The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

Each source that I read, I would look through the bibliography and the footnotes, and use that as a map for the next thing I would read.

I have lived for a long time inside a series of coincidences that most people would find implausible in a novel.

The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

The idea of a talent that was bigger than an artist's ability to choose to use it, that would dictate the artist's life more than the artist could dictate, was interesting to me.

PhD, MFA, self-taught - the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.

I grew up treating a life as a writer as a career in letters, one devoted to many kinds of writing. And so it seemed normal to study both fiction writing and the literary essay as an undergrad.