Interviews

“[T]his process of building and connecting stories together into a larger work… You can start off with one version that you send out to lit mags, and then you can design another version that connects to a larger world. You…

“All my work has been about the cost of belonging, because I find that the price of belonging is conformity. Especially as someone from a working-class background who was raised to always think of the “we” and never the “I,”…

“A story can change your day; it can give a different texture to it, like music can. I love precision and brevity in writing, and the best stories come in the smallest packages. I think of stories more like songs–more…

“ It is difficult and overwhelming to think about what’s happening to the whole world at scale and the forces that are at play. But telling the story of one person and the points at which they are interacting with…

“I think the places in this book (especially Damascus and San Diego) are reconstituted in that they are mangled in my recitation of them, and I allow them their mangledness. By insisting on the presence of Arabic on the page,…

“So what do we do with the rage? We can make meaning from it. We can shape it into some form where it’s manageable, whether that’s a form on the page in a poem, whether it’s a story we can…

“The book was always meant as political in its simple existence— the adding my voice to the annals of Trans/Nonbinary collective is an act of anti-erasure. While writing this, though, the incoming administration became even more vile in its attempt…

“Being rooted in my neighborhood has made my writing better because I listen to other people who aren’t on the internet. I listen to people who have very different perspectives on the world, and sometimes I hate people that I’m…

“Breaking a big project down into small steps helps. In terms of time, I’m at my best when I write in the morning, first thing, even though it’s hard when there are all the social media notifications and emails to…