Born and raised in the periphery of Lamka, Lian Dousel writes fiction inspired by his background—the folktales, the history of his town and culture, and the people that he calls his people. Growing up on the imaginations of Enid Blyton and the adventures of the Hardy Boys taught him to love his own imagination. Oates, Murakami, and Marquez inspired him to write. But it is the writings of local literary pioneers, people the wider literary culture is all the poorer for not having recognised, like T. Gwite, Tualchin Neihsaial, and Stephen Nangchin, that let him know that writing is imperative.