Taylor’s Real Life hit many “best of” lists for 2020, and a collection of loosely linked short stories comes out this month. “My most formative early reading was the Bible, which haunts me still, and the first author I loved was Pat Conroy, because the lyrical language of The Prince of Tides sounded so much like the Bible. I tried to imitate that intensity when I started writing, and then I was like, no; a lot of black writers get called raw and visceral because they write lyrically, and if I could remove that from the equation, it would be nice.” – The Guardian (UK)
