Mia Walker belongs to an exclusive club: the one per cent club. For years, blissfully unaware, she lived with a condition that wasn’t normal – aphantasia. This revelation came as a shock when she discovered she couldn’t visualise pictures. Close your eyes and try to picture your front door, your mother’s face or a sunset. Most of us can. Mia can’t. There are no mental pictures at all.
As if that wasn’t enough, Mia’s teens were plagued by chronic anxiety, eventually leading to years of agoraphobia. She certainly faced her fair share of challenges.
However, running parallel to these struggles was another gift: poetry.
She’s published thirteen anthologies and is now a published author. Her debut novel earned her feted status in America. Now a dystopian writer, she spends much of her life inhabiting post-apocalyptic worlds.
It’s quite incredible for a woman who can’t visualise pictures in her head.
Yet, I wonder if there’s a utopian element quietly running beneath it all. While Mia writes about worlds that have fallen apart, she’s spent her own life imagining one that could be different.
Whatever label Mia has qualified for, it hasn’t defined her. She simply keeps innovating.
The moment she surrendered to fear and literally walked out of the house wasn’t just the day she went outside. It was the day she decided fear wouldn’t dictate the rest of her story.
This conversation explores imagination without pictures, fear, poetry, dystopia, utopia and what happens when you refuse to let a diagnosis become your identity.
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