So often we think of a wound or a loss as making a person feel more deeply, become a better person. But I don't think that always happens. I think it can constrict people's lives, especially if they don't push beyond it.

I am fascinated by tiny, incremental changes, almost imperceptible shifts in how people orient themselves in the world, because those are in some ways the most hopeful.

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.

Portland is a pretty magnificent place to live.

In my short stories there's a lot of focus on people successfully and not successfully responding to some sorts of discomforts or instabilities.

There's relief in white space for the reader.

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.