A stellar, fully-realized collection of stories... grounded, wonderfully, in the river valleys of western Maine. You come away not only understanding a place but the soul of its people.

There's a great Anton Chekhov quote. He says, "The Russian loves recalling life, but he does not love living." That scene has always been something that I have held dear. When something happens, the first thing you want to do is tell it. That's almost more exciting. It's almost simultaneous with the experience; you are already telling something incredible while it's happening. The stories that everybody carries around and repeats, I am really interested in that.

I think anything we do - eating, walking down the street, online shopping - gives you another perspective on writing stories.

My characters tend to be people who are looking back on a life lived, their joys, their regrets.

A collection, for me, is a book of very diverse stories that somehow speak to each other, across wide geography, across time, years, decades.

People have to follow their own strangeness. The minute they start making their own vision of the world flattened out so everyone can read it, they lose. I encourage people to be as awkward and odd on the page to capture their own way of seeing the world and not trying to see the world for other people.

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