I have a B.A. in Spanish, so briefly I thought that somebody might pay me to speak Spanish badly in another country, like Norway.

I do think that I have a more flexible view of the interactions between people, and between human and non-human protagonists, humans and their landscapes.

Pain collected into deep pockets and I was aware of this painbut somehow I could not seem to feel it. It was like a body-deafness.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

No, I don’t have to tell a soul about this, I promised myself. When you are a kid, you don’t know yet that a secret, like an animal, can evolve. Like an animal, a secret can develop a self-preserving intelligence. Shaglike, mute and thick, a knowledge with a fur: your secret.

My mom says I'm destined to be the sort of man who uses big words but pronounces them incorrectly.