Growing up in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, I had a wonderful life, one that I have not experienced anywhere since, even after living in nine countries.

One of my fondest memories growing up in Rwanda was seeing everyone participating in community-building activities. This happened every Saturday at the end of month. People work together in cleaning streets, planting trees, and take care of each other by facilitating productive conversations and actions that are beneficial for the society.

As a child growing up in refugee camps, life taught me that many things were impossible. My older sister, Claire, taught me otherwise when her strength and resilience made the impossible possible in the way she worked, behaved, and took control of our lives.

Growing up, many of us are taught to place limits on what we can accomplish while on earth. We tend to think of things in binary form: either as possible or, more frequently, impossible.

The family is the first essential cell of human society.

I would love to go to college because you never know what is going to happen with your career, and you always want something to fall back on.

I was lucky enough to be a child during the renaissance of Australian children's literature, when people like Ivan Southall, Colin Thiele, Lilith Norman and Wrightson were pumping out hugely inspiring stuff.

It took a long time to get to the place in my career where I could pick and choose what I wanted to do.