Interviews

“All of us are searching for answers for something in our lives. I like when someone is coming at the subject from a place of not knowing and I am there with them. I can’t think of anything more intimate…

I just think that the way that we consume language on the internet has to be super utilitarian because our attention spans are being ripped to shreds at any given time. For me, prose and writing a book that I…

It can be easy, when you’re young and you don’t know very much, to be a critic out of jealousy. To say, “well, that’s shit, and that’s shit.” To come directly out of being a fan, and then decide to…

I do aim to be funny and writers and booksellers tell me that my work usually is. It’s partly to soften the blow, make the hard facts of history palatable. But just as important – if not more important—is the…

“I’m still taking the picture of the road going over the hill, and when I see the road going over the hill, I screech to a stop and take it. The burden is to figure out the new way to…

In The Years of Blood, though, I think what is critical is the multiple selves that exist in the collection. The I resists a single voice—sometimes dead, other times, alive and in fear—and I think that, that is fascinating to…

When Chilco appeared in my life, I didn’t know it was going to be a novel. I told my friends I thought I was writing a poem that had just gone on too long, a poem in free prose that…

I remember, too, reading some time ago someone describe Black Americans as being part of a post-apocalyptic culture. We’ve survived the worst: the belly of the slave ship; the tortures wrought upon generation after generation of our ancestors for centuries.…

Taking stock of her own life, she writes about what hurt, what thrilled, and what shaped her. The result is a rare behind-the-curtain view of the golden age of journalism, interwoven with glimpses of Orlean’s childhood, her evolution as a…

“A lot of pandemic novels were about a place where everyone could get away from it and not directly have to deal. I totally understand that, but as a person who was writing about it from the very beginning, probably…

“ I’ve been saying that I wrote this book to avenge her [Aaliyah]. In my mind, even in childhood, I was like, “I have to do something, whatever I can do with whatever power I have.” It just happens that…

“A lot of people think financial ruin looks like Dickensian destitution. But for many Americans, what it looks like is a never-ending credit card debt. Financial illiteracy can look very luxurious. But the way American fiction describes material possessions, and…