Rahul Mehta
(1990)
How would you characterize the influence of your YWW experience in your life?
It changed my life. That’s an honest statement, not an exaggeration. It was one of the first times that I felt like what I did as a writer—that being a writer—was valued. It showed me that there was, indeed, a path for me, that there was a community of others like me, and that I wasn’t alone.
What’s the best advice you can give a Young Writer (in general or in your specific genre)?
Being a writer is more than a profession: it’s a certain way of being in the world. I remember reading something Jonathan Safran Foer wrote in the acknowledgments of Everything Is Illuminated. He was thanking his editor, saying that his advice always boiled down to the following: Feel more. I love that.
What do you find yourself most often reading or listening to lately and why?
Here’s what’s on my bedside table right now: Zipper Mouth by Laurie Weeks, Left-handed by Jonathan Galassi, and Mitko by Garth Greenwell.