This is Pamela Paul, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and host of our weekly podcast

inside the New York Times Book Review.

This week, I interviewed Colson Whitehead about his new novel, The Underground Railroad.

Here's a clip from a longer conversation that'll go up as part of our next podcast.

To hear the full interview in its live, you can subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play

or go to nytimest.com slash books.

Here's the clip.

Who's it hard to be in this world creatively?

You know, I don't know how long you worked on it, but every day to be thinking about this?

Before I started writing, when I had the characters, I knew who Cori was and what I'd have

to do to her and her friends.

Yeah, I mean, I felt terrified and the more I researched what I did, I was like, well,

she's going to enjoy a lot of abuse before she hits the road.

It's just a fact of being 14-year-old on a plantation.

So that was depressing and horrible.

And then, you know, I thought of my nameless ancestors.

You know, I don't, after 100 years, the record of my family sort of dies out.

So what did they, what state would they in and what kind of place were they, how'd they

come here?

Once I got into the writing of it, I had that sort of distance to shape the material,

you know, the sort of the story.

At the end of the day, I could knock off and not dwell upon it.

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