Where do you live?
With my better half, our beloved cats and our books, at the foot of the Kantara mountains.

What did you have for breakfast?
As a ritualist, it’s the same as the last eight years: Avocado on toast with poached eggs.

Describe your perfect day.
Morning research at the Humanities One Reading Room at the British Library; bookshop crawling with my better half; reading at a park; a lunchtime classical music concert (preferably a baroque concert at Wigmore Hall); writing in a corner of a quiet pub or a cafe; and watching an off-West End theatre performance. This London routine has been a ritual for me for a very, very long time, and I can’t think of a better, more perfect day.

Best book ever read?
First, allow me to state the ephemerality of the answer to such questions, as tomorrow’s answer would differ from yesterday’s. Today, I would love to say that it’s Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveller. As an aficionado of metafiction, I know how difficult it is to create worlds within worlds. The artistic craftsmanship of that book, in that sense, is Daedalian and simply genius.

Best childhood memory?
Finding out that there was a sequel to the book I was reading! The day that I discovered the idea of a sequel! I was around five, in my room, trying to finish the book but reading very slowly, as I didn’t want it to end. My parents were away; I was with my grandma. My parents got home with the sequels to the book. I didn’t know such a thing existed. I want to keep that moment in me – to celebrate the continuation of a fictional world.

What is always in your fridge?
Home-made kimchi.

What music are you listening to in the car at the moment?
Sonatas of Jan Dismas Zelenka and O Viva Rosa by Francesca Caccini.

What’s your spirit animal?
I am a nottambula. My spirit animal could be any nocturnal animal that shares the secrets of the night.

What are you most proud of?
To be passionately encapsulated by my fictional world and to be able to shed the skin of the real world outside, no matter what.

What movie scene has really stayed with you?
The hotel room scene in Barton Fink, where Barton is trying to write at the typewriter, looking at the wallpaper and then directly at the camera, the bizarre Hotel Earle becoming surreal; and yet the act of writing at that moment itself is the most surreal thing, reflecting the internal and external struggles of a writer. Also, Eve’s reading books in Only Lovers Left Alive, a scene I watched with a hint of jealousy, made me realise I would never read with such celerity as that vampire.

If you could pick anyone at all (alive or dead) to go out for the evening with, who would it be?
In winter, Dorian Gray (to an art gallery); in spring, Knulp (just for a stroll in the city); in summer, Witold Walczykiewicz (to a Chopin concert); and in autumn, Shevek (to a science museum).

If you could time travel when/where would you go?
I’d love to visit where my protagonists lived; for instance, Victorian England, where the protagonist of my novel, Florence Passeri lived; 1600s Florence, where the protagonist of my play, Francesca Caccini lived; or Pleistocene Cyprus, where the Cypriot pygmy, the protagonist of my latest short story lived.

What is your greatest fear?
To be encapsulated by my fictional world so much that I start losing the connection with the world outside.

What would you say to your 18-year-old self?
Those daydreaming times will save you. Never lose faith, as one day you’ll be paid to do that.

Name the one thing that would stop you dating someone.
Not appreciating poetic space, or being disrespectful to life of any form, be it a little wildflower on the pavement or a bug resting on it.

If the world is ending in 24 hours, what would you do?
What I just did today: write the day away.

Dr Sentug-Tugyan is a writer of fiction, mostly metafiction, in various forms: plays, short stories, poetry, novels and films. She is a lecturer at the Department of English Language and Literature. She is currently the creative director of the Paris Institute for Critical Thinking website, the organiser of periodical interdisciplinary panels at Rustem’s Bookshop, the head of the cultural heritage team at the Fashion Heritage Network Cyprus and a playwright at So Kolektif.
Her play, FFICTIVE was performed in English by Precarious Theatre in London on May 19 and will continue its performances as FFICTIF in Turkish as part of So Kolektif’s KISSA theatre project in Nicosia until June