February 2022’s Woman Warrior Writer is Anjali Enjeti. Anjali Enjeti is a former attorney, organizer, and journalist based near Atlanta. She is the author of Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change, and The Parted Earth. Her writing has appeared in Oxford American, Poets & Writers, Harper’s Bazaar, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Reinhardt University and can be reached through her website, anjalienjeti.com.

How did you come to author your life?

Writing is not something I pursued with any intention the first 28 years of my life. I read several books a week. I journaled. I studied narrative. But I couldn’t picture myself as an author. I didn’t feel as if it was something available to me. 

The birth of my first child changed this. I was not only flooded with words and stories about my life, I felt, for the first time, that these words carried with them some kind of value. It took a monumental moment in my life – becoming a mother for the first time – that opened the door for me to author my own life.