Marlon James

What I find, particularly with young writers and readers, is that they don't want complicated feelings.

My first novel, 'John Crow's Devil,' freed me up to write about the past, and 'The Book of Night Women' freed me up to have a book totally based on voice and being very spontaneous.

Not every gay person recites poetry or has read Keats. You can get readers through anything if the characters are complicated. You can't dismiss Josey Wales' quite liberal worldview.

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.

I'm a big action junkie. I grew up on the '80s action movies - the bad ones and the good ones.

If I planned everything out in advance, I'd expire of boredom.