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

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

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.

I hope that the relationship of the title to the novel [ What Belongs To You] gets more complex with each section of the book: that maybe it begins by resonating with the question of prostitution - to what extent can a body be commodified, what exactly are you renting or purchasing when you pay for sex - and deepens over the course of the book to address larger questions of ownership and belonging.

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.

Being a high school teacher was wonderful, but unsustainable: I needed a way out.

Writing the novel felt so private to me! I think publishing a novel is quite public and exposing, and what's a little frightening to me right now is the fact that it feels so entirely opposed to the privacy that is writing.