Emma Knight on The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus

Emma Knight
“The octopus became my metaphor before I even understood why.”

That was the first line I wrote in my journal before I ever began my novel, The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus. I had been thinking about transformation, secrets, identity, the emotional landscapes women inhabit—and how little language we have for what truly shapes us from the inside out.

The octopus, with its soft body, its intelligence, its camouflage, and its solitude, captured the essence of Penelope’s journey. But more than that, it captured mine—and, I suspect, the journeys of many women. We adapt. We conceal. We reach. We release.

This series is a conversation I dreamed of having while writing the book. Not with critics or analysts, but with those who live these questions deeply: women who write not just to be understood but to understand. Women whose voices have taught me that invisibility is not silence—it is the prelude to emergence.

To bring together 25 writers across five themes—metamorphosis, invisibility, emotional truth, secrecy, and belonging—felt like coming full circle. This is not a debate. It is a listening room.

You’re invited in.

 (Note: This is an imaginary conversation, a creative exploration of an idea, and not a real speech or event.)

Topic 1: Metamorphosis and Self-Discovery

Emma Knight
"Writing The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus was never just about crafting a plot—it was an attempt to express how we evolve, often invisibly, in response to love, pain, and displacement. Penelope’s journey mirrors the octopus: fluid, intelligent, elusive, and always adapting. Her metamorphosis isn’t about achieving clarity—it’s about surviving confusion, and eventually trusting it. Today, I’m honored to explore this with five writers whose work has shaped how we understand change—not as clean transformation, but as a messy becoming."

Emma: What does true metamorphosis actually feel like—and what myths do we hold about it?

Lidia Yuknavitch
“It feels like being skinned. Metamorphosis is bloody and often lonely. It’s not a makeover. It’s an undoing. The myth is that you’ll emerge stronger—but often, you emerge softer, and that’s what makes you strong. I wrote The Chronology of Water while drowning in grief. Transformation didn’t save me. It just made my voice impossible to ignore.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
“I used to believe metamorphosis was something you planned. But Eat, Pray, Love taught me otherwise. It’s an act of surrender. You fall apart in Italy, you pray in India, and you learn love in Bali—but the truth is, it all begins when you admit you don’t know who you are anymore. And that’s terrifying. But also sacred.”

Jeanette Winterson
“People assume transformation leads you forward. Sometimes, it leads you backward—into childhood, into silence, into memory. In Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, I realized my most powerful metamorphosis was reclaiming what had been stolen: love, self-worth, and spiritual autonomy. It wasn’t a change. It was a return.”

Cheryl Strayed
“Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail didn’t make me brave—it revealed how much fear I was carrying. Metamorphosis is deeply physical. My feet bled. My back ached. But something primal kicked in. I forgave my mother. I forgave myself. That’s the truth no one tells you: transformation always begins with forgiveness.”

Mira Jacob
“For me, it happened through my son’s questions. In Good Talk, I had to unlearn so many stories I’d been handed—about race, about identity, about how women should behave. Real metamorphosis means sitting in contradiction. You don't shed skin cleanly. You carry remnants of what you were. That’s okay.”

Emma: How do we know we’re not just adapting to survive—but actually becoming who we are?

Jeanette Winterson
“You can feel it in the resistance. Survival is silence. Becoming is loud. Even if no one else hears it, you do. Becoming insists. It taps on your skull at night. It screams through the page. You write. You howl. You dare.”

Mira Jacob
“I ask myself, ‘Is this reaction fear, or is this truth?’ If I’m speaking to avoid discomfort, that’s survival. But if I’m telling the story I don’t want to tell, that’s becoming.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
“There’s a difference between shrinking and shape-shifting. The first is a compromise. The second is creation. When I’m becoming, I feel more rooted even as I change. My laugh is louder. My heart feels less armored.”

Cheryl Strayed
“I remember a moment on the trail. I screamed into the void, ‘I am not broken.’ And for the first time, I believed it. Survival taught me how to disappear. Becoming taught me how to stand.”

Lidia Yuknavitch
“When the body stops flinching. That’s how I know. When I can stay present through pain, love, or rage without numbing—I’ve crossed into something real. Becoming isn’t about being safe. It’s about being whole.”

