I'm an obsessive writer who needs and loves revision. Writing helps me learn and helps me teach.

Not so deep down, we all know that safety is an illusion, that only character melds us together. That’s why most of us do everything we can (healthy and unhealthy) to ward off that real feeling of standing alone so close to the edge of the world.

Long Division has a lot of Afrosurrealist impulses. I think the book was more Afrofuturist when it was like 700 pages.

Black is not a vice. Nor is segregation a virtue.

I'm a black writer from Mississippi. That's what I most consider myself.

I'm also, than anything else, a teacher and a student. And without the four hours, I'm pretty monsterish. For real.

First of all, the novel should be a critique of the novels that have come before it in a language that broadens the audience of American literature. Second, it's really got to be invested in a number of what-if questions.