"I think I have a sense of how things need to sound, how to pull an audience in with tone, timing, and pacing. That af…"

"I try to tell the most authentic stories I can about womanhood and Dominican-ness and Afro-Dominican-ness/Afro-Latini…"

"Part of it is finding your readers. Sometimes your readers don’t look like you, or come from your same background, bu…"

"(How do you distinguish Y.A. books from adult fiction?) Partly voice, but my own personal ethos is that Y.A. requires…"

"I don’t think writer’s block is real either…but I do think of it as a response to anxiety that oftentimes when we thi…"

"In a way, writing has always been lonely, that’s not really a new thing due to the pandemic per se, but it’s nice tha…"

"I feel like each book requires a different level of research. “The Poet X” was the most closely aligned with my own u…"

"I didn’t personally have anyone in my family who passed on that crash, but I remember how it ruptured our understandi…"

"I’ve been lucky to travel to DR to the Mariposa Foundation and so speaking with the young women while I was doing wor…"

"I often wish I was asked more about the craft of the verse. I spent so many agonizing hours ensuring every line break…"