Jesmyn Ward

“People are not afraid to be activists, to be vocal. And I think back to my years in college, and that wasn't the case.”

“I wanted to write about the experiences of the poor and the black and the rural people of the South.”

“I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction.”

“I celebrate my blackness. I love the artistic vibrancy of the culture I was born to.”

“While I admire writers who are able to write with a vitality based on order and action, I work in a different vein. I often feel that if I can get the language just right, the language hypnotizes the reader.”

“If I could chat with anyone, it would be Claire Messud, because I think she could tell me how to get better as a writer as I age.”

“It really bothers me when people say we live in a postracial America.”

“If I'm honest about the people that I love, then I need my characters to live through the same things that the people I love and care about are living with and struggling with.”

“I grew up in a lot of different homes when I was younger: my parents rented trailers and small, boxy houses set high on cement block pillars.”

“I could stifle my voice, or strip it. I know that I could, because we can do anything we put our minds to. 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.”

“If I can get a page out in a day, I am celebrating.”

“Because everyone grows up together in my small hometown, everyone knows everyone else. And there are such large extended families that a lot of people are related to each other.”

“Hip-hop, which is my generation's blues, is important to the characters that I write about. They use hip-hop to understand the world through language.”

“After I finished my first draft of 'Salvage the Bones,' I felt that I wasn't political enough. I had to be more honest about the realities of the community I was writing about.”

“People ask me all the time, 'Why did I move home?' As well as I can articulate it, that's why. I moved home because I love the community that I come from.”

“I lived in San Francisco and did the Stegner fellowship for two years, and it was amazing. From fall 2008 to spring 2010, I was there.”

“While I've said that there are plenty of things I dislike about the South, I can be clear that there are things I love about the South.”

“Physical books are still my favorite, but I own an e-book reader. They're convenient for travel.”

“There's so much I love about home, but then there's a lot that I can acknowledge that I dislike about home. And acknowledging that to myself helps me see that place more clearly and to bring readers to that place.”

“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.”