I live in East Hollywood which is sort of the end of the grit, butting up against Silverlake and Los Feliz which are the refined gentrified hipster zones, which I tend to appreciate when I need to get coffee, but I like living in the grit. I like feeling separate from that elitist civilization in some way, even though I don't really "belong" in the grit either. But I do spend more than half my time now in the desert which is really nice - to be off the grid, remembering that the world is bigger than the city streets.

Think about every time you've seen someone being objectified, abused, enslaved. We see it constantly on the TV, in magazines, on the Internet. We've become numb, so we do nothing. The accumulation of passivity might make reading about that exploitation uncomfortable. And sometimes when I'm writing, I think of it like this: "People seem to like garbage, so here is what garbage smells like..."

I've always really enjoyed sharing my work with others. I find it really hard if I don't think the work will exist outside of my own apartment.

I was really interested in piano and sort of discovered that I was a writer when I was about 13 and started writing. And it was my secret thing and my passion.

I was the first person in my family born in the United States. My mom is from Croatia, and my dad is from Iran. They met at music school in Belgium. I grew up as a pianist.

I love art because I feel that it's evidence of the great shared universal power. I like art that feels real, that cuts the bullshit.

I was feeling like I'd been born in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. I don't believe that anymore, not coincidentally two years after writing Eileen. I think that was the driving curiosity for me, thinking about real and fictional characters who could respond to that problem.