It's really difficult to know what is the best way forward when you're not getting a lot of support - and probably most writers aren't getting enough support.

There are so many people who write really interesting work and try super hard and still don't get published.

When I was in college, I had a friend who was an artist and her theory was that all the best art in the world is funny/sad. That was her favorite genre. Funny/sad are probably my two favorite tones.

I don't make fun of my characters. I just like to laugh and I think people are funny and the world is funny.

The "we" voice is rare, and the communal impulse of the "we" is interesting to me.

I laugh when I'm writing. I feel like all my work is funny to me.

I'm really interested in the United States, what it means to be American - maybe because my father's an immigrant and my grandparents were immigrants, and also because I grew up so isolated from mainstream life, and it was such a total shock to leave the commune and, in a way, enter America for the first time when I was eleven - so I've always felt a little like an anthropologist - like, what is this strange place I find myself in, what are the rules here?