I’ve long been a fan of Sari Wilson’s 2016 novel Girl Through Glass, so when it came time to publish my own dance novel, Immersions—out this May from Tin House—I wanted to call Sari up to discuss bringing dance to the page.

There is no ballerina in Ballerina, and not much ballet. There is a creaky snow globe that cranks out that famous melancholic melody from Swan Lake, and a nightmarish rehearsal scene, where our heroine spectacularly wipes out of her fouetté turns while an impassive director intones, “Again. Again.” Yet Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) is not training to become a ballerina, but rather an assassin. She is learning the choreography of death.

Artists are vultures. We scavenge the past, taking what’s useful, and leaving the rest. I once heard a Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist sniff and say he’d never read George Eliot: Too boring. Not in his lineage.