LGBTQ

“The book didn’t announce itself to me until 2017, when I went looking for it. I scanned over the poems I had been writing, scanning to see what my brain had been up to without me noticing.” —Danez Smith, author of Homie

“It wasn’t until the final year or so that I felt I had some control over the shape and content, that I understood how the pieces worked together.” —Mark Bibbins, author of 13th Balloon

“For a while, I was most productive at night, then mornings. Now it’s just whenever there’s a moment.” —Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life

“Work that’s good, that’s itself, eventually gets seen.” —Paul Lisicky, author of Later

“Write what you do not know, which I think is particularly helpful because—not to sound too much like Socrates—I’m not really convinced that anyone knows anything.” —John Elizabeth Stintzi, author of Vanishing Monuments

“It is a vulnerable thing to expose one’s least-glamorous moments to the scrutiny of the page.” —Cooper Lee Bombardier, author of Pass With Care

“I have a deeply unhealthy work-life balance in that the Venn diagram of those things is a circle.” —Ilana Masad, author of All My Mother’s Lovers