To me, and I'm sure for other writers, too, characters come back and they relive again, but what about those characters who only live for a page or two? Or for five pages or 10 pages. I like to think they're still out there - still living - but for me they kind of die, too. It's kind of sad. I don't think about them anymore unless I give them life again.

As a professor I can't teach writing.

I try not to read my own books just because I would rather read somebody else.

Alexis Coe rescues a buried but extraordinarily telling episode from the 1890s that resonates in all sorts of ways with today. That in itself would be an accomplishment. But this is a book that is truly riveting, a narrative that gallops. Lizzy Borden eat your heart out. Here’s a real crime of passion. Or was it? I dare you to pick this one up and try, just try to put it down.

I've spent so many years living in one place and imaging another.

Actually, you’re not famous at all. Maybe you’ll get some traction after you’re dead?

What you can do with a short story that you can't do with a novel is punch someone in the gut, in the best of ways.