“I make playlists for friends, family, moods, parties, road trips, and of course, I make them for my books. Nothing gets me into the world of a project faster than music.”
“Included in this playlist are songs I was listening to while drafting The Moon Papers, as well as some lunar summer tunes the book evokes….”
“As I fashioned these documents into a book, the music of that era played nonstop in my head, often intruding on the narrative.”
“I wrote much of Whole, Holy, Hot to full albums set to play on repeat. Once I’d worn out one album’s spell, I’d move to another. I wanted to stay inside a single artistic world for a while—to let its atmosphere shape the space I was writing from.”
“The following selections by contributors to Black Summers reflect that tension between sentimental longing and racial strife. Mostly, they land upon Black joy.”
“While I was writing Paradise Pawn, I made a playlist of songs that make me feel emotional about change for various reasons.”
“I often say that for indigenous peoples, the world ended once. We live on the other side of the apocalypse.”
“I want to highlight a particular type of Native American music. Tunes that are based in country, rock, or soul, not necessarily powwow or traditional; the type of music that I remember my mother playing when I was a child.”
“When I was young, I used to play three or four albums in a row at top volume and sing along, also at top volume, to get out of my own head.”
“These songs and pieces reflect some of the themes, moods and ideas the book and its heroine are grappling with as the day spirals beyond her control.”