I like straightforward names for my characters. When I get too symbolic with names or places, I start feeling like the characters and the story are less read, and I lose interest.

I am always urging my students to honor their writing practice, to set up a schedule.

If there was ever a time to boil up some grits it is now.

My first novel, Leaving Atlanta, took at look at my hometown in the late 1970s, when the city was terrorized by a serial murderer that left at least 29 African-American children dead.

When you write a novel, you make other people see your imaginary friends.

This is what I have come to know: Our past is never passed and there is no such thing as moving on. But there is this telling and there is such a thing as passing through.

When I am writing a story it feels as real as the life I am experiencing off the page. It's an emotional illusion, I guess.