Emma: If you could whisper one truth about transformation to your younger self, what would it be?

Cheryl Strayed
“Everything you’re ashamed of will become your greatest strength. Don’t hide your story. One day, it will heal others.”

Elizabeth Gilbert
“You don’t need permission to begin again. You never did.”

Mira Jacob
“The questions you’re afraid to ask—ask them anyway. They’ll be the beginning of your freedom.”

Lidia Yuknavitch
“Sweet girl, the parts they told you to bury will become your fire. Let them burn.”

Jeanette Winterson
“You were never broken. You were just rearranging yourself into something unrecognizable—and luminous.”

Emma Knight
"I wrote Pen as someone who didn’t yet have those truths—but she was searching. That search, that questioning, is the real metamorphosis. We don’t transform in a single moment. We shift. We squeeze through impossibilities. We soften, we stretch, and we survive. If we’re lucky, we learn to stay soft. That’s the power of becoming."

Topic 2: The Invisibility of Women’s Inner Lives

Emma Knight
"When I wrote The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus, I wanted to explore the spaces where women live emotionally—but rarely speak aloud. Pen doesn’t always understand her own desires or wounds. She holds silence, performs control, and hides pain, not to deceive others but because she hasn’t yet learned the language for what she feels. That, to me, is the essence of feminine invisibility—not just being unseen, but being unformulated. Today I’ve invited five writers who’ve each shattered that silence in their own way."

Emma: Why are women’s emotional lives so often hidden, even from themselves?

Rachel Cusk
"Because to speak clearly is to risk judgment. Women are taught not to burden others with interiority. In Outline, I removed the narrator’s voice intentionally—to show how many women live through the projections of others. Self-erasure is often mistaken for grace."

Elena Ferrante
"In Naples, everything is loud—but women’s thoughts are not. Lila and Lenù internalize everything because there is no safe space for them to rage or contradict. Emotional invisibility begins in girlhood. We learn to carry others’ expectations, never our own voices."

Maggie Nelson
"It’s a defense mechanism. If you’re too complex, too fluid, too contradictory, you’re punished. So we simplify ourselves for survival. But the body remembers. In The Argonauts, I had to write my messiness into clarity—not for approval, but for freedom."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
"Because we’re conditioned to think of feelings as weakness. Especially in cultures where resilience is the only survival strategy. But emotion is not fragility. It’s data. It tells the story of what has been denied. Feminism, to me, begins with acknowledging that."

Sally Rooney
"Because there’s a fear of being ‘too much.’ My characters—Connell, Marianne—they struggle to express because they’ve internalized the idea that vulnerability is dangerous. Women especially are taught to speak in small, quiet ways. It’s a kind of emotional minimalism."

Emma: What happens when women finally begin to articulate what was once hidden?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
"Revolution happens. Quietly at first. A woman speaks up at the dinner table. Another writes a blog post. Then a book. Then a movement. But also, grief happens. For all the years you spent mute."

Rachel Cusk
"A rupture. The narrative shifts. Once a woman reclaims her voice, the architecture around her resists. Family. Partner. Even the self. Everything you built while silenced begins to collapse. But you rebuild on truth."

Sally Rooney
"Intimacy deepens—but not always comfortably. When a character like Marianne says something raw, people pull away. That’s part of the risk. But it’s also the beginning of real connection. Not all intimacy is soft. Some of it is electric and painful."

Elena Ferrante
"It changes the reader, too. I’ve remained anonymous so that readers can place their own lives into the story. When Lila speaks what has never been said, it creates a mirror. Articulating silence is contagious."

Maggie Nelson
"It destabilizes genre. Structure. Self. That’s why The Argonauts is so hybrid. When women articulate the unseen, language itself must bend. We invent new forms to fit truths that don’t behave."

Emma: If a young woman asked how to stop making herself invisible, what would you say?

Maggie Nelson
"Write your contradictions down. Keep them messy. Keep them true. Don’t aim for coherence—aim for wholeness."

Sally Rooney
"Don’t wait until you feel ‘ready’ to speak. You won’t. Speak anyway. Even if your voice shakes or your thoughts feel incomplete."

