On Sept. 30, author Roshani Chokshi spoke to students during all three lunches in the Great Room. During each session, the audience was encouraged to ask questions, since Chokshi preferred a casual atmosphere.

She started off by expressing her love for Beauty and the Beast, part of the inspiration behind her first novel, The Star-Touched Queen, which is a combination of the timeless classic and Hindu and Indian mythology. The main character, Maya, is also heavily-based on Persephone.

“I grew up in a mixed-race home, and getting in touch with my heritage meant listening to and reading mythology and folktales and my parent’s stories, because they did not teach us their native languages,” Chokshi said.

The more she read, the more she noticed that the same fairy tales were being retold over and over again, leading her to a breakthrough.

“If you can find all these tales across the cultural spectrum, why are we only seeing western versions of them?” Chokshi said.

As a child, Chokshi was an avid reader but found it difficult and confusing browsing through bookstores and not seeing anyone on the covers that resembled herself. There were never books filled with the cultural tales she had grown up with, so she decided to fill that space with her own family’s stories, incorporating the familiarity of classic fairy tales while, at the same time, providing a unique interpretation of them.

“They are the stories of shared human existence, and it’s very freeing to know that every single person knows some semblance of that tale,” Chokshi said.

However, the journey to getting The Star-Touched Queen published wasn’t an easy one; she got around 400 rejections, with some publishing companies even referring to her as a man, blatantly showing their carelessness.

“I felt like my writing didn’t matter,” Chokshi said.

After getting a little emotional, she stressed the importance of confidence and not letting other people’s opinions cause doubt.

“Do not rush; there is no expiration for success,” Chokshi said. “Nobody can ever tell you that your story isn’t worth something or that your voice isn’t important, because it is.”

Chokshi often draws inspiration from her family; her appreciation of strong female characters was instilled in her after being surrounded by fearless women her whole life.

“I don’t just mean the assassin-turned queen or, like, the pirate queen. I’m talking about women whose strength comes from their compassion, their kindness, their strength, their intelligence; girls who are tricky and clever,” Chokshi said.

As far as fictional characters go, she loves Shahrzad from Renée Ahdieh’s The Wrath and the Dawn and Kestrel from Marie Rutkoski’s The Winner’s Curse series.

“They all have strength in such different ways, and it’s beautiful to see how they gain life and breath on the page,” Choksi said.

An interesting concept in The Star-Touched Queen is the tree of memories. Chokshi was driving home one night during the winter season when she noticed one Christmas tree that, unlike the others — covered by multi-colored lights — she’d seen earlier, was only adorned with yellow ones. She quickly made an analogy between the hundreds of lights and our memories, asking herself what would happen if each light represented a memory.

“Why would we store them there? And what would be the need for that?” Choksi said.

Additionally, she hinted at future novels, including a heist fantasy set in Paris, complete with lots of magic. She also mentioned the types of stories she’s interested in telling are from marginalized points of view.

“I’m really interested in colonialism and what that looked like in Europe, and I’m interested in the repercussions and what it meant for people who maybe claimed more than one identity,” Chokshi said. “As a biracial person, writer, and reader, I’m looking a lot at the stories that don’t fit into one narrative.”

As the session came to an end, Chokshi revealed that she was grateful to have gotten an opportunity to travel to Texas, where she has never visited before, and meet younger readers and writers.

“[Everyone] was fantastic; great questions, and nobody yawned at me, which was nice,” Chokshi said. “I was really afraid of that, but most of my high school jitters went away, so I had a lot of fun.”

Westwood is her second school visit, and she had an amazing time, as did the students who came out to listen.

“[Chokshi] was very interesting and passionate and a cool person, so it wasn’t awkward, because she told a lot of stories,” Kate Lee ‘19 said.

Chokshi’s final piece of advice to passionate readers and writers is to “honor your voice no matter what you do”.