Do you have a bird story or favorite feathered friend?

I grew up in suburban New Jersey, and New York City always seemed like the promised land to me, the height of glamour and art and adulthood. In high school, in an attempt to seem mature and adventurous--you know, to seem NYC-like--I came into the city, went to a downtown restaurant, and ordered pigeon off the menu. I’d never eaten pigeon before. It arrived at my table as a whole, naked, purple bird, its eyes and beak and tongue all still in its head. It looked so vulnerable. It stared right at me and I stared at it and then I ate it and I can to this day, decades later, taste it, plummy and desperate and sad. That’s my bird story—ta-da!

What is your most memorable reading experience?

Oh god, I will never, ever forget reading Love in the Time of Cholera for the first time. I was in my childhood bedroom when I got to the scene where Fermina sees her love Florentino after pining for each other from a distance for ages and realizes that her feelings for him were nothing but an illusion. That moment in the story knocked the wind out of me. I had to put the book down on my chest and stare at the ceiling for minutes in an attempt to recover. Gabriel García Márquez is the greatest.

What makes you most excited about Disappearing Earth?

That it exists as a real-world object with which other people can engage. For so long, it seemed like an idea or a secret or an obsession of only mine. I can hardly believe that now anyone else can pick it up.

To tweet or not to tweet?

Not to tweet. But to lurk, taking in other people’s tweets, alllll daaaayyy loooongggg.

What books do you have in your bag right now?

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson. So excited.

Can you tell us your favorite rejection story?

One time I ordered a rejection off a menu and it arrived with a beak and a tongue and I gobbled it right up.

What literary journals do you love?

The brilliant One Story and A Public Space!

What shakes your tail feathers?

The Moana soundtrack. It also shakes all the tears out of my tear ducts. It’s so damn good.

What advice do you have for fledgling writers?

Connect to your community. Being in conversation with other readers and writers, whether in person or online, will give you so much joy and sustenance as you continue the challenging work of shaping your own stories on the page. It will teach you new ways to engage with the written word and open up your artistic life in directions you may have never otherwise imagined.

What other eggs do you have in your basket right now?

In my basket right now I have a creative egg, which is another novel manuscript I’m plugging away at, and a fertilized physical egg, which is a pretty gross way for me to refer to the fetus currently chilling inside my pregnant human body. The latter egg is set to hatch this summer. The former egg...let’s see!