![BREAKINGIN BREAKINGIN](https://cdn.magzter.com/1596011059/1711978154/articles/DonAF0wa_1712041163672/BREAKINGIN.jpg)
Ishi Robinson Sweetness in the Skin (Literary fiction, April, Harper-Collins)
“Sweetness in the Skin is about a Jamaican girl named Pumkin, struggling with her identity and trying to find her place in the world, who is determined to bake her way into the opportunity of a lifetime.”
WRITES FROM: Berlin. PRE
SWEETNESS: I started off writing short stories as a child, a couple of which got published, then as a teenager, I wrote a weekly opinion column on teenage life in Kingston, Jamaica, for the national newspaper. In Rome, I wrote a weekly opinion column on life as an expat for a now-defunct e-zine. I got back into fiction writing in Berlin: I wrote short stories, a number of which were published in online magazines and one in an anthology.
TIME FRAME: I started writing it in the month of my 40th birthday, which is significant for me because I just don’t think I could have written this book when I was younger. I started out with NaNoWriMo and finished it in about two years, although I took a few months off writing during the pandemic.
ENTER THE AGENT: I’ve been a member of a writing organization, Th e Reader Berlin, for about a decade. The founder, Victoria Gosling (a fantastic author!), read my draft and asked me if she could send it to my now agent, Jenny Hewson from Lutyens & Rubinstein, because she thought it was right up her alley.
BIGGEST SURPRISE: Hilariously, when I got my book deals in September, I thought the book would be published by that same December, three months later. I was horrified to learn it would take almost two years!
This story is from the May - June 2024 edition of Writer’s Digest.
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This story is from the May - June 2024 edition of Writer’s Digest.
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