An essay on insomnia.

On Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, screenwriters.

“My name is Jackie and I am addicted to waitressing.” An essay on waiting tables.

Paul Simon’s Graceland at 25.

The Paul Simon who, on a bus en route to New York City told his sleeping girlfriend that he was empty and aching and he didn’t know why, that Simon belongs to our parents. My generation may love him but he’s not ours. The Simon who is soft in the middle (or at least feels an affinity for men who happen to be), however, the one who reminds young women of money, who has been divorced and has a kid to prove it, and who has the means to catch a cab uptown and take it all the way downtown talking dispassionately while doing so about the comings and goings of breakdowns, that Simon belongs to us as much as he does to our folks because he is our folks.

On returning to Lagos after years abroad.

It is always understood when you leave Nigeria as a Nigerian that you will return at some point.

The intertwining histories of two men who defined twentieth century European style.

On existing as a girl in the boy’s club that is the world.

“What you say is very unclear, but I suppose you mean that since I find one of your remarks illogical and since I like your poems, that therefore I must like poems which are illogical. But I don’t find your poems either logical or illogical. If you want this interview to have the logic of a poem and not ordinary logic we will have to start over again.”

An 1992 interview with Martin Scorsese. On Goodfellas, “I figured to do it as if it was one long trailer, where you just propel the action and you get an exhilaration, a rush of the lifestyle.”

How a childhood gorilla-hunting safari and a string of sexless marriages led Alice Sheldon to become reclusive sci-fi legend James Tiptree Jr.