Why or what piqued your imagination to write, and that too in between lectures?
I started writing The Bone Season when I was nineteen years old, shortly after completing an internship at David Godwin Associates (DGA), a literary agency in Seven Dials, a small district in London. While I was there, I had a vivid image of a girl having the same day at work as me, but she happened to be clairvoyant...and The Bone Season was born. I sent the finished book to the same agency in April 2012 and it was bought by Bloomsbury, a month later. I was mostly an indoor girl at the university. Where other students did drama or music or sports alongside their degrees, I wrote. I used to work on essays and class work and on the The Bone Season in the evenings.

Author Samantha Shannon’s book The Bone Season is a fusion of genres, from paranormal to mystery. Pic courtesy/ Thomas Kavanagh