Elena Ferrante
"Find a friend who sees the real you. One who challenges you. One who frightens you a little. Friendship can be a crucible for visibility."

Rachel Cusk
"Refuse to perform. Even when it feels rude. Stop smiling when you don’t mean it. Don’t soften your sentences for someone else’s comfort."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
"Name what you feel. Name it again. And again. Until it feels like yours. Until it cannot be taken from you."

Emma Knight
"Pen’s journey is one of quiet undoing. She doesn't make grand speeches or dramatic escapes. She begins to notice herself. That noticing—that first flicker of acknowledgment—is the start of visibility. Maybe, for all of us, becoming seen begins when we stop editing ourselves before we speak."

Topic 3: Emotional Intelligence Over Rational Control

Emma Knight
"In The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus, Pen doesn’t win by outsmarting her problems. She begins to feel her way through them. I wanted to challenge the idea that logic alone can guide us, especially as women whose emotions have long been dismissed. Like the octopus—with its intelligence distributed across its limbs—Pen learns to trust the parts of herself that feel, react, and intuit. Emotional intelligence isn’t weakness. It’s wisdom. And I’m honored to explore this with five women who’ve made emotion central to their storytelling."

Emma: Why do we still treat emotional insight as less valuable than rational analysis?

Brené Brown
"Because emotion is messy—and mess scares people. But emotion is also where we find courage, empathy, and connection. We glorify control, but emotional insight is a form of mastery too. The ability to sit with discomfort and not shut down? That’s strength."

Lisa Taddeo
"Because rationality serves power. Emotion disrupts it. In Three Women, I saw how women’s desires were dismissed as irrational. But those desires told the truth. They revealed what logic couldn’t touch—grief, hunger, longing. Rationality often edits. Emotion exposes."

Zadie Smith
"Because emotion is private. Rationality has rules, structure, data. Emotion is personal, and therefore harder to argue. But art doesn’t live in data. Fiction lives in friction. I never write to explain—I write to feel something worth understanding."

Anne Lamott
"It’s safer to do a spreadsheet than to cry. But it’s not more honest. Rationality is useful. But it’s not where the soul lives. And when I’m writing, I want soul—not stats. The world’s dying for truth, not just logic."

Tayari Jones
"Because emotional truth is inconvenient. In An American Marriage, everyone wants a clean answer. But emotions don’t work that way. Love doesn’t follow a formula. Neither does loss. And yet we keep pretending life is a math problem."

Emma: What role does emotion play in decision-making or storytelling that logic cannot fulfill?

Zadie Smith
"Emotion animates. It gives narrative weight. A character might make a logical choice, but the reader won’t care unless there’s emotional consequence. That’s the marrow of story."

Tayari Jones
"Emotion shows stakes. Logic might say: stay or go. Emotion says: here’s what it costs. Here’s what it breaks. Every decision in An American Marriage is layered with feeling—duty, betrayal, hope. Without that, there’s no real tension."

Anne Lamott
"Logic leads to plot. Emotion leads to meaning. They’re both useful. But only one helps you survive. Only one lets your reader see their own reflection and say, ‘Me too.’ That’s why I write. That’s why I pray. Same thing, really."

Brené Brown
"Emotion tells you what matters. Logic tells you what’s possible. But when those two aren’t aligned, people burn out. In real life and in fiction. Emotion gives decision-making a compass, not just a map."

Lisa Taddeo
"It reveals humanity. In every sentence, I’m asking: ‘Why did she do that? What was she really feeling?’ That’s where the story lives. Not in what happened—but in what it meant to the people inside it."

Emma: How do we teach the next generation to value emotional intelligence as deeply as intellect?

Brené Brown
"By modeling it. We don’t teach kids to value emotions by giving speeches—we do it by apologizing, by being honest, by showing that it’s okay to feel. Emotional fluency is learned through witnessing, not lecturing."

Anne Lamott
"Start by telling the truth. Especially when it’s awkward. Let kids see that sadness isn’t shameful. That anger isn’t evil. That love isn’t embarrassing. That vulnerability isn’t a defect. It’s the beginning of real connection."

Lisa Taddeo
"Give them stories that don’t resolve too cleanly. Let them sit with ambiguity. With desire. With contradiction. The world is obsessed with answers. Emotion teaches you to live inside the question."

