Bulgaria is a fascinating, beautiful, difficult country, and I fell in love with it.

There are lots of big books that have gay characters - or, more commonly, a gay character - in secondary roles, but seldom are their lives, and especially their sexual lives, on center stage.

Even though I don't sing any more, singing was my first education in the arts, and it's clear to me that my training as a musician also shaped me as a writer.

I realized, that the life of a musician, even of a very lucky, very successful musician, wasn't really the life I wanted: I hate travel, I hate living out of suitcases, I hate the constant anxiety of being on stage.

I do think that the sense of being opposed to the present moment, that sense of the rub of history, invigorates the writing I find most exciting, and maybe precisely in being equally allegiant to an inward fineness of sensibility and an outward-facing rigor of protest or critique.

I guess I've done a lot of different kinds of performing at various times - opera singing, poetry reading, not least high school teaching - and I do enjoy it, at least sometimes. But I find it incredibly anxiety-producing and exhausting. Privacy is more congenial, and I go a little crazy if I can't spend a big chunk of every day, or almost every day, alone. Certainly I have to be alone to write.

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