I was a reader before I was a writer, and when I started putting together my first collection of short stories, Fairytales For Lost Children, I drew on my rich history as a reader to try and create my voice. I wanted this voice to reflect my Somali background, my Kenyan upbringing and my London home. This voice would be a mashup of all the elements that formed my youth; the sticky-sweet Jamaican patois, the Kenyan street slang, my Somali and Italian linguistic tics, my love of jazz poetics and nineties hip-hop slanguistics. This language would form the bed on which my narratives of love, loss, identity and hope would rest. . Diriye Osman
About This Quote

My voice is my own in all of its hybridity. It is a melange of cultural influences, an amalgam of all the things that make me an individual. This melange is reflected in my works, especially when I create stories with a place in mind. My homeland of Somalia is the birthplace of the stories that I write.

Kenya is where I was born, though I grew up in England. And my love for jazz and hip-hop music has always been a part of my life. I wanted to portray the many aspects of my life in this collection of stories.

Each story reflects some facet of my life, giving homage to each element while also allowing me the chance to blur the lines between fiction and reality.

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