I grew up in the Caribbean. My family is from the Caribbean. It is home for me. It will always feel like home. I find that even in memory I know it more intimately than anywhere else I’ve been. I’m also just really interested in the Caribbean as a place: its complicated relationship with colonialism, its unique relationship with race, its particular prejudices, its variation. I mostly write about the Virgin Islands because it is what I know, but I have family from all over the Caribbean, so I feel connected to those places as well. When I write about other places, I often bring that Caribbean perspective to those locales.

I was in choir from elementary school up into my first year of college. I was a first soprano through and through. Music is one of my passions; I enjoy listening to orchestra, Broadway, video game and animation music. If you want to win me over, tell me what you think of Hamilton or Undertale. In addition, I trained in the basics of violin playing.

I have a fascination with insect hive populations and mega-colonies and their various forms of communication, and I’ve always wondered if at some point, insects will figure out a way to manipulate humans into becoming walking bone radios or wetware smart phones or whatever it is they need us to be. And I think of insects as wholly alien and therefore probably excellent at transmitting messages between dimensions, acting as voice carriers or even as video cameras for beings in other planes of existence.

The horror that has the strongest impact on me has always been horror in which suspense is primary and gets coupled with a kind of dread, so that you feel sure that something is wrong, but that you’re only touching the tip of the iceberg. A friend of mine and I were talking about how disappointing most horror movies are when the monster you’ve been seeing bits and pieces of is finally revealed: it’s almost always a disappointment. It’s much more frightening when you only partly know what’s there.

I set myself a challenge a few years ago to write a series of stories using the titles of cheesy SF/horror movies from the 1950s as a source of inspiration. The idea was to honor the pulpy nature of the material while treating it with subtlety and emotional nuance. So far, three of them have seen print—The Creature from the Black Lagoon (retitled “The Creature Recants”), “I Married a Monster from Outer Space,” and “Teenagers from Outer Space,” with another one forthcoming (“Invasion of the Saucer-Men”).