The Artist's Statement

2023 National Book Award for Fiction winner Justin Torres joins us to discuss his novels We The Animals (2011, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and Blackouts (2023, Farrar, Straus and Giroux). We talk about what Torres considers success in his writing, the value of fiction that diverges from the realm of reality, and how he approached his award-winning new work.

Inspired in part by the book Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, Blackouts moves between fact and fiction as it explores the life of an unnamed narrator referred to as "nene," his older friend Juan Gay, and historical figure Jan Gay. Torres creates stories from what's missing, challenging readers to confront questions that have no answers.

Torres's bestselling debut, We the Animals, won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, was translated into fifteen languages, and was adapted into a feature film. He was named a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35,” a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Tin House, The Washington Post, LA Times Image Magazine, and Best American Essays. 

Host: Davin Malasarn

The Artist's Statement is brought to you by The Granum Foundation.