My Grandma Sue lived alone in the middle of a rice field in southern Missouri. The electricity would flicker if the wind blew too hard and the water smelled like lead. She stole all her dad’s savings and ran away…
I submitted something due tomorrow 20 minutes ago. I feel incredibly ahead of the game. I’m usually sweating it until one minute before the deadline. It only took four loads of laundry and multiple checks of social media to focus…
I decided to write a historical novel because I wanted to get completely out of my day-to-day life and contemporary everything—terrorism, the failure of capitalism, modern marriage, childhood and adolescence, politics, racism, climate change, you name it. Did I have…
This summer I got to travel around Asia for two months with a dear old friend—a novelist and playwright, and my best reader. For weeks we’d looked forward to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the massive Hindu temple complex dedicated to…
This spring I nearly declared a moratorium on violent fiction after reading three savage novels: The Orphan Master’s Son, The Sympathizer and A Little Life. Afterward life felt dirty. Basta! After all, the news is horrific: a toddler refugee washes…
My big deadline this week entailed completing and submitting my author questionnaire. In this document, you outline some basic facts, like your name (important), publishing and media contacts (most important, which is sad, because I have none), and digital outreach…