In undergraduate classes, I often see writers who are still simply imitating. I mean, we all imitate - that's how we learn to speak or write in the first place - but they're writing a Dean Koontz novel or something.

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

Even in so-called realist or conventional writing there can be defamiliarization.

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

For me, the genders are an essential element of numbers and letters, not something that could be removed from them.

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

I started reading contemporary fiction in college or right after college. It wasn't as if I was steeped in experimental minimalism when I was twelve or something. I was reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond.