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James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” has been meaningful for “generations of queer people (including for me),” says the novelist, who argues for “less facile” literary conversations. His new book is “Small Rain.”

To write “Exhibit,” the queer novelist says she had to pretend that no one would read it. “By writing things I’m afraid of saying, I might stand a chance of voicing what I, too, really need and long to see in words.”

His essay warning that dictatorship was a real threat went viral, which prompted the early release of “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again.” To relax, he reads the sports pages.

“The material that he uses for the songs is powerfully moving, involving his own personal losses,” the 88-year-old poet says. Also name-checked in “So What”: an Italian motorcycle magnate.

But a full calendar meant carving out time for “Theft,” his new book and first since winning the prize.

His new novel is titled after Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons,” he says, “given the theme of incomprehension between generations in that book.”

“The first condition is silence,” says the 2022 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, whose most recent book is “The Young Man.” “The when and where do not matter.”

Some familiar San Franciscans turn up in the British countryside in “Mona of the Manor,” which the author vows is the 10th, and last, in the series: “That has a nice symmetry.”

“I love it when I don’t have any plans the next day and end up reading until daybreak because I can’t sleep,” says the author, whose new novel is “The Premonition.” “It’s the best feeling.”

“If I come across ‘Dad’ or ‘Mommy,’ I’m out,” says the former U.S. poet laureate. “‘Grandma’ gets a pass.” His new collection is “Water, Water.”