In her forthcoming story collection, Thank You, Mr. Nixon, Jen charts the lives of characters caught between the home they know and the homeland they don’t.

When asked if stories come more easily now than they used to, Williams explodes with laughter. “No,” she says. “Oh no. No no no no no. They don’t come easily. No.”

The sort of realism that I’ve practiced in the past isn’t adequate to the times we’re in.

Being a former journalist, I discovered early on that fiction is a terrible way to break news. I think it’s also a hard way to practice politics. What fiction can do is more important than that: it’s such a shot of empathy.