For So to Speak, Madeleine Wattenberg interviews writer Anne Valente. In discussing Valente’s latest book, Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down, they touch on magical realism, using multiple points of view to tell a story, and how literature can engage with contemporary issues:
Fiction requires empathy, and also vulnerability and being comfortable with the unknown. We live in a culture that disavows vulnerability and uncertainty and forces bravado and violence in the face of not knowing.