Photo credit: Jourdan Christopher
What led you to write this book?
I began writing this book just after a good friend of mine from high school passed away in the fall of 2015. I had not been in touch with the friend in years at the time of her passing, and I didn’t expect her death to devastate me; after all, we hadn’t really been friends, not in the sense that friends are people who talk, in a long time. But the day I heard the news, my mood dropped. Over the next while, I didn’t want to talk to anyone or go outside or go to work. I just wanted to stay in my room and watch TV, which I didn’t even like doing. Whenever I went outside, I fantasized about sneaking away without telling anyone, about hopping on a local bus to 30th Street Station and then a long-distance bus to some city where I didn’t know anyone...