“I’m very feeling-centered in my work; you could call me a largehearted girl. My poems are often an exploration, a translation even, of internal worlds. Music is one of the best ways to enter an internal world, to bask in it, sit in it like a mud bath—whether that’s in the stage of writing, editing, or reading.”
“…this playlist is a direct reflection of what I was forced to listen to during some of the most impressionable years of my life.”
“…the book has lightness, too, because darkness and misery can be funny if you look for it, and because childhood is strange and magical and incomprehensible.”
“Music, like writing, has helped me come to terms with the fact that pathology is what I make of it.”
“You’ll find the playlist touches grief but doesn’t stay there…”
“The revised playlist succinctly reflects the heart of my novel—two women overcoming angst and striving toward hope with a heavy helping of family drama.”
“In my novel, pop culture proves to be diabolical, but not so with these songs.”
“My playlist is comprised of songs that soundtrack the ATLien’s journey, but also the seven years I spent writing the rest of the book: songs that accompanied the ordinary and extraordinary weather of those years—love, grief, friendship, loss, and the hardheaded, sometimes ridiculous work of trying to remain open to joy.”
“Perhaps because at my core I am a musician and a former performing pianist who became a critic and author, I almost never listen to music when I’m writing. Music is too powerful for me.”
“Considering the role of jazz in noir, I thought to move beyond superficial aesthetic and make the genius of John Coltrane the structural engine of my protagonist’s entire world. His first name is Coltrane, last name Davis. Exactly. He bears the names of arguably the two most important jazz musicians to ever live. My protagonist doesn’t like jazz; he IS jazz.”