Largehearted Boy

“Along with a dog named Lola, I wrote Monstrilio listening to music. There were songs that took me to the places I needed to be: Upstate New York, Mexico City, Brooklyn and Berlin. Others dug into feelings shouting to be explored: loneliness, chaotic giddiness, carefree monstrousness. Others jerked me away, whisked against some horror I’d just written, spitting me out at the other end, harrowed but satisfyingly alive.”

“When I’m asked to describe what Thirst for Salt is about, I often say simply that it’s a love story because I believe that love stories, like love songs, can act as vessels for our deeper existential longings.”

“Over the last decade spent writing Only and Ever This, these songs were how I managed to quiet the thoughts in my head for long enough to let another story exist, a story of a mother who is a ghost, a father who is a pirate, and sons who trundle down a complex of caves, the story of mummifying twin boys so that they won’t grow up.”

“In The Unfortunates, music is everywhere, appearing in Sahara’s playlists, song parodies, and track titles. Music helped me discover the novel’s experimental form, and when I needed to jog my memories, it transported me back to 2013, the year of the novel’s setting.”