Poured Over

"Tracy never went away. So yes, you can say I'm bringing her back, but the culture kept her in circulation in a way that was really interesting to me, and at times a little alienating. It's like you create a character and, suddenly, she's played brilliantly by Reese Witherspoon, and in a sense, that becomes the public's image of the character — and I love that performance as much as anybody. But t...

"I missed it so much. And definitely didn't get it or appreciate the specialness of it, or this particular beauty of it … until you have to show up at a party full of strangers. And answer that,  where are you from  question so many times. I'm not sure I would have written this book, if I didn't have to do that over and over and over again, in so many different places." That's Katie Runde, riffing...

"I was very, very unintentionally smart in that I started it as a short story, I genuinely believed it was a short story, which was good, because if I hadn't sat down and said, I'm now going to write my first novel I'd probably still be working on it, but because it was a short story that got longer and became a long story, and then became a novella. And then like, Oh, I'm writing the book that I...

"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 this very goth all the time, this very gothic world, the kind of fog-on-the-Moors ki...

"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 it a big ego drama about me, that actually opened up space in my creative lif...

"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 always coming back to these characters." Finalist for the National Book Award, poet Ho...

"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 was to you know, write it." Critically acclaimed author Akwaeke Emezi ( Freshwater , ...

"…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 else." We'll follow bestselling author Candice Millard anywhere at any time—her lates...

"That was really what I wanted to get at. The relationships that you have with the people who you love  so  much, and who you're  so  close with that you don't have to talk to them all the time." All of Emma Straub's novels have big beating hearts, no matter who or what or where or when she's writing about.  This Time Tomorrow  is her "autobiographical time travel novel" and it's an absolute delig...

"But then when I read that Raymond Carver said he didn't have the ability to write, you know, a full novel. He was a sprinter and I thought,  Oh, maybe I could do it .  Is there any such thing as a half a paragraph short story , because that was all I had the focus for. So, it took me a long, long time to write this book." Actress ( Cruel Intentions ,  Hellboy ,  Legally Blonde) , model, muse to K...

"For me, part of the fun of coming-of-age novels, both reading and writing, is getting to have that adult perspective on these youthful moments and kind of allow you to make sense of them in a way you couldn't before; it can allow you to forgive yourself for some of the things maybe you did, it can allow you to laugh at some of the things that horrified you, and that can bring peace and joy and re...

"I was thinking about caretaking. And I was thinking about mothers because I lost my mom last year, but just the places that feel familiar and how they almost become characters in our heads. Like when I think about the house where I grew up, and I can remember it so specifically right down to the way like the closet smelled or when I think about all the time I spent in Cape Cod, the way the sand o...

"…It's like if Tim Burton decorated Versailles for Halloween…" Heather Walter's queer retelling of  Sleeping Beauty  kicked off with  Malice , which we think of as more than just a remix to a familiar story—It's a complex, character-driven story with action, political intrigue, betrayal, and of course, a slow burn romance ... Heather's closing out her Malice duology with  Misrule , and she joins u...

"For me, the novel form is the greatest expression because it has that room, that latitude to really explore for the full complexity of human existence and psychology and diversity, and there's no other single format that I think comes close, even with the amazing ways in which television drama has grown and become more complex and more satisfying, I still think that it's the novel form that did i...

"And the title, of course, has this double meaning, the financial meaning of trust, and let's call it, emotional meaning of trust … To what extent can I trust this voice and the book, to a large extent is questioning the contracts we enter into as readers." Hernan Diaz follows up his acclaimed debut novel,  In the Distance  (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), with  Trust , a stunning book-about-a...

"I grew up hearing  The Ramayana  over lunch. My grandma would tell me little bits and pieces to me and my younger sister, she would tell us little bits and pieces every day. And we would ask to hear the same stories over and over again." If you're a fan of imaginative retellings like  Circe ,  Ariadne  and  The Witch's Heart , you don't want to miss Vaishnavi Patel's  Kaikeyi .  Vaishnavi joins u...

"And so then, I felt like that's when I had to go back to the beginning of telling my story of sort of rediscovering the young Viola, who definitely may have been traumatized, but was pure." Multi-award-winning actress Viola Davis has poured herself into the characters she portrays on the big screen and on stage. And, now, in her most deeply personal and inspiring role yet, as author, she has rele...

"And I think it's just overall her humanity and her recognition of what other people could accomplish. If you just say the right things, if you create the right chemistry, that really drove me to her. And she does—she has her own chemistry with everyone in the book." That's Bonnie Garmus talking about Elizabeth Zott, the unforgettable center of Bonnie's debut novel,  Lessons in Chemistry . Bonnie...

"I didn't want that more traditional kind of arc of childhood to a certain stance of wisdom or resignation or triumph. I wanted—partly because I felt with  Negroland , and very much with this book—that ability to change persona, change my position, to acknowledge that one was performing at times, and that one played many, many roles … I wanted to be able to take in all of that, and a traditional m...

"There's an intense pleasure in viewing the flaws of the people around you and saying,  I'm not a part of that , even if maybe at the beginning you want to be or even maybe you still do, but you learn to come from where you stand. And that's part of what Jordan is doing. She's very comfortable in her discomfort…" Nghi Vo won the Hugo Award for Debut Novella with  The Empress of Salt and Fortune ,...

"Leonard Cohen is like my all-time favorite musician … I, all my life, have had this reaction to sad music, of not feeling sad at all when I listened to it. Instead, what I feel is a kind of sense of uplift, and a sense of wonder and awe that a musician could take pain and turn it into beauty. And most of all, a kind of sense of connection with the musician and with all the other people who are li...

"I knew that after writing this sweeping family portrait that goes over about 40 years in the Bain family's history, that for my next novel, I wanted to write something that was very focused, that was quite propulsive, and quite edited in the scope and the time that we spend with the characters. And so, for me, it was about romance. It's about that love between these two young men." Douglas Stuart...

"You know, beauty is such an interesting term. I think it's really important how vast and complex it is … we call people beautiful, I call my dog beautiful every day. I call food I eat beautiful, I call bitter, bitter coffee, beautiful, I call an idea beautiful. A mathematical concept can be beautiful, a sunset, the natural world, a performance, a song, certainly works of art, but … I've heard mys...

" True Biz is an ASL idiom. It doesn't have one direct translation into English, but a few of the things that it could mean:  seriously, literally. Real talk  is one that I think gets used a lot.  No kidding . Like, if someone says like,  No, you made that up ,  no true biz , you know, and I thought that it was a good title for the book, because it doesn't quite translate directly into English." W...

"I really wrote it for me, I didn't think anything would come about — I wanted something that could bring me a bit of joy, where Asian American characters could live their lives and do something as fun and ridiculous as robbing art museums across the world." Grace D. Li loves a caper flick, and now she's written  Portrait of a Thief , a caper novel with a very fun Chinese American cast. Grace join...