Literary Birthday – 30 November – Tayari Jones

Happy Birthday, Tayari Jones, born 30 November 1970.

Tayari Jones Quotes

1. Remember that the writing itself is good for you. If your story is so close to home that you are afraid to write it, it probably means you need to write it.
2. This is what I have come to know: Our past is never passed and there is no such thing as moving on. But there is this telling and there is such a thing as passing through.
3. When you write a novel, you make other people see your imaginary friends.
4. When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.
5. When I am writing a story it feels as real as the life I am experiencing off the page. It’s an emotional illusion, I guess.
6. I like straightforward names for my characters. When I get too symbolic with names or places, I start feeling like the characters and the story are less read, and I lose interest.

Tayari Jones is an American author of four novels, including An American Marriage, which was a 2018 Oprah’s Book Club Selection and won the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her other works are Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and Kin. ‘Her novels portray African-American experiences in the Southern United States, specifically how their lives are impacted by the unjust systems they live in.’ (via) She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.

Source for quotes
Source for image: “https://www.lyceumagency.com/speakers/tayari-jones/” author’s press kit (credit: Tyson Alan Horne)

by Amanda Patterson

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