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."

Giving the reader the space to move around and be active, and encourage their active response is important to me. That will connect the reader more to the text.

There's always something else to work on and different solutions to these problems in the next thing. We each have a certain set of obsessions which we each cycle through.

Portland is a pretty magnificent place to live.

When I watch students make particular decisions about language, structure, and form, it sharpens my own thinking and my own development as a writer.

I'm always interested in encountering people who are synesthetic and seeing how they experience things.

I find myself writing protagonists who do feel pretty cut off from others but who want to make connections and aren't very good at it.