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.

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 cults I studied.

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.

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

I find myself speaking through the other characters, putting ideas in their voices and heads. Writing almost becomes a splitting of myself into multiple personalities. But I don't write to make an argument on behalf of any of the characters, or to prove anything about a character. I think that's important that I be serving the story first and not my own point of view.