The artwork of Oge Mora is full of deliberate joy and grace—qualities that Mora herself shares. She is exuberant, yet thoughtful, throughout our conversation during a break from work at her studio in Providence, Rhode Island, on the eve of publication of her new picture book, Saturday (Little, Brown; Oct. 22).

Mora, a recent graduate of the Rhode Island Institute of Design, didn’t start making picture books until a senior year class assignment; at her senior showcase she was offered a book deal, and her debut picture book, Thank You, Omu, won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award, a Caldecott Honor, and the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award, among other commendations. How did it feel to be the recipient of such sudden success?

Says Mora: “I wasn’t worried about whether it would have so much great feedback as it has come to have; I was really focusing on the craft of it. I was aware that it would be a journey from idea to publication. But there has been another journey for me, from publication to beyond, in seeing my stories resonate with people, and the stories people share with me about the special people who are in their lives. I could never have anticipated that impact.”

Mora confesses that she is still adjusting to her growing career and the opportunities it affords her. As someone who had long defined herself as an artist, says Mora, “the idea of being a writer is a new kind of role that I am getting more and more comfortable with.” But, for Mora, “thinking about narrative from a visual side is something that has always been in my life; picture books were always something that I was interested in as a sequential visual medium.”

Mora got into art because she loved drawing and visual storytelling. But despite going to art school for illustration, she says with a laugh, she never thought she would end up a freelance illustrator. “I thought I would find a career that at least gets me close to art, but I didn’t think anyone actually did art for a career.” She developed her unique collage style on the advice of a professor and loved it “because it combines texture, color, and other things I had always been passionate about as an artist.”

What does art mean to Mora? “Growing up, art was a real coping thing and source of comfort to me in my life,” she says. “It was just drawing for the joy. Even today, it doesn’t matter how I am feeling—if I can put my pen to the page for a little bit, I feel really comfortable and really right.”

Mora’s new book, Saturday, is a story about a mother and daughter who create joy in their lives despite unexpected difficulties. In many ways, it is an ode to time spent with the people we love. Was this the inspiration for Mora?

“I think that moms tend to estimate how much they give to their children,” says Mora. “When I first started to figure out the story, I was wrapping my brain around a mother and daughter who share Saturday, and the mom is being a mom—that rock, that beacon of positivity.”

Continues Mora: “All of my work is just really steeped in where I grew up and the people that I know and the person that I am. And if you are really speaking from that space, you have to give it your all. If I’m going to speak about the people who have given me so much in my life, and I’m so grateful for them, they deserve everything because they gave me everything.”

Mora, who grew up in Columbus, Ohio, is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants who settled in historically black American neighborhoods. She describes being “immersed in the culture” of murals and other aspects of community art as being foundational to her artistic training growing up. She cites especially the work of Nina Robinson—“her murals all around the city that would tell the story of life in the area when she was a girl.”

Mora admired how “these artists had a lot of storytelling, not only in the work itself, but finding the magic element in everyday life.” As she grew up, Mora realized that “there were so many stories that had been shared with me that I didn’t see in mainstream picture books. So it’s about taking these stories from the margins and celebrating them in this main space, in the work.”

“Really,” says Mora, “my greatest joy in life gets to be my career, which is really amazing.”

Hope Wabuke is a writer and assistant professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.