At 16, I dropped out of school and spent five years working as a bicycle mechanic and volunteering in a Trauma Centre before ultimately deciding to go to university.

At 16, I dropped out of school and spent five years working as a bicycle mechanic and volunteering in a Trauma Centre before ultimately deciding to go to university.

My first published novel, American Rust, took three and a half years of full-time work to write. But I wrote two apprentice novels before that.

No land was ever acquired honestly in the history of the earth.

Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live.

You ought to be able to grow up in a place and not have to get the hell out of it when you turn eighteen.

When I finish a book, I get extremely restless; I have to aggressively find ways to occupy myself; going off into the woods alone, doing things that are physically or mentally demanding to keep myself busy until the next big idea comes.