Video Description: In “Transcendent Kingdom” Yaa Gyasi’s tells the story of Gifty, a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who is studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction in order to answer the central question “Are we going to be OK?” Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose and her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. In this interview the author discusses how the novel came to be.

• Use the video as you study specific elements of story writing such as plot, character, or theme. What insights into those concepts do students gain from the interview that they could use in their writing?
• Use the video in conjunction with a student activity that has students researching a particular author or a certain form or genre of writing. What insights do they gain from the interview they can use in their project?
• Use the video as inspiration/example for an activity that has your students interview each other on writing they have done. Use the video to show interview styles, types of questions, and how a finished interview video could be edited together.