Ten Questions for Yanyi
![Yanyi Yanyi](https://www.pw.org/files/styles/magazine_article_teaser_portrait/public/article_thumbs/10q4_yanyi_portrait.png?itok=H4NKlDMW)
“Then summer came and there was a lightning moment.” —Yanyi, author of Dream of the Divided Field
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Read weekly interviews with authors to learn the inside stories of how their books were written, edited, and published; insights into the creative process; the best writing advice they’ve ever heard; and more.
“Then summer came and there was a lightning moment.” —Yanyi, author of Dream of the Divided Field
“What if there was an agency that verified people’s online dating personas?” —Jane Pek, author of The Verifiers
“How do you navigate a life in opposition to and in spite of systemic racism, with poetry?” —Angel Dominguez, author of Desgraciado
“Don’t let an algorithm tell you what to read. Disobey the algorithm.” —Sarah Manguso, author of Very Cold People
“It took me more than a year to put aside my fear of attempting it.” —Lan Samantha Chang, author of The Family Chao
“It’d be easier for me to stop talking than to stop writing.” —Tochi Onyebuchi, author of Goliath
“I will miss thinking about Joan and her world every second of every day.” —Weike Wang, author of Joan Is Okay
“Make it so good they can’t reject it.” —Edgar Gomez, author of High-Risk Homosexual
“Everything fell out of me in five intense sleepless weeks.” —Xavier Navarro Aquino, author of Velorio
Ten writers, including Alex Dimitrov and Kaitlyn Greenidge, share the best writing advice they’ve ever heard.
“If you feel that the story is good and that it needs to be read, then keep at it until you’re happy with it.” —Obed Silva, author of The Death of My Father the Pope
“This was the book I was meant to write my whole life.” —Neel Patel, author of Tell Me How to Be
“Thinking is really about 90 percent of the work.” —James Hannaham, author of Pilot Impostor
“I wrote this book with the constraint of honesty.” —Truong Tran, author of book of the other
“It felt as if my protagonist was in the room with me.” —Claire Oshetsky, author of Chouette
This week’s installment of Ten Questions features Domenico Starnone and Jhumpa Lahiri, the author and the translator of Trust.
“What does it take for any of us to change our core beliefs?” —Okezie Nwọka, author of God of Mercy
“I was using the text as a future image of what my own life could be.” —Shayla Lawz, author of speculation, n.
“I need to be involved with life, its business, its noise.” —Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, author of The House of Rust
“Trust yourself and your own vision for your work.” —Blake Sanz, author of The Boundaries of Their Dwelling
“I wanted to articulate and be honest to the emotion of grief.” —Eugene Lim, author of Search History
“I write poetry when I’m in transit or transition.” —Angela Hume, author of Interventions for Women
“It was a fever dream process of creation.” —Casey Plett, author of A Dream of a Woman
“There was so much shame in this project for me to dispel and bury.” —Mahogany L. Browne, author of I Remember Death by Its Proximity to What I Love
“The moment you walk away from the conversation with a poem, you lose it, and it will never return.” —CAConrad, author of AMANDA PARADISE