She was fluent in four languages and yet her fists against the rusted hood were the fullest articulation of her defeat.

My work often begins as little internal dares, wondering if I can pull something off. So I spent a few years drawing these stories together, trying to build a Pangea of what began as separate continents.

We tend to associate humor with lightheartedness, but really, it's a rhetorical mode than can be applied to any subject. It was through researching Chechnya that I came to understand this.

She wouldn't climb out of the bed for her sister, but she had climbed into a crater. She wouldn't cross a room, but she had crossed a continent.

You are mine. I recognize you. We twist our souls around each other's miseries. It is that which makes us family.

She was fluent in four languages and yet her fists against the rusted hood were the fullest articulation of her defeat.

She wanted to hold foreign syllables like mints on her tongue until they dissolved into fluency.