Rarely is the pain of losing someone expressed with such directness, energy, and, yes, humor. The grief in Evan Kuhlman'sWolf Boyis palpable, and so is the flawed, honest humanity of his characters. Here is real loss and somehow, real catharsis.

Everybody, doesn't matter who you are, escapes time. And for me, nothing is stranger than the thought that kids are just kids. Nobody is just anything. Whether you are eight or eighty, you've got your own unique take on how weird this world is.

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

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

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'm pretty tight - I rewrite, in some cases, 70 to 80 times before I show it to people.

Lot of stories in deceit, how characters deceive other people, but most of all, I think, how they deceive themselves. We're not as tricky as we think we are.