Alaya Dawn Johnson: Hello, my name is Alaya Dawn Johnson, and I am the author of The Library of Broken Worlds. So I tend to have what I call composting approach to novel creation, which is to say that I get an idea, a core idea, and then I just sit with it for years. This book was at least seven years if I start counting from the time I started actually writing it, and maybe 10 if I start counting from the time I had the idea in making. So the first kind of core idea I had was this vision of a young woman crossing a desert alone. And she was carrying a heavy grief and she didn't have much in the way of personal belongings, and she was leaving the only home she'd ever known to try to save someone and most likely kill herself at the other end of the universe, which she should somehow access when she crossed the desert.

So that image kind of showed up in my head and I was so fascinated. Like I knew she'd come from a place called the Library, and I knew she was going to meet a God, and I didn't know exactly how or what, and that just hung out for years and years, while I just kept composting more and more ideas until I ended up with the extremely deep world building of The Library of Broken Worlds. One of the aspects that I was most proud of developing in my giant rewrite of the second draft of this novel was the concept of freedom from justice versus freedom to justice.

And the idea is that freedom from justice is more basic because it's like freedom from hunger, freedom from homelessness, freedom from things that make it impossible for you to have any of the freedom-tos. Which was like freedom to speak, freedom to run for office. And so a lot of times people can say that they're really interested in freedom, but they're only really focusing on the freedom to, and they forget the freedom from which is what mostly oppresses many people around the world. And so this was very relevant to the story of indigenous land rights in the story, and I just felt like that was such an important concept and something that I would love people to take away.

And now, I'd like to read aloud from The Library of Broken Worlds. This is from the very beginning.

Nadi taught me in threes. Ze taught me about love, which was trust and vulnerability and truth. It was sprouting and blooming and withering. It was catching up and holding on and letting go. "That's a cube, Freida," ze told me, which is a three of threes, and we use it to hold that which is most sacred. Ze had other triplets too. There was one for the Library, which dated from its founding. It's flat, but you can't fall off. It's peace. But it was built from blood. It's divine, but holy material. "We are peace, Freida." ze said one night when I was six. We were sitting in zir garden and ze had drunk two glasses of that dark tarry wine ze called indigo.

I snuggled against zir side and watched a caterpillar with a dozen purple eyes on its back, eat a leaf in my lap. "Why are we peace?" I asked. "Because when the universe would have drowned in blood, we built the Library to save it. You and me Freida, we of the Library preserve peace. We are the ballast against Nameren." That was the first time I heard your name, oh, first and thirstiest God. But I did not truly think it had anything to do with me. An ache did not grab me between my shoulders. A warm hand did not close over the nape of my neck.

Only Nadi's hand steady and strong. And as far as I knew, old as the gods', tightened on my elbow. I hummed as I fed the caterpillar the last of its leaf. I suppose I can see why ze didn't tell me then. I suppose I can see why each year as I became more myself, it grew harder for ze to explain how my fate would intertwine with yours. I suppose I can understand, Nameren, but it is hard to forgive.