Relationships
On candidly depicting a black woman’s consciousness, the contradictions of intimacy, and the joys of other art forms.
On candidly depicting a black woman’s consciousness, the contradictions of intimacy, and the joys of other art forms.
On the life experiences that smooth our edges, writing into the unknown, and the brutality of love.
The first time I saw Jane I was working at the bike shop, a veritable cacophony of grease and gunk I only survived by occupying my hands. Bikes had a purpose that had nothing to do with me—every part fit together properly so my mind could remain free and unviolated. Her left knee was scrapped, with pieces of pavement lodged in the wound. The sight disrupted my hard-earned equilibrium. I tried not to look, but it was too late. I had already imagined retrieving the bits of bloody gravel from her abrasion and rolling them like candy on my tongue.
The writer on her new novel, creative partnerships, sex as communication, and tending to old drafts.
The writer on writing about secrets, food as love language, and releasing a debut novel during a pandemic.
On writing mentally ill characters with nuance and how our identities shape the power relationships of our most intimate interactions.
I have just read a diary entry from fifteen years ago, in which I wrote that I had just read some diary entries from many more years before that, written at a time when I was staying by myself in a small town near Caen, in Normandy.
The debut writer on complex characters, love stories, and how we code each other.
A short story from the collection The Dominant Animal.
On the individuality of grief, demystifying the creative process, and the right time to tell a story.
“People talk about algorithms like they’re magic. It’s easy to see why. They govern how the internet is shown to us, conjured from spells. Their methods are opaque, and yet we put our trust in them.”
Mapping personal attachment styles onto art institutions.
The writer on romance under capitalism, Nietzsche, sex work, and freedom from the tyranny of the sentence.
Goddamn it to motherfucking hell, she says. I think that ought to cover it, he says. He asks her why she feels the need to swear so much, so deliberately, what depends on it, why it’s so important to her. Why, after so long, she hasn’t grown tired. Worn out in the mouth.
we consummated our marriage / on a bed littered with sour faces / of dead presidents, liberated livestock / sweating through the dollars.
She was coming out of the library when she saw him. Their paths had crossed a couple of times before. Three, to be exact. More or less under the same circumstances. He was riding an orange bicycle, and a little girl was standing behind him on the pannier rack.
On resisting parasitic invasions—from the poisons in our soil, to toxic masculinity in the psyche.
The writer on her new story collection about the lives of the displaced and the daily estrangements we all face.
