Stuff White People Write

Around 30 years ago, as a weird, shy kid living in a Jamaican household in Malton, Ontario, I discovered fantasy and science fiction. It started as a mild compulsion, the moment I opened the Chronicles of Narnia boxed set on Christmas morning. A couple of years later, I picked up R.A. Salvatore’s The Crystal Shard at a moving sale, and a full-blown addiction was born. My mother curated my habit carefully, and before long the WHSmith staff knew her by name. To this day, even in the age of iPads and Kindles, I walk around with a miniature stack of books in hand. I am 36 years old, and I still read Dungeons & Dragons novels late into the night, as though I have nowhere to be in the morning. I read books for adults, books for teenagers and books for children as old as I was the first time I wore an unzipped sleeping bag as a cape, searching for the entrance to Narnia in my bedroom closet.

Three decades since I began reading fantasy and sci-fi, I have...