It’s funny. When you leave your home and wander really far, you always think, ‘I want to go home.’ But then you come home, and of course it’s not the….

I was influenced growing up by everything from Harlequin romances to Fedor Dostoyevsky and Albert Camus, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and later Lydi….

I'm not trying to be coy, but I think everyone notices these things like skin color but some people are more aware that they are noticing them than o….

I wrote the first draft of the New People quickly but it had been percolating a lot longer. It's a hard question to answer because I'd been working o….

Writing New People I was thinking a lot about the era that I came of age - the 90's. Brooklyn, in particular, this moment when I lived there. The sen….

I find myself speaking through the other characters, putting ideas in their voices and heads. Writing almost becomes a splitting of myself into multi….

In terms of music, each novel is different but I usually find my way into an era through the music. In this novel the New People, I listened to a lot….

I definitely feel like when I write a book it's not my job to police or guide the readers. The book and the characters don't belong to me anymore. If….

I didn't read about it for school. It was just for myself. I was interested in cults in general but Jonestown was the most interesting of all the cul….

I'm felt I was writing about love and desire and community and belonging and grief and a whole host of other issues. But race is never far from the s….

I'm increasingly less interested in classic storylines and that arc that we have come to expect..

I had been really obsessed with Jonestown for a long time - many years - and had read everything there was to read about it, seen all the footage and….

I guess the subject of race is so natural to me I never think of it as hefty. It's something I talk about and joke about and discuss with my loved on….

Motherhood. It was hard to get lost in anything else completely when children were 3 years old..

My fear was like a stray dog, roving the neighborhood of my life, looking for a new source of worry..

I think cults never stop being interesting and I'm intrigued by how we all do a tiny bit of submitting to a larger group - and how they can sneak up ….

I think about some of the novels I love - The Stranger, Disgrace, Quicksand and Passing, Giovanni's Room, The Talented Mr. Ripley. I think I'm more i….

I don't like stories that are too neat and too resolved. I think resolutions can be deadening for the reader..