Sometimes you just feel like you could work forever on something and never know when it's done.

In my writing classes, I don't outlaw any genre writing.

Whether consciously or unconsciously, I felt myself drawn to writing a female character who was pretty flawed and not very virtuous or wonderful or attractive in these ways that throughout literary history we've come to expect female characters to be.

I felt sure about wanting to look at a person's life that had been limited or damaged, but not necessarily ennobled, by loss.

It just fascinates me, those private mechanisms that we use to make sense of the world - whether they have to do with the five senses or not. I think literature is one of the only kinds of art that truly lets us into that.

Another obligation that I have as a teacher is to make available to students a range of options and devices and approaches, rather than saying "well here's one way to do it and that's the only way that's good."

Portland is a pretty magnificent place to live.