May 31, 2022

“I didn't want it to be just a very overwhelming dark book. I mean, it has so much tragedy that I had to balance that I wanted to make it part of, you know, light and airy and fun and frothy and feminine to contrast with what's going to happen. I think there's power in that contrast ... I felt like it can't all be...

May 28, 2022

"And I had to actually give up and say, Okay, maybe I'll go to the grave not having written a novel, and I don't have to carry around shame about that. I can just do the kind of writing that I'm maybe better at or that it is my calling to do, and the moment I stopped putting so much pressure on myself and stopped making...

May 26, 2022

“I'm always coming back to Chicasetta, in the same way that Ernest Gaines always comes back to Bayonne parish. And William Faulkner always comes back to that county that I cannot pronounce, your top or whatever it is, right. You know, in the same way that Louise Erdrich returns to the particular reservation, I'm...

May 24, 2022

“I had a dream about them. I have like these really cinematic dreams. And I woke up from this one. And I was like, this is a fantastic, messy little story, this is a love triangle that I want to read about. I want to—as a reader, as a viewer—I want to see this play out. And the only way I could get it to play out...

May 21, 2022

“…You have to have so much primary source material that you are drowning, you think you can never get through it all. That's the only way you get dialogue, you get all those details, you know, that really make you feel like you're there and kind of at you just like sinking into the story and forgetting everything...