Miscellaneous Files is a series of virtual studio visits that uses writers’ digital artifacts to understand their practice. Conceived by Mary Wang, each interview provides an intimate look into the artistic process.

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2021

Victoria Law: “We understood that prisons and police would not make us safer.”

Rivka Galchen: “What we run away from often determines where and to what we run.”

What Happened to Paula: “She was different from them. And that’s why I loved her.”

Patricia Lockwood: “I like the things people on the internet can’t talk about.”

Elizabeth Lo: “Like the dogs, I existed in a limbo where I wasn’t entirely part of human society.”

 

2020

Laila Lalami: “We have to think about citizenship as a relationship.”

Hilton Als: “It’s always so moving to see how art claims us out of a kind of loneliness.”

Anne Helen Peterson: “What else is there but my ability to work?”

Hazel Carby: “If it can’t actually cope with the entanglement of all these histories, then to me, it’s useless.” 

Miscellaneous Files on Racial Justice: Eric Ward, Cat Brooks

Miscellaneous Files on Racial Justice: Sylvana Simons, Rosebell Kagumire, Amanda Adé

Ken Liu: “We get to define the stories we want to be told about us.”

Maisy Card: “There is this hazy quality to my family history that no amount of research can clarify.”

Ariella Aïsha Azoulay: “It is not possible to decolonize the museum without decolonizing the world.”

Namwali Serpell: “I almost always find my errors productive.”

 

2019

Helen Phillips: “Living with the awareness of the abyss is probably a good thing.”

Wayne Koestenbaum: “I use obscene as a term of praise.”


Binnie Kirshenbaum: “If you think you shouldn’t say something, say it.”

Leanne Shapton: “The mix of proof, shock, and totally crappy images.”

Morgan Parker: “In the back of my mind I’m on a slave ship, yet I’m also here just telling you how it is.” 

Valeria Luiselli: “There are always fingerprints of the archive in my books.”

Anelise Chen: “Then I changed it to third-person clam, and that was exactly how it was meant to be.”

 

2018

Jabari Asim: “Narrative can be a form of resistance.”

Ottessa Moshfegh: “Sentimentality is a curse.”

Olivia Laing: “It turned out to be an exercise in structure, in how to assemble objects in empty space.”