“Songwriters were (and still are) my favorite poets.”
“All music has time-machine potential, even if it only takes you back to your last summer holiday, but the music of World War II seems especially era-defining.”
“Before cassette tapes became obsolete, I made dozens of mixtapes for myself and friends, like kids make friendship bracelets today.”
“Colorfast’s central color is red, which the poems consider as both a pigment applied and vividness faded and discover in rocks, roots, cosmetics, fabrics, stains, and blood, among many sources.”
“Birdsong is the ur track for music. My half-human birds can’t resist breaking into song now and then, although they fear their singing will get them caught.”
“This is a book that eventually settles on a group of badass Black women and girls taking on their would-be oppressors.”
“Given its subject, time period, setting, and tone, the book to me makes a sound very much like American pop: bright, relentless, animated by outrageous and unachievable desires, menacing. It’s the most beautiful sound I know.”
“While locked away during COVID, music was always there. As these stories were finding their way, music was always there. As I was editing for hours upon hours, music was always there. Without music, Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood wouldn’t exist.”
“For me, writing Trondheim, each of the following songs was model, permission, catalyst, encouragement.”
“When I was writing the first draft of Twice Lived there was one album I put on repeat: Birds and The Bee9 by Sampa the Great. It drowned out the bustle of the everyday. The album feels both vast and intimate and I wanted that same feeling for Twice Lived.”