Growing up, the question “Where are you from?” used to leave me speechless. Not because I didn’t know the answer, but because I had too many answers and none of them felt complete. One particular memory replays in my mind like a movie stuck on repeat. It’s Saturday evening, and my family and I are at another Armenian cultural gathering. The band is playing traditional songs that make the adults’ eyes glisten with unshed tears. Tables are overflowing with dolma (stuffed grape leaves) and khorovats (grilled meats), and conversations flow in rapid Armenian punctuated by scattered English and bursts of laughter. I sit at the edge of it all, understanding fragments of the language, feeling the pull of something ancestral and beautiful, yet somehow remaining on the outside looking in.

Then Monday morning would arrive. I’d be back in my American high school, surrounded by friends who knew nothing of Saturday night’s music or the weight of carrying a culture that existed in pieces. The two worlds felt impossibly separate, like parallel universes that never quite touched. In one world, I wasn’t Armenian enough. In the other, I was too foreign, too different. Neither felt like home.

This is where books became my salvation. Between the pages of fantasy novels, I discovered characters who also lived between worlds: half-elves who belonged fully to neither realm, chosen ones who felt displaced from their origins, heroes searching for where they truly belonged. These stories didn’t just entertain me; they helped me understand that “home” might be something more complex than a single place or culture.

Through countless hours of reading, I began to realize that home isn’t necessarily found on any map. It’s not the country your grandparents fled, nor the one where you were born. Home is a feeling, that sense of belonging that settles in your chest when you’re surrounded by people who understand your stories, who see all the parts of you and embrace them. Home is the warmth that spreads through you when you find your tribe, whether that’s around a dinner table sharing family recipes or in the pages of a book that speaks directly to your soul.

When I began writing, this understanding shaped every world I created. Fantasy became my way of building the home I’d been searching for: places where cultural traditions could flourish without needing explanation, where characters could embrace multiple identities without apology. In my stories, traditions that connect characters to their ancestors aren’t foreign curiosities but integral parts of the world’s fabric. The customs that feel alien in one context become sources of strength and magic in another.

Perhaps this is why I find myself drawn to writing characters who exist in liminal spaces. In Light Weaver, Satya straddles the world of mortals and gods, never fully belonging to either. In my current work-in-progress, my protagonist serves as the vessel of Tsovinar, goddess of the sea, caught between the human world of land and the mysterious realm of merbeasts beneath the waves. These characters reflect my own experience of existing between worlds, and through their journeys, I explore what it means to find strength in that in-between space.

Now, as I share these stories with readers, I’m creating a new kind of cultural gathering. In the space between author and reader, across the bridge of shared story, I’m building a place where other diaspora voices can find recognition, where anyone who has ever felt caught between worlds can discover that this liminal space isn’t a burden but a gift. We are the bridge-builders, the world-weavers, the ones who understand that home isn’t a destination but a creation.

Fantasy literature gave me permission to imagine what home could be, rather than mourning what it wasn’t. In return, I hope my stories offer that same permission to others: to build their own sense of belonging, one page at a time.