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In this online exclusive we ask authors to share books, art, music, writing prompts, films—anything and everything—that has inspired them in their writing. We see this as a place for writers to turn to for ideas that will help feed their creative process.
“I wrote The Boy Next Door in Geneva, Switzerland and one of the biggest challenges for me was to capture the essence of life in Zimbabwe, particularly the second largest city, Bulawayo, in the eighties, which was a delicate period: optimism and hope (Zimbabwe was newly independent after a
“When I need poetic inspiration, I return to music. My go-to album these days is the Upsetters’ Super Ape
“Sitting at the desk. Naps. The painting over my desk shows a woman lying on a bed with her eyes closed
“My sense these days is that I’m constantly inspired by all kinds of things
“There’s a studio recording of Nina Simone singing ‘My Father’ that always knocks me out.
“The Lure of the Detour: five things that feed me plus the sixth that haunts them.
“(1) Silence: the body and the breath that haunts that house.
“(2) Sound: Alice Coltrane, Yoko Ono, David Lang, John Cage, Krishna Das.
“I believe, as many writers do, that there are touchstone moments in literature—poetry, fiction, and plays—that spark the imagination. So here are a couple of personal inspirations:
“Running takes me out of the city and into nature, which does something to me that most man-made stuff can’t. I pass the Brazilian transsexuals, wave, pass the mean forest cops on their big horses, salute, pass that one old guy with the terry-cloth headband, wave.
“One of the seventeen times The Supremes appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, they sang ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ wearing earrings that weighed close to what Diana Ross weighed at the time.
“Lately I’ve been writing poems on my iPhone. But I also like to write poems on Post-it notes and in my trusty sketchbook, too.
