“In public and in private, whenever I was writing something for On Sundays, songs would come to me—bits of jazz, a hymn I grew up hearing in church, a blues song, something moody by Hozier or Nina Simone. Sometimes the songs snuck their way onto the page as with “Don’t Let Me Misunderstood” and “There’s a Leak in This Old Building”, but most stayed in my head, happy to be hummed while I wrote out some horrible, stomach-churning scene of horror.”
“Finding a song that aligns with the emotion or experience I’m trying to communicate helps me go deeper and stay in the moment.”
“Berceuse Parish is a community record: part myth, part elegy, part songbook, and ultimately a love letter to Louisiana. It’s a poetry book you can read as a novel, or maybe a broken novel you can read as a series of poems and other ephemera.”
“When I think about Red Girl Jumping – both the writing and living within — the music that comes to mind embodies states of confusion, longing for saviors and hope, and the da-da-dum heartbeat sounds that Red Girl hears in herself.”
“Music helps me imagine the world at the moment of the story.”
“I chose this song in an early story about the Arrington family because I see ‘Take the A Train’ as a representation of their old life in the Black Community.”
“Clutch, a book about friendship and endurance and the ups and downs and trainwrecks of growing up and into midlife together, has a lot of music in it.”
“”Whatever the case or occasion, music holds my emotional memory. Known songs aren’t just melodies but rather life’s bookmarks, bookmarks that evolve and change with each listen…”
“Novels take me FOREVER to finish. I keep a running playlist in my head that fuels the spirit or, as the kids say, the vibes of the book. This changes the more I begin to see the world through characters’ eyes, and songs seemingly unrelated ear-worm their way in. “
“I wrote If You Leave from a place of unknowing, groping in the dark for a story. What carried me were settings, Washington, DC, and rural North Carolina, with their textures of sounds and sights that I collaged into a character-driven novel.”