Tanzina: I am struck that the first time that we learn that your protagonist is an artist is when we're actually learning that she isn't making her art or hasn't been making it. Joining me now is Raven Leilani to talk through Edie's lyrical, complicated journey of failing, flailing, creating, and consuming. Author Raven Leilani is leaving breadcrumbs to the origins of her novel. Tanzina: The mistake, the correction, the perfection. It's not that I want exactly this, to have a husband or a home security system, that way the length of our marriage never goes off, is that there are gray anonymous hours like this, hours when I am desperate, when I'm ravenous, when I know how a star becomes a void.

Somewhere in Essex County, Eric is in bed with his wife. I rinse my brushes and washed on coming in smoky metropolitan corn. The slope of his nose and the soft red light of the dash. I have a passable replication of Eric's face. My palette knife breaks into, the wind is almost 5:00 AM. I mix 13 shades of green, 5 shades of purple I don't need. I work with the paint, let the acrylic dry, and when it isn't right, I rework it again. The last time I painted, I was 21, the president was Black, I had more serotonin and I was less afraid of men. Raven Leilani: I've woken up from dreams where my hands are slick with oil and turpentine and lost the inspiration by the time I brushed my teeth. Tanzina: But the second reading was perfect. The first time she started reading, she flubbed the line a bit. I sat down with Raven Leilani to discuss Luster and asked if she would read a passage from the text. Instead, she writes Edie is human, stunningly, recognizably human. Edie is indeed a Black woman who fails a lot, but because Leilani does not ask us to adore or reject her, she wrote. Luster is the story of Edie, a Black woman in her 20s living in Brooklyn, who's making a bit of a mess as she seeks human connection, professional fulfillment, and artistic self-actualization. Tanzina Vega: ''I wanted to write a story about a Black woman who fails a lot.'' This is what Raven Leilani told The New York Times about her first novel.

Luster by Raven Leilani