Hey, it's Anna. We've been doing a series of live Zoom conversations with the authors

of new books that we love this summer. Last week I sat down with writer and artist

Equikey Amazing and it was a fantastic conversation. Equikey has recently been a very prolific

writer. They've published three books in three years. Their debut novel Freshwater came

out in 2018 and was met with celebratory critical acclaim. Then came a young adult novel

called PET and this month their novel The Death of Vivek OG came out and became a New York

Times bestseller. All this at age 33 and after Equikey took a pretty winding path through

school which I asked them about. I also want to give you a heads up we talk about mental

health including suicidal ideation. We talked over Zoom while Equikey was in New Orleans

and the home they bought last fall and have been settling into since.

You know I came to the States when I was 16 so 17 years ago and in that time I never really

had a home here. Like I moved to the States before my mom did and my father still was back

in Nigeria. So when I moved I just like stayed on college dorms and college dorms and I stayed

with family friends over the holidays and then my mom moved a year later and my sister was

living with her but I never lived with her. I would just visit for a couple of weeks and so for

more than a decade I've just been bouncing from apartment to apartment sometimes without apartments

in between. Sublets I've never lived in one place for longer than two years. So Tobiah House was a

really really big deal for me because it felt like I was getting on home for the first time since

I was 16 and this one was mine. You know it didn't belong to either of my parents it was just mine

and I could do whatever I wanted it and it's it's a little terrifying at first like this idea of

you don't have to leave. Like I have to tell myself that the first year a lot. I'm like you never

have to leave like you can put stuff in the house and you don't have to pack it up. You don't have

...