[George W.] Bush's presidency was one of the great nightmares of my life to date.

I love the Russian absurdists - [Nikolai] Gogol,[Daniil] Kharms, and [Vladimir] Bulgakov. Even within the Russian experimentalists, there's a lineage of traditional narrative, conflict, and character development, which I find vital to my storytelling.

"Rocket Night" is my take on bullying culture. I think this is getting better, thanks to the anti-bullying work being done by my generation. But there's a way that coaches, teachers, parents, and administration officials can conspire against our students who need the most support.

I think the future is intrinsically linked with our universal human problems. In fact, it's these very problems, and how we deal with them, which will determine our future.

I'm a big fan of Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco's book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, where they visit what they call The Sacrifice Zones of America and report on the current state of our environmental calamity.

In the story ["The Pyramid and the Ass"] there's this war against the so-called Buddhist Terrorists. As we find out, they're not really terrorists at all, just good folks trying to liberate people from technology and fight against an American government/corporation trying to coopt our souls. The inherent racism and Buddhist-phobia in the story plays into the present demonizing of Islam - and of our loss of knowledge about the great, spiritual history of the Sufis, for example, or the cultural heritage from the middle east.

We're being asked to continually be "authentic" and "honest" with the world through social media. There's a demand to post our wedding pictures, baby pictures (only minutes after the birth), our relationship status, and our grief and joys on Facebook and Instagram. Similarly, we construct persona through dating apps and networking sites. All of these social media networks exert pressure on us to share the personal details of our lives with unknown masses. So the pressure on the characters in "Openness" isn't merely romantic, but public/social as well.