Interview With Author Nadiya Fayaz
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am an Indian writer who has carried words inside her for a very long time — since the seventh grade, to be exact. Back then, poetry was something I kept quietly to myself, too intimate to share, too personal to explain. Writing felt like holding a secret that was also holding me together. Letters I’ll Never Send is my debut collection, and it is everything I spent years being afraid to say out loud.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Letters I’ll Never Send is a raw, emotionally honest poetry collection that moves through heartbreak, self-doubt, trauma, and healing. It was inspired by all the feelings I could never quite say to someone’s face — the words that lived in me but had nowhere to go. I wrote letters I knew I would never send, and somewhere in that process, a book was born. It is for everyone who has ever felt unseen, unheard, or unloved.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Almost all of my writing happens at night. There is something about the quiet after the world goes to sleep that makes honesty easier. I also write almost exclusively in my phone’s Notes app — no notebooks, no fancy setup. Emotion rarely waits for the right moment, so I capture it wherever I am, whenever it arrives.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Honestly, every author and every book speaks to me in its own way. I have never believed in limiting what you let in. Words find you when you need them, regardless of genre or form. That said, Brianna Wiest’s The Mountain Is You touched something deep in me — the way it explores self-sabotage and inner transformation is the kind of writing that stays with you long after you have put it down.
What are you working on now?
I am exploring longer forms of storytelling — possibly a novel or a novella. Poetry taught me how to feel in fragments; now I want to see what happens when I let a story breathe across more pages. It is a new kind of challenge, and I am excited and terrified in equal measure.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
The most powerful promotion I have had has come from the people closest to me — my family and friends who believed in this book and shared it genuinely. There is no algorithm that beats someone who loves you putting your work into someone else’s hands.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Stop waiting until it is perfect. Stop waiting until you feel ready. Stop waiting, period. Life is short — just publish it. The world does not need a flawless version of your work; it needs the real, honest, imperfect version that only you can write. Your voice matters more than your doubts.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Life is short — just publish it. It sounds simple, but it is the push I needed to stop hiding and start sharing. Someone believed in what I had created before I fully did, and that changed everything.
What are you reading now?
current I’m reading Brianna Wiest’s The Mountain Is You.
What’s next for you as a writer?
More honesty. More courage. A novel or novella that I am slowly finding my way into. I spent years hiding my words — I do not plan to do that anymore. Whatever comes next, I want it to be braver than what came before.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
These four books together probably say more about me than any answer I could write. Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi — because I have always been drawn to the quiet weight of things left unsaid and moments we wish we could return to. The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest — because it is the book that helped me understand myself, and I would need that on a desert island more than ever. Dead Poets Society by N.H. Kleinbaum — because “carpe diem” is not just a phrase to me, it is the reason this book exists at all. And I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee — because it is the most honest, tender, and quietly devastating book about existing in a difficult mind, and it has never once made me feel alone in mine.
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