I read everything. When I say everything, I read everything: children’s literature, Y.A., science fiction, fantasy, romance — I read it all. Each gen… - Jesmyn Ward

(Which writers – novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets – working today do you admire most?) there are so many: Jacqueline Woodson; Colson Whitehead; Celeste Ng; Natalie Bakopoulos; Justin St. Germain; Molly Antopol; J. M. Tyree; Michael McGriff; Quan Barry; Kevin Young; Jericho Brown; Clint Smith; Daniel José Older; and Kima Jones are a few.

I know that I could, but it feels very unnatural for me to strip my prose like that, in part because place is so important to me. I feel like in the reading I did when I was growing up, and also in the way that people talk and tell stories here in the South, they use a lot of figurative language. The stories that I heard when I was growing up, and the stories that I read, taught me to use the kind of language that I do. It's hard for me to work against that when I am writing.

(What’s the last great book you read?) “The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of America Capitalism,” by Edward E. Baptist. It taught me so much about slavery and how slavery enabled America to become America. Every time I left my house after reading it, I saw the world differently. I saw the legacy of human misery underpinning it all...(If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?) “The Half Has Never Been Told.” It’s an essential book for anyone who seeks to understand the America we live in now.