Interviews

“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…

“Genre could be said to be another bubble—another set of laws that preclude us from participating in anything outside them. As I was writing the book, I did my best to pretend that there were no walls pinning me in—beyond…

“I have self-censored in the sense that, once, when I knew a story was to be published, I took out a few overtly explicit name-callings. I believe the story was actually better for it—sometimes leaving something unsaid has a chilling,…

“To me, there always has to be a sort of rhythm or pace to it, which is what I was keeping in mind as I was switching POVs in this novel. The train’s always moving, and it’s almost always moving…

“I generally wrote as if the reader would know what I was talking about. I did not want to be bothered with incredibly long and detailed descriptions of culturally specific food, clothes, events et cetera. I thought it would slow…

“ I was interested in seeing what I could do with the sonnet and a voice much like my grandmother’s. Being urged to write about the women in my family moved me to write about the people and place I…

“I know sometimes people find titles by looking at the titles of individual pieces, and they look for the most significant or biggest piece. And in this case, it was actually one of the slightest pieces, but that also seemed…

“I do think a lot about musical structures, and call and response. There is a common source to both writing and music—some of these patterns that we digest and metabolize as musicians about structure and callbacks. I love telling my…

The distinctions we make between ourselves and our animal brethren tend to be very self-flattering. We have unique skills and capabilities, to be sure, but they’re just fractionally different from those of many animals, and our primal drives are essentially…

“I wanted to do a heroic crown of sonnets to try to encapsulate the bigness of his life, but also the bigness of his loss. That was a lot to deal with. So, knowing that I at least could focus…