Though I have been reading and enjoying books for as long as I can remember, I can recall perfectly the moment that led me to inadvertently fall in love with literature when I first encountered the Harry Potter series as an eight-year old. Never before had I been so surprised by a book’s events, and for the first time, I experienced the exhilaration that comes with the unpredictability of a well-written book. Suffice to say, I waited restlessly for each of the Harry Potter books to come out and devoured them, and all the other wonderful books I discovered, in one read. My reading soon inspired me to start writing beyond school assignments. As I re-read my favorites, over and over again, I discovered something new every time and soon began to pay close attention to the diction and the writer’s choices. I begin to wonder why a writer chose to reveal seemingly trivial details at a particular point in a book or why he/she left something out at another time. I started to write longer stories as I got older and participated in such events as the online National Novel Writing Month, elected to take more Literature classes and served as editor for my school’s magazine. Now, as a junior at Barnard College of Columbia University in New York, I have the opportunity to engage with wonderful texts in so many of my classes. Working with The Missing Slate gives me the chance to read the works of a varied group of global writers who all bring their own unique experiences to their stories. There is no better way to translate ideas and feelings across people and civilizations, after all, than through reading and writing. It is my hope that I will never lose the incredible joy to be found in simply curling up with a good book.