New York Times Bestselling novelist Brit Bennett (The Mothers) has had a whirlwind couple of years. After finishing her M.F.A. at the University of Michigan, the California native (and Stanford grad) found herself at loose ends as she applied for teaching positions and continued working on the novel she’d started back in high school. Then she wrote an essay about racism for the website Jezebel that introduced her as a powerful and necessary new voice. In this candid interview, Bennett talks about her early education as a writer, what it’s like to write a screenplay for Kerry Washington and why she believes “all art is inherently political.”