The following interview is part of the Spring Will Come notebook.

This Nowruz, we have been showcasing work from the notebook “Spring Will Come: Writings from East Turkistan.” The notebook features poems and short stories by writers connected to East Turkistan, a region that borders at least ten countries, including Russia, India, Mongolia, and China. A site of tension and power struggle throughout history, this region has often been overlooked or misunderstood. It is also a place with a powerful and strong poetry and storytelling tradition, from nomadic oral epics to large online poetry salons. In this notebook, we sought to spotlight the literature and art of the region, as well as the people’s persistence that surfaces both in the work and the making of it.

For this notebook, we collaborated with Uyghur artist Efvan to share snippets of the people and life that are perhaps unfamiliar to the rest of the world. Efvan illustrates Uyghur children’s books and magazines produced in the diaspora, so her imagery felt at home in the notebook. We were drawn to how she played with nostalgia through simple, bright sketches that elicited a sense of hope and home.

Efvan also writes poetry—her poem “My Plea” is published in the notebook—and we were immediately enamored by her depiction of the frustration, anger, and sadness many of us have felt towards the world. The contrast between her poetry and her artwork also felt like a familiar fissure between the celebration of life and the darkness of reality. Still, we allow ourselves in all her work to see the little moments, people, and spaces that fill our memories, the things that the writers in this notebook dream to go back to some day.

Below is a short interview with Efvan about her process.