(keys clicking)

(bell dinging)

(carriage clicking)

- [Bryan] Hi, I'm Bryan Washington and this is "Memorial",

a story about love, about family,

about home and how home can change.

(emotive music)

- [J.T.] There's a lot of cooking in the book.

Could you talk about how important it is

to feel comfortable in your kitchen

and how that translates into your life?

- The kitchen, like narratively,

just sort of as a narrative construct,

is just a really useful structural tool,

because it's the one space where a character,

where people pass through every single day

for one reason or another.

And there's a narrative for when they pass through it.

Like literally when, like what time of day.

there's a narrative for who they spend time with

in that particular space, right?

Like if they're avoiding someone, there's a reason for that,

there's a narrative there.

If they're willing to spend time with someone in that space,

there's a reason for that, there's a narrative there.

- [J.T.] What do you want the reader

to take away from this?

- The idea that many different things

can be true simultaneously.

And that one thing's being true

doesn't negate the importance or the significance

of another thing's being true.

At the same time, it was really important to me

not to write a book that was prescriptive

about any particular thing or person or way of being

but one in which characters and, you know,

people perhaps at large were allowed to change

and to make mistakes and to find one another

after they changed and after they made those mistakes.

- What is the best writing advice you've ever received?

- Not to write with an eye or an ear

toward monetization or to the market,

because the market really doesn't know what it wants

until it wants it.

But really writing toward your personal interests

and your personal obsessions and the things

that perhaps you think are interesting only to you,

at least in my immediate experience has yielded a result

in which you find out that no, it's not interesting to you.

Many other folks are interested in that.

- [J.T.] For more of my conversation with Bryan Washington,

visit awordonwords.org. (bell dinging)

- [Bryan] "Memorial" would not have been written

and it certainly would not have been published

and it would have not found its place

within the wider marketplace if not for the work

of queer folks in this country,

carving not only an enclave but reiterating and repeating

that it is queer culture but this is also culture,

like this, this is culture.