The ways in which theological constructs pose questions about what it is to be a human being on this earth are deeply elegant and deeply interesting to me. I may not always agree with the answers religion offers, but I take great interest in the questions it poses.

The ways in which theological constructs pose questions about what it is to be a human being on this earth are deeply elegant and deeply interesting to me. I may not always agree with the answers religion offers, but I take great interest in the questions it poses.

You have to find a way of shutting the future out and focusing on the writing. One of the problems I'll have with writing my second book is getting back into a situation where I think about the words on the page rather than the publishing industry, or success, or any kind of readership I may now have. I'll have to do what writers do, which is focus on the story and nothing else.

Fiction writing is an act of imagination, lived experience is secondary in many ways, writing a novel really is all about inventing worlds and people.

I think being consistent is really important. In the arts there's a misconception that you sit around waiting for the muse to come, and that it's all really mystical and mysterious. In reality, sometimes you have to fake it till you make it.

There's a stereotype that to be a strong black woman is to be strong about being black.

I think that if you just write your characters you end up with something that people can access.