The author on the short stories that taught her about grief, being inspired by Jennifer Egan, and rereading James Baldwin

My earliest reading memory
Marcus Pfister’s The Rainbow Fish, as a four- or five-year-old in Hong Kong. Retrospectively a book with absolutely the wrong message. If your friends are making you peel scales off your body, they’re not your real friends!

My favourite book growing up
Out of the Ashes by Michael Morpurgo – a children’s novel about, of all things, foot-and-mouth disease. It was my first memory of feeling devastated at the end of the book, a feeling I chase in adulthood!