Interviews

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.

I’ve always wanted to write plot-driven novels that borrow from a lot of different traditions and institutions. That’s something I like most to read, and whenever I write something, I try to write something that I enjoy reading too.

I’m sure you’ve seen your own versions of these stories. These truths, these stories, are everywhere. Quiet, but waiting.

When you’re writing about family, there's what’s really relevant and has meaning to you. And then there’s what has meaning to the audience.

. . . the process of writing really was a devotion. It gave me a reason to keep going. And because I’m interested in formal problems, it was the crafting of sentences, finding rhythms, shaping my material that helped me to get hold of it.