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.

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 realized that there was an intellectual content in music, a kind of thinking, that I would never be able to hear.

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

I felt a lot of ambivalence about going back to graduate school for a second MFA. The impulse was really the opposite from what it had been more than a decade before: I wanted to interrupt a career.

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'm not sure I can articulate any principles behind the decisions about what to cut and what to keep.