Interviews

When entering a narrative that has great emotion, it’s important to commit to capturing the emotion and portraying it. But also knowing when to stop.

. . . it’s the poet or artist’s job to open up a new dialogue, to ask questions that aren’t being asked

All of life is simultaneity for everyone. We’re all inside of many different tracks of experience at once.

I want my readers to get whatever comes to their hearts and minds as they read the novel.

An oral tradition is something you can add to a story that already exists, and you can now retell in a way.

Humor and self-deprecation can impose an ironizing distance, but at what cost?

You have to advocate for your work and make sure that you aren’t waiting on some fairy godmother that isn’t coming.

Identity is a pastiche. My identity is made up of my family identities, in addition to other things that I’m always struggling to find.

Each day returning to this book teaches me something else. It teaches me about the height of my optimism.

To be human means to be forever shifting with the emotions of the day, of the hour. We are never just one thing.

I’m interested in complexity. I’m interested in the fact that very few things are simple.

I like to think of the short novel as the thin elephant; as an artistic form, it interests me because, by definition, it exists in a state of tension.