How do you hope it’s received by people who may be unfamiliar with these themes? We all live in different worlds, so some people say, “This isn’t even happening, why are you even discussing it? It’s not even a problem.” I know I scare a lot of people off who think my work is too aggressive, too radical. Your work deals with a lot of strong and sensitive feminist issues. So I wondered, ‘What if they try to do that? What if they say that some of these pieces are too radical and try to remove poems, would that be staying true to me?’ But they said, ‘We want it all.’ Now that I have basically a machine behind me, I can just do what I’m good at and have them do what they’re good at.Īt first I was excited, but then I thought, “What if they try to change the cover?” For the person that writes and creates, it’s very emotional, but the wonderful team here understands the market and that’s how they work. In order to make the book what it was, I had to switch my creative side off, and once the business end of me came on, I stopped writing they’re two different sides of your brain. After I self-published, the book was very successful, but it really took a lot out of me.

I was doing it all by myself, then all of a sudden I have this wonderful, established team. I don’t understand how it all happened and how it ended up here it’s just been so great.

I remember after the first time I walked into the Simon & Schuster Canada office a few months ago, I went home and was so overwhelmed that I was laughing and crying at the same time. Professors told me once you self-publish, that’s the end, and you won’t be taken seriously because you crossed all the gatekeepers. How has this journey from self-published author to international book deal been for you? It’s been crazy. Q&Q spoke with Kaur about the title, her future plans, and social media as a platform for writers. Simon & Schuster partner Andrews McMeel Publishing re-released the book with additional poems and Kaur’s own artwork in Canada and the U.S. Her self-published debut poetry collection, milk and honey, was released in November 2014 and sold 15,000 copies. Kaur was initially a visual artist who studied economics – later switching to rhetoric studies and professional writing – at the University of Waterloo, but began amassing a following for her writing on social media. Rupi Kaur, the 23-year-old Brampton, Ontario–based writer, has had a wildly successful year, ratcheting up more than 280,000 Instagram followers, along with public endorsements by such celebrities as Martha Stewart and Mark Ruffalo.

Rupi kaur poems milk and honey