Wafa’ Tarnowska is a children’s author with an array of works already published in different languages ranging from Dutch, Danish, Arabic and Korean. Nour’s Secret Library is her latest release and is a profoundly gripping tale of hope, resilience and community inspired by real-life volunteers in Syria and her own personal experiences during the Lebanese Civil War. What We Reading sat down with Wafa’ to discuss everything from her love for travelling to her hopes to take her storytelling worldwide
Thanks for speaking with us, Wafa’! First off, tell us a bit about yourself and what led you to the world of writing.
I am a writer, translator, storyteller and a world Bedouin who was born in the Lebanon and lived and worked in Australia, India, Poland, Cyprus, Dubai and the UK and who spends every penny I earn travelling around the globe.
Writing is my first and greatest love and I will die still writing. No retirement for me: I live for writing, travelling and storytelling.
Talk to us about In Nour’s Secret Library. What is it about, and where did the inspiration for it come from?
Nour’s Secret Library is based on a real event that happened in the town of Daraya in Syria between 2013 and 2016, where despite the daily bombings, the young people collected 15,000 books from bombed-out houses and created a library in the basement of an abandoned building which served the community in many practical ways while helping to keep their morale high.
It is also partly based on my experiences in the civil war in Lebanon where I found myself hiding in a basement for 100 days in 1976 with my family to stay safe from bombardments. All 12 families in our building, that’s 40 children and adults spent every night in the caretaker’s apartment, playing card games, reading, drinking coffee, listening to the news, knitting, colouring, and talking politics. We left the basement in the morning when the bombing stopped, went upstairs to our apartments to wash and change, eat and sleep a little until the next round of bombings would start so we went down to the basement again for the night.
What is the number one goal you want your work to have with readers?
To inspire them.
What do you think makes you stand out as an author?
My cultural background and the fact that I write in English and for children about a controversial region of the world trying to build bridges between East and West.
What would you say has been your biggest success so far?
Nour’s Secret Library, which is my 9th book. I’m the tortoise in the fable of the Hare and the Tortoise!!
If you could go back in time to one book you read for the first time, what would it be and why?
I loved The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas which I read in French several times because it inspired me so much and made me cry. Like Nour, it’s a story of resilience, vision and courage to achieve one’s dream despite huge odds.
What’s one tip you would give your younger self if you had the opportunity?
Don’t listen to the voice inside you that tells you “who are you to write”? That voice needs to be silenced because it’s the voice of fear, not of hope. It’s the voice of procrastination and that of the blank page.
And finally, what do you hope the future holds for you and your writing?
My dream is for my books to be translated into dozens of languages and sold all over the world and for me to go here, there, and everywhere telling my stories to children all over the world.
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Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
