Author of The Known World and All Aunt Hagar’s Children is interviewed at Small Spiral Notebook. I’ve been meaning to read this guy for a couple years now, and everything I read about him and everyone I talk to only convinces me more and more that the longer I wait, the more I’m missing out.

My mind is always working. And like that morning when this woman [character] came back to me and there she was a couple of decades younger, and she was on Ridge St and was with this boy friend that was abusive and the community was seeing all this—that became a story. So tomorrow morning I might wake up with some idea for something. But if I don’t, I don’t. I don’t want to feel that I have to slit my wrists—I wouldn’t do that. I would find a milder way of killing myself, I guess. Writing is important and I am glad I am able to do it—they talk about the Mona Lisa and everything but if someone burned the Mona Lisa, up tomorrow the world shouldn’t end because of that, the world should end because some child in India doesn’t have enough to eat. So if I don’t write, if nothing that comes to me— then the world shouldn’t end. My world certainly shouldn’t end. But I hope I do [continue to write] I have things that I still have to say.