You got one choice at the beginning but if you didn't choose right, things got narrow real quick.

I wouldn't mind being a track and field coach.

I live in Cullowhee, North Carolina. That's where I teach, at Western Carolina University. That region is where my family has lived for a long time and that region is my landscape.

I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read 'Crime and Punishment,' and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, 'cause it was the first time that I hadn't just entered a book, but a book had entered me.

It's a hard place this world can be. No wonder a baby cries coming in to it. Tears from the start

I usually do at least a dozen drafts and progressively make more-conscious decisions. Because I've always believed stories are closer to poems than novels, I spend a lot of time on the story's larger rhythms, such as sentence and paragraph length, placement of flashbacks and dialogue.

We had some good times at school. I didn't know how good those times were until I left, but I guess that's the way of it