Tayari Jones
"Talk to them like they’re already wise. Don’t dumb it down. Give them novels. Ask them how they feel—not just what they think. Feelings are intelligence. Full stop."

Zadie Smith
"Let them write. Not essays. Not summaries. Let them write what they notice, what they wonder, what they fear. And never correct the feeling. Just say, ‘Tell me more.’ That’s where self-trust begins."

Emma Knight
"Pen’s breakthrough wasn’t intellectual—it was emotional. She didn’t find answers. She found the courage to stay present with questions. That’s what emotional intelligence is. It’s not soft. It’s strong enough to bear ambiguity. And in a world addicted to certainty, that’s revolutionary."

Topic 4: The Weight and Liberation of Secrets

Emma Knight
"In The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus, secrets are tidal forces. They shape Pen’s identity in ways she can’t see. Her father's distance, her mother’s silence, and the enigma of Lord Lennox are not just plot devices—they're emotional inheritances. I’ve always felt that secrets are both prisons and escape hatches. What we don’t say controls us—until we choose to name it. Today, I’ve invited five writers who’ve illuminated that tension—between secrecy and truth, burden and freedom—with breathtaking clarity."

Emma: Why do families keep secrets, and what impact do they have on personal identity?

Tara Westover
"Families keep secrets to protect a myth. In my case, the myth was survival through separation from the world. But secrets fracture identity. You start to doubt your memories, your instincts. You wonder if the pain was real. Writing Educated was about reclaiming my story from the silence."

Celeste Ng
"In Everything I Never Told You, I explored how silence accumulates across generations. Families keep secrets not always out of malice—but fear, shame, or love. But unspoken truths don’t disappear. They seep into the margins of daily life and shape who we believe we’re allowed to become."

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
"In Stay With Me, secrets were a way to manage grief and gendered expectations. In cultures where silence is survival, people withhold to protect each other—or to maintain control. But the impact is often isolation. Secrets can create invisible walls between the people who love each other most."

Mira T. Lee
"I write about mental illness in Everything Here is Beautiful. In many families, that’s still taboo. Silence becomes a way of coping. But it also breeds confusion and guilt. Secrets distort the lens through which we view ourselves and those we love. They alter the emotional blueprint of the next generation."

Jeanette Winterson
"My mother said, 'The devil led us to the wrong crib.' I wasn’t allowed to ask questions. That’s how secrets shape you: they fill the vacuum of truth with shame. But I learned that truth-telling is an act of creation. The moment you tell your story, you stop being its prisoner."

Emma: What happens emotionally when a long-held secret is finally spoken aloud?

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
"Relief, yes—but also grief. You mourn the years you lived in distortion. You grieve the relationships that weren’t built on truth. But it’s also the beginning of self-respect. Naming the truth is a reclamation."

Mira T. Lee
"It changes the dynamic of love. Sometimes it breaks it. Sometimes it rebuilds it on sturdier ground. But it always reconfigures trust—between others and within the self."

Jeanette Winterson
"It’s not a confession. It’s a resurrection. When I wrote Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, I wasn’t just recalling facts—I was restoring a version of myself that had been silenced. Secrets delay mourning. Telling them reclaims time."

Celeste Ng
"It shifts the center of gravity. Everyone involved has to renegotiate reality. That can be liberating—or shattering. But even shattering has value. At least then, the pieces are on the table. You can begin again."

Tara Westover
"The truth doesn’t always bring reconciliation. But it brings clarity. And sometimes, clarity is enough. You stop asking for permission to remember your own life."

Emma: When is a secret worth keeping—and when is it time to let it go?

Mira T. Lee
"When the secret protects harm, it must be released. But not all truths need to be weaponized. Timing matters. So does intention. You don’t share to wound—you share to illuminate."

Jeanette Winterson
"Keep a secret if it’s a seed. Let it go if it’s a shackle. Secrets that nurture can be sacred. But the ones that diminish you—they have to be named."

Celeste Ng
"When keeping the secret sustains shame, it’s time to speak. Secrets that survive on silence grow monstrous. Speak not to destroy, but to reclaim your story from the dark."

