1. Her
name is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable and her family is
originally from Iran.
2. She
has four older brothers and was born in Connecticut. She currently lives
in Orange County, CA and has a season pass to Disneyland.
x3. At age
five, she wanted to be a chemist and grew up “living in the library.” Harry
Potter is one of her favorite books because she was the same age and grew
up with Harry
4. She
went to a small liberal arts college and never took a creative writing
class. For her, writing a book was always something that seemed like it
was too difficult. Tahereh says “Writing is such a solitary pursuit that you
often have to be your own biggest fan and cheerleader. I know writers who
had to wait for 10 years or 20 years before they were published. I needed
to keep myself motivated so that I could hang in there.”
5. She is
an obsessive writer who would lock herself up in her house for weeks and
literally wake up, write and fall asleep. Repeat. She wrote
‘Unravel Me,’ the second book in the series, in two weeks.
6. She
wrote five manuscripts and received hundreds of rejections before coming up
with Shatter Me. Her advice for people who want to be writers is
to never give up. “I have been there many times. The only
difference between successful and unsuccessful writers is time. So don’t
give up too soon.”
7. She loves
to do things with her hands including cook, draw and doodle. One of the
things Tahereh is known for is “defacing” her books, where she draws, writes a
quote or just goes crazy on the white hard covers. This practice started
one day when she was just sitting around and took the jacket off one of her
author’s copies. She saw that the cover was plain white and just started
to draw on it. She put the photo up on Twitter and it received so much
positive reaction that her publisher asked her to do a few more for a
giveaway. It has now become her “thing.”
8. She is
a picky eater. When one of her friends found out she was coming to
Manila, she was asked if she would try balut. She replied “NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!”
9. She
has the same agent as Stephanie Meyer.
10. On the fans in Manila, Tahereh says: “The
readers here are so passionate and it is very difficult to describe but I have
never been to a signing where people were just so into it and screaming.
You can ask ‘Who is Team Warner?’ and people would scream. They are just
so genuine in their interest that you just want to squeeze and hug each one of
them. And it is very flattering to the author.”
Source: http://www.philstar.com/sunday-life/2013/03/10/917688/10-things-you-did-not-know-about-tahereh-mafi
