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Anyone reading contemporary poetry - especially contemporary African-American poetry - will quickly see that race is an enduring subject. What some don't realize is just how diverse the handling of that subject is. It's as diverse as blackness.

I always crave to see more stories about and by people of color, particularly new work by young black writers.

The ending is one of my blackest, utterly without hope of any sort.

What we call soul has been around a long time. It comes out of a particular culture that is African in origin, but influenced by 250 years of slavery, as well as other forms of racial oppression.

I wrote that song 'Black,' and it was just this idea that I had been married for 10 years. Everyone talks about 'happily ever after,' but there's so much more to it than that.

Love stories seek to demonstrate the great truth of love: that we discover eternity in a moment that dies immediately after.

I think the blues is the best literature that we as blacks have created since we've been here. I call it our 'sacred book.' What I've attempted to do is to mine that field, to mine those cultural ideas and attitudes and give them to my characters.

In my time since moving to the United States, I've found that there is a dearth of great writing for black people. There are stories that depict us in a way that isn't cliched or niche, and that a white person, a Chinese person, an Indian person can watch and relate to. Those are the stories I want to be a part of telling.