Tara Westover
"If the cost of the secret is your sense of reality—let it go. Even if others aren’t ready to hear it. You deserve to live in a world where your memories matter."

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
"A secret is worth keeping if it protects someone’s agency. But if it steals yours, then it’s not preservation—it’s erasure."

Emma Knight
"I didn’t know what Pen would discover when she began asking questions. But I knew this: the act of seeking was itself liberation. Secrets lose power when we stop treating them as sacred. The moment we tell the truth—however quietly—we start writing a different story. And that story belongs to us."

Topic 5: Belonging and Alienation in a Complex World

Emma Knight
"In The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus, Pen moves to Edinburgh and quickly realizes she’s a stranger—not just in a new city, but in her own story. She’s foreign to herself. Writing her journey, I came to understand how belonging is not a place—it’s a state of recognition, of being known, or at least mirrored. The octopus, solitary and adaptable, became a metaphor for how we learn to inhabit uncertainty. Today, I’m joined by five extraordinary writers who explore the tension between identity and displacement with clarity and compassion."

Emma: How do you define belonging—and why does it remain so elusive for many?

Jhumpa Lahiri
"Belonging is the comfort of not needing to explain. But for immigrants, language alone fractures that comfort. You’re always translating yourself, even in silence. In The Namesake, I wrote about characters who carry their homeland like a phantom limb. You belong when you no longer feel the need to defend your presence."

Ruth Ozeki
"Belonging is a process, not a destination. In A Tale for the Time Being, my characters find belonging not through geography, but through connection across time and perspective. We often search for belonging externally, when it’s really an act of spiritual alignment."

Yaa Gyasi
"I define it as feeling safe enough to be fully seen. In Homegoing, I followed generations that never felt rooted—because colonialism ripped up the soil. Belonging isn’t elusive because we fail—it’s elusive because systems were built to exclude us. Recognizing that is the first step toward healing."

Min Jin Lee
"Belonging is the right to complexity. When you’re expected to represent a group, you lose the right to contradict yourself. In Pachinko, the characters weren’t allowed to be ordinary. They had to be symbols. That’s why belonging is elusive—it requires a space where you can just be."

Nicole Krauss
"Belonging, for me, is about narrative coherence. Feeling like your life fits inside a story that makes emotional sense. Displacement distorts that story. You feel like a footnote in someone else’s book. My work is often an attempt to rewrite the story so that I can re-enter it."

Emma: What do we discover about ourselves when we live at the margins of culture, geography, or family?

Min Jin Lee
"You learn to become multilingual—not just in language, but in emotional translation. You understand how to read a room, a silence, a stare. Margins teach sensitivity. They hurt, yes, but they also deepen you."

Yaa Gyasi
"You discover the parts of you that were hidden by expectation. In Transcendent Kingdom, my character lives between science and faith, Ghana and America. The margins forced her to look inward—to define herself without easy reference points."

Nicole Krauss
"You become the curator of absence. Living on the edge means constantly archiving what’s missing—home, language, tradition. But in that curation, something original is born. Margins often create the most haunting art because they hold both longing and imagination."

Jhumpa Lahiri
"You begin to treasure small recognitions. A stranger who pronounces your name correctly. A book that echoes your silence. These are rare, so they become sacred. Margins teach you to build intimacy in quiet places."

Ruth Ozeki
"You realize you are porous. The boundaries others set around identity—these start to feel artificial. Margins dissolve certainty. And that, in my view, is the beginning of enlightenment."

Emma: If someone feels alienated today—emotionally or culturally—what would you offer them?

Nicole Krauss
"Write. Even if no one reads it. Even if it makes no sense. Writing reorganizes alienation into shape. The chaos of feeling outside is a kind of raw material. Use it."

Jhumpa Lahiri
"Seek out people who live between worlds. They understand. Belonging isn’t always found in the majority—it’s often found in shared nuance, in the in-between."

Yaa Gyasi
"Remember you’re not alone. Alienation lies to us. It says we’re the only ones. But millions of people are feeling it right now. Find one of them. Say hello."

Min Jin Lee
"Read stories that don’t flatten your experience. Let literature affirm your contradictions. Belonging isn’t about consensus—it’s about resonance."

