This is Thresholds, a series of conversations with writers about experiences that completely turned them upside down, disoriented them in their lives, changed them, and changed how and why they wanted to write. Hosted by Jordan Kisner, author of the essay collection Thin Places. Thresholds is a co-production between Black Mountain Institute and Literary Hub

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Jordan sits down to talk with bestselling novelist Tayari Jones about the power and satisfaction of moving back home after decades away, and how her new novel, Kin, changed the scope of her work.
Tayari Jones: “As writers, we need to come home. I think it’s a problem that there are huge swaths of the country that don’t really have popular writerly representation. Genius, gifts, skills are evenly distributed among people. So if there’s any group of people that’s not represented it’s because they’re being left out, and I think we have to go back and get them.”


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Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, including the international bestseller, AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE. Her new novel, out this month, is KIN. She is the winner of the Women’s Prize, Aspen Words Prize and NAACP Image award. She is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University and the A.D White Professor at large at Cornell University.

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For more Thresholds, visit us at thisisthresholds.com. Original music by Lora-Faye Åshuvud.

Thresholds

Thresholds

Thresholds is a series of intimate, surprising interviews with writers and artists you love about the transformative experiences (surprises, crises, existential freakouts, u-turns, breakthroughs) that have shaped their work. The life-wasn’t-the-same-after-that moments. Hosted by Jordan Kisner, author of the essay collection Thin Places, and brought to you by Lit Hub Radio.