“Persimmons are pretty present in a lot of Asian cultures, as gifts that you give…” — Michelle Zauner

I read Lorrie Moore and Marilynne Robinson and Jhumpa Lahiri and Richard Ford, John Updike, Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Nabokov - all of whom I really fell in love with.

I never really wanted to be a journalist, honestly. I always wanted to be a writer, and I thought the only way to apply that interest was with journalism - when you're young and you want to be a writer, it seems like the most practical thing to do with those types of ambitions.

I've been lucky to come up when there's such a huge explosion of women, and especially Asian women, in music.

When I started doing press after college, I never got asked about my racial identity; I was asked more about being a girl in music.