In this cultural moment, many of us are feeling inadequate to solve societal problems - fascism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, the list goes on - and are unsure of how individuals can affect real change. We don't know what effect we will have on the current political climate as we strive to effect change. All large historical decision draw from a sea of smaller decisions. One never knows what will make the difference in the long run.

Monstress is an exhilarating rollercoaster of a book. Deeply funny, heartbreaking, hopeful, philosophical, bawdy, and wise, Lysley Tenorio’s stories, written from the underbelly of the American Dream, present one brilliant portrait after