Even while I was working on the novel I would also write short stories as relief, just to be in a wieldier world that could negotiated more easily and more quickly. In the novel, I even changed the narrator from a man to a woman.

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

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.

Part of being a writer is feeling that constant dissatisfaction, thinking about what else you could do, and also knowing when it's time to leave a project.

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

If a synesthetic person says the letter a is green, it can't ever be anything but green.

Portland is a pretty magnificent place to live.