Whenever I go to New York I try to soak up as much live music as I can, including as many nights at the opera as I can manage.

If my novel gets any attention in Bulgaria, it will be as a scandal: a book about a teacher at a famous school and his relationship with a prostitute. I doubt very much it will be evaluated on its merits as literature. If Bulgarian were the book's only language, that would be painful and limiting to me as a writer. Since my book also exists in English - where it isn't scandalous at all - I feel comfortable with the possibility of scandal.

I am a gay writer, absolutely. And in no way does that fact limit the reach or importance of what I write.

I do think that calling a book nonfiction affirms a kind of responsibility to an attempt at truth.

I went back to graduate school because I wanted to avoid being a professional, to try to piece together a life that would let me avoid the tenure race and full-time teaching.

I take pleasure as a reader in books that tease with a kind of urgency of the real, even if it's only a manufactured effect.

I'm drawn to fiction that hints at nonfiction, that blurs or seems to blur the boundaries between invention and autobiography.