When I first started sending out work, I kept encountering the idea that people wouldn’t read about the kind of people I was writing about—that this kind of work wouldn’t find an audience. People in power probably assumed that because I was writing about poor black southerners, no one would want to read about them. It feels good to get this kind of recognition now and to know that many will read about the kind of people I’m talking about and find the stories universal in some way.
