“The first thing to do is to let go of the sense that we must be good members of the social class we were born into, and to instead ask ourselves: How do we want to live? Who do we want to work with and how? How do we make a sustainable literary culture that supports us and others, makes room for more stories, more art?” … read more

“Often I think that the whole country lets itself off the hook with this notion that the South—or any rural place—is more homophobic or racist or misogynistic.”… read more

“The novel aims toward, in serious, comical, and satirical ways, a conversation about how society imagines the correct subject position for a person…”… read more

“I’m human and so I’m often grossed out by myself, by my thoughts and actions, and scared of what people will think. But I’ve also found—through trial and error—that the best place for me to get to in a story is that gruesome little ledge.”… read more

“I’m interested in what it looks like to stand tall in difficult feelings: embarrassment, love, anger, desire, cowardice, even joy which can be difficult too.”… read more

“As a poet who came to prose after 15 years of writing poems, I’m always paying attention to words, to sound and rhythm, to images and metaphors, as well as ideas and arguments.”… read more

“None of the categories we depend on are ever fully adequate to represent us, so poetry must always find ways to represent us, whatever we are, that go beyond ready-made language.”… read more

“Things have so many edges, so much nuance, and that’s why poetry’s so beautiful, because you can relate to something that was really quite disturbing or dark, and approach it almost in a tongue and cheek manner.”… read more

“To be a queer writer is to stand in relation to two sometimes overlapping, sometimes diverging traditions […]”… read more

“Punk and riot grrrl influenced me hugely, not just musically but politically and aesthetically as well, and my friends too.”… read more