Interviews

Just as my body that might ache all night is the same body that gives me pleasure. And I feel it aching because I am alive and living in it.

We believe we grant access to our lives to others; I think that is an illusion.

Being affected in those ways can give us motivation to make sure that other people aren’t hurt in the same ways that we’ve been hurt.

Reading a new book by an admired writer offers the chance to recapture the familiar pleasures of their previous work—the equivalent of ordering your favorite dish at a restaurant again, comparing it to the version that only lives in your memory.

I don’t consciously look for symbols while I’m writing; they come to me from being in the community.

Characters do stuff, and the reader is always going to ask "why," and as a writer I’m just as interested.

Literature is a balm against loneliness. I feel close to these other writers, to the characters in their books, to these women in history.

When Vauhini Vara’s This is Salvaged (W.W. Norton, 2023) arrived at my doorstep, I couldn’t wait to tear through the slim collection. Vara is a master storyteller, but more than…

To some extent, I think I was also exploring how witnessing, absorbing, and listening are related to writing, and questioning whether this is a valuable way of approaching a life. I think it can be.

As a poet, I’m constantly trying to make connections and see between and among things.

Compassion is a window, and ideally the reader feels that—even if they’re reading a character whom they don’t necessarily like—this person is a rounded character with good qualities, bad qualities, and in-between qualities.