By Yeow Kai Chai

As a broadcast journalist and foreign news correspondent, Atia Abawi is used to reporting from the front line, interviewing personalities like former Afghan President Hamid Karzai as well as embedding herself with NATO, American and Afghan forces during key military operations for media outlets such as CNN and NBC.

Born to Afghan parents in West Germany and raised in the United States, she was especially attuned to the social tension and cultural traditions in Afghanistan when she was stationed there for almost five years.

Her experience inspired her first novel, The Secret Sky: A Novel of Forbidden Love in Afghanistan, which focuses on the budding romance between a Hazara girl and a Pashtun boy who strive to forge a life together in the face of opposition from their families as well as the Taliban.

Based in Jerusalem with her husband, Fox News Channel correspondent Conor Powell, and their infant son, she takes on the Proust Questionnaire before coming to Singapore as a featured author at Words Go Round in March.

1) What are you reading right now?
The Red Sparrow, by Jason Matthews.

2) If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play or poem, what would you be and why?
Shams Tabriz from Elif Shafak's The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi is who I would want to be. He is so spiritual and his energy so beautiful – I would love to know how that feels.

But who I am most like? Probably Ron Weasley from Harry Potter – because I'm not the friend who will save the world or the one who is the smartest but I will always help them in any way I can.

3) What is the greatest misconception about you?
I must be a very confident person because of my career as a journalist and novelist. I think deep down I will always have that insecure girl inside of me who keeps wondering if I will ever succeed.

4) Name one living writer and one dead writer you most identify with, and tell us why.
I honestly don't think I can compare myself to the writers I most admire. I feel like all the writers I have met and know about are such unique individuals that I wouldn't feel comfortable even trying to identify my own self with them. That said, I love the works of Khalil Gibran, and sometimes I just read his poems to help remind me of the beauty and tragedy of the world and of love.

I also loved Suzanne Collins' writing in The Hunger Games, especially in the third instalment, Mockingjay. Her books really felt like she understood the realities of war and the effects both physical and mental it has on individuals and society. Reading Mockingjay, I somewhat felt like she knew what we saw and experienced during war.

5) Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
Yes, I completely believe in it and I suffer from it often. I try and overcome it by going to a crowded place to write, like a coffee shop or public library. The fact that there are people around me forces me to try and focus harder on my blank page. It doesn't always work but it does sometimes.

6) What qualities do you most admire in a writer?
I admire those writers who can be organised with their writing and schedule their time properly to write. I am more disorganised than I would like to admit – this is probably why I don't do well with outlines.

7) What is one trait you most deplore in writing or writers?
It bothers me when writers criticise other writers unfairly. I believe everyone has his or her own style and personality. If it's not your taste it may be someone else's.

8) Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or a piece of advice from a writer?
"[Writing a novel is] like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." – E.L. Doctorow

9) Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but...
My husband bought me a guitar for finishing my first novel.

10) At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy, a tragedy, or an action thriller to watch, which will you go for, and why?
Well of course it depends on what's out. But I do need a good comedy to watch often – this world can bring you down at times and there is nothing like a good laugh to help make the day a little brighter.

11) What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite one?
'Love', and 'failure'.

12) Write a short-short story in three lines that includes the following three items: refugee, Lesbos, pebble.
The refugee's cold fingers clenched the pebbles on the ground – she made it. Peering through the water droplets dripping from her lashes she couldn't stop staring. This was the island they had risked life and limb for. This was Lesbos.

13) What object is indispensable to you when you write?
My research. And of course my husband – who makes sure I am at work and doing my best.

14) What is the best time of the day for writing?
Whenever your brain is ready.

15) If you have a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soiree, and why?
J.K. Rowling – because she is amazing and I want to meet the brain behind the Harry Potter books.

Rashid – from my novel The Secret Sky. Although he is a creation of my mind, he embodies the young men I met in Afghanistan. And I want to have a political and religious discussion with him.

Katniss Everdeen – I'd love to talk to her about the impact of war on a young person and the pressures of leading a movement to free a nation.

16) Your first novel, The Secret Sky, focuses on the romance between two teenagers, Fatima and Samiullah, who come from two different tribes in modern-day Afghanistan. As a journalist, why did you decide to write a Young Adult novel, as opposed to a non-fiction account of the situation in the nation?
I feel if I wrote a non-fiction account I would have to put myself into the story to be able to share it. And I feel that the Afghan story isn't mine to tell. It's a story that belongs to the people who are living the tragedy daily. So I wrote the book in a way where I could incorporate so many of the stories compressed into one. Also, by choosing fiction, I feel like I'm able to share the Afghan story in a more compelling way for the readers and for a different audience.

17) What would you write on your own tombstone?
Oh goodness, I'll leave that for my loved ones to decide. I just hope it will be something good.

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