When a colleague of mine had a notable New York Times book, I said, turn one of the chapters in the collection into a pitch for a novel and sell it to your publisher.

I feel too much. It's like being drummed to death from within. You know?

Genres are just bottles for the various boats. The boats matter to me.

I'm a writer of faith. I was raised Catholic, and I have a deeply Catholic imagination.

Beauty, you can find it here if you look hard enough.

I've left the Church - for many reasons that I've written about publicly - but it's still a large part of my identity, and I still have my faith, if not my Church.

Writers aren't born properly labeled so it is hard to know one when one appears.