the sadness across the world.

My top tips for staying on track and being creative are to try to keep to a routine of writing, get out into nature as much as possible and take your notebook with you to write and sketch anything that inspires you and remember what’s really important – things like love, family and community. n

Tamarind & The Star of Ishta is out now. Jasbinder is speaking at the digital Reading Is Magic Festival, which goes live on 2 October, talking with Jasbinder Bilan and Kiran Millwood Hargrave www.readingis magicfestival.com; www.jasbinderbilan. co.uk