Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novel's length, satisfies the reader.

Faulkner came from my region and taught me how you could write about a place.

Cool-Hand Luke' is one of my favorite movies.

I learnt how to hunt rattlesnakes with an eagle for Serena.

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

One thing's sure and nothing surer. The rich get richer and the poor get- children

Intensely moving but never sentimental, Academy Street is a profound meditation on what Faulkner called 'the human heart in conflict with itself'. In Tess Lohan, Mary Costello has created one of the most fully realized characters in contemporary fiction. What a marvel of a book.