Ruth Ozeki
"Practice stillness. Alienation often drives us to overcompensate. But stillness allows your true voice to emerge. And sometimes, that voice is exactly what the world needs."

Emma Knight
"Pen never quite arrives. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe belonging is less about arriving and more about allowing ourselves to remain—in flux, in feeling, in search. Like the octopus, we adapt not to escape, but to connect. To touch something real—even if it's brief, even if it's fragile. That moment of connection, I believe, is home."

Final Thoughts by Emma Knight

Over the course of these five conversations, I was reminded that there is no singular path to understanding ourselves. Some women write their way into wholeness. Others walk through silence until it breaks. Some forgive. Others rage. All of them illuminate.

If Penelope’s journey in The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus resonates at all, I hope it’s not because she “finds herself,” but because she learns to stop running from what she already knows deep down. Like the octopus, her evolution is unseen, but undeniable.

In every conversation, I heard echoes of that truth—that we are not waiting to become someone new. We are peeling away the myths that kept us hidden from the people we already are.

Thank you for reading, for feeling, and for holding space.

Stories, like oceans, are made for return.

— Emma

Short Bios:

Elizabeth Gilbert is the bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic, known for her explorations of personal transformation, creativity, and self-reinvention.

Cheryl Strayed is the author of Wild, a memoir of healing through wilderness, and the voice behind the popular advice column Dear Sugar.

Lidia Yuknavitch is a memoirist and novelist whose work, including The Chronology of Water, delves into bodily trauma, reinvention, and the redemptive power of story.

Jeanette Winterson is a British literary icon, author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, blending fiction and autobiography with spiritual inquiry.

Mira Jacob is a novelist and illustrator best known for Good Talk, a graphic memoir that navigates race, identity, and parenthood in America.

Sally Rooney is the Irish author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends, praised for her minimalist prose and emotionally intricate characters.

Rachel Cusk is the acclaimed British author of the Outline trilogy, whose work explores voice, identity, and female interiority through stark, reflective narrative.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer and feminist thinker, known for Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists, blending cultural commentary with fiction.

Elena Ferrante is the pseudonymous author of the Neapolitan Novels, celebrated for her portrayal of complex female friendships and inner lives.

Maggie Nelson is a genre-defying writer of hybrid memoirs like The Argonauts, probing gender, motherhood, desire, and philosophical tension.

Anne Lamott is a beloved spiritual memoirist and novelist, author of Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies, known for her wit, honesty, and grace in exploring faith and emotion.

Brené Brown is a research professor, author, and public speaker who popularized the value of vulnerability and shame resilience through books like Daring Greatly.

Zadie Smith is the award-winning author of White Teeth, Swing Time, and numerous essays on culture, race, and identity in modern life.

Lisa Taddeo is the journalist and author of Three Women, a groundbreaking narrative nonfiction work about the emotional and sexual lives of women in America.

Tayari Jones is the author of An American Marriage, a novel praised for its portrayal of love, justice, and emotional complexity.

Tara Westover is the author of Educated, a memoir detailing her escape from an isolated survivalist family to earn a PhD from Cambridge.

Mira T. Lee is the author of Everything Here is Beautiful, a novel exploring sisterhood, mental illness, and cultural identity.

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ is a Nigerian novelist whose debut Stay With Me confronts secrets, grief, and societal pressure through the lens of marriage.

Celeste Ng is the bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You, often focused on family, silence, and belonging.

Jhumpa Lahiri is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author known for The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies, writing about displacement and cultural identity.

Min Jin Lee is the author of Pachinko, a sweeping generational novel about Koreans in Japan, exploring identity, dignity, and resilience.

Yaa Gyasi is a Ghanaian-American writer whose novels Homegoing and Transcendent Kingdom examine lineage, loss, and faith through diasporic narratives.

Ruth Ozeki is a Zen Buddhist priest and novelist of A Tale for the Time Being, blending time, memory, and spirituality in her storytelling.

Nicole Krauss is the author of The History of Love and Forest Dark, whose lyrical fiction often explores memory, metaphysics, and identity.

Emma Knight is the debut author of The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus, a coming-of-age novel that weaves metaphor, mystery, and emotional truth through the lens of a young woman’s search for identity.