Hey there, I'm Jason Gots and you're listening to Think Again a Big Think podcast.

Since 2008, Big Think has been gathering and sharing big ideas from some of the most creative

minds around. The Think Again podcast takes us out of our comfort zone, surprising our guests and me, your host,

with unexpected conversation starters from Big Thinks, huge interview archives, ideas that we didn't necessarily come here prepared to discuss.

My guest today, and I'm really, really happy she's here, is Jacqueline Woodson.

She has written many, many wonderful books and

poems for children and young adults and adults as well, and has won the Coretta Scott King Award,

the Newberry Award, the Caldecott, the Poetry Foundation, and the National Book Awards and a

whole bunch of other awards that I'm not going to list here in the interest of time. Her new book,

Another Brooklyn, is her first adult novel in 20 years. Welcome to think again, Jacqueline. Oh, thanks for having me, Jason. Oh, thanks so much for being here. I'm so excited. Okay, so I guess, you know, I'm going to start with a question that you've probably been asked already on this book tour, but, like, why an adult novel now and like how is it, you know,

is it very different for you going into that space as a writer? And have you been asked that

question 30 times already? And, you know, I haven't. I haven't. This is, you know, I'm early

out on the tour. So no, you're an original.

That's thus far.

I, after the National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming,

and after writing that memoir and in the writing of it,

realizing where so many of my other books came from, I decided I needed to take a step

back from children and young adult literature and really do something different and outside

of my comfort zone.

So another Brooklyn was born.

And it is different writing for adults because of the way you're

allowed to play with time and go way into the future, way back into the past, in the present,

...