Rachel Zucker speaks to poet, critic and professor Maggie Nelson about her new manuscript-in-progress, what it feels like to have written two unusually successful small press books, her (non) relationship to the internet, going on tour, book parties, what it’s like to be in the role of mentor and how that changes her relationship to her mentors, the sadistic edge of being a student, why she only writes about people she likes and hardly writes reviews, freedom and care, ways of demonstrating compassion, suspending reactivity, spiritual practice, midlife notions of emancipation, motherhood, how to develop methodologies to combat the anxiety of aging, how to honor various states (and ages) of knowing, whether libretory or emancipatory projects are a young person’s game, what is not transmittable across generations, disentanglement vs. entanglement, lucidity, and so much more.