Awards season is always a huge amount of fun whether you're a part of it or not. It's always really exciting seeing what films are coming and a lot of new talent as well.

The growing-up-fast part weirdly happened between the ages of 15 and 22.

Mum and Dad were very much friends and up for life. There was no anxiety for anything when I was growing up; they just taught me to be me.

Growing up, I had a very happy childhood, with two parents who are still very much together.

That slave narratives existed at all implied a satisfactory conclusion to the journey - the attainment of literacy, the escape to the place where one could reflect on the experience of bondage and the flight to freedom, and, in the early days of the slave trade, the conversion to Christianity.

Life experience brings out different emotions and different perspectives on things. I just want to be constantly evolving.

Growing up, nobody I knew even knew a writer. So it was a big adventure and something that I've wrestled with my whole life. I think it's a journey worth taking, really finding out who you are and what you do well.

Oh, how I treasure this freedom. I really do It's a glorious, wonderful experience. I am off marriage - for life!