Three Short Interviews With Children’s Literature Authors

Salma Hussain

TALI VORON-LEIDERMAN: The Secret Life of Mona Hasan is your debut novel, written for a young adult/middle-grade audience. The novel spans a year in the life of Mona Hasan, as she immigrates from Dubai to Canada and navigates the challenges of growing up. What inspired you to write this book?

SALMA HUSSAIN: The origin story for this novel is that when my oldest daughter was five, she turned to me sleepily at bedtime and asked, “Mama, you were born outside Canada, right? Were you a regular kid just like us?” That one question was the spark behind this entire novel. What I wanted in that moment was a child to answer my own’s child’s underlying questions: in what ways are the kids who grow up outside Canada different? And in what ways are they the same? It was then and there that I decided to write an entire novel in the voice of a child who is born outside North America and immigrates here in her teens, just like I did. That said, the book ended up taking on its own life and went on its own journey; it went from being a more or less straight-forward autobiographical story to something much more fun and fictional. The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan now captures the reality of my immigration journey more realistically than the truth ever could.

TVL: What was your journey to publication with your debut?

SH: I have an unusual publication journey (but don’t we all?). In 2020, I was working on the draft for Mona when I decided to submit the first ten pages to FOLD festival’s Pitch Perfect contest. This is an annual event where writers submit pages from their manuscript-in-progress and then are paired with an industry professional for a twenty-minute feedback session. It’s to help writers from marginalized communities make connections in the publishing industry and get invaluable feedback. I was randomly paired with an agent who loved the sample I sent in and requested the full. I sent in the full and she offered representation. She was the first literary agent I ever met, and the standard advice is not to go with the first one you meet, but she was such a lovely person, had so much genuine enthusiasm for my writing (I showed her other projects), and we had so many points of connection that I felt she was absolutely the right fit for me. Not six months later, she sold my draft to Penguin Random House (Tundra) in a two-book deal.

TVL: What is one piece of advice you would give to an emerging writer?

SH: I can not replace the most commonly given advice to emerging writers, which is to read, read, and read some more. If one does not read, and I mean this very respectfully and kindly, then I’m not sure writing is for the best fit for them.

TVL: In addition to writing for young audiences, you also write short fiction and poetry. You’re also deeply embedded in the literary community in Toronto, including your role as the director of Canthius [magazine], and your forthcoming chapbook with Baseline Press in the summer of 2025 (congratulations!). How do these elements of your creative practice inform and/or influence your writing for younger audiences?

SH: I have a background in law, and after many years of feeling constrained in that line of work, my pivot into creative writing (which is really a return to it, because I did this before law as an undergrad student) allows me to experiment with language, story, and meaning, and this time in different genres and for a range of audiences. All the writing-related things I do enrich my writing for young audiences because I don’t feel limited in any way. I approach everything with a sense of joy, wonder, and curiosity.

TVL: What are you working on right now, or what is something you’re excited about right now?

SH: Right now I’m super excited about my chapbook of poetry coming out this summer. This is a collection of nine of my poems which have been curated by Karen Schindler and are being edited by the fabulous poet Puneet Dutt. I am so indebted to these two powerhouses in the CanLit community for their enthusiasm, generosity, and time with my writing. I love both these ladies so much and I’m really excited about what we are creating together. The chapbook is titled What If Maybe and other poems and releases this summer. Please support small Canadian publishers and consider picking up my chapbook and/or any of the other amazing chapbooks being produced by Baseline Press this summer.

SALMA HUSSAIN

writes poetry and prose. Her fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead, The Humber Literary Review, The Temz Review, Queen’s Quarterly, The Antigonish Review, The Hong Kong Review, Ex-Puritan, and Pleiades: Literature in Context. Her debut novel for kids, The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan, about a young girl’s immigration and menstruation journey, was published by Penguin Random House in 2022. It was selected for ALA’s Rise: A Feminist Book Project Book Project List and shortlisted for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People. A chapbook of poems from Baseline Press is in the works for summer 2025. You can find her on Instagram at: @salma_h_writes.