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 on another novel for years and when I gave up on that, this one came very easily. But I think the work had been going on a lot longer than the actual writing.

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 the documentaries. I found it really chilling in a personal way - the question of people submitting all their personal power and agency and independent thought it the name of a group or ideology. I could not find a way to write about it directly that didn't feel too heavy.

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 surface.

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

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 ones every day of my life.

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 on you.

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 same. You can’t live with it, you can’t live away from it. And it seems like from then on there’s always this yearning for some place that doesn’t exist. I felt that. Still do. I’m never completely at home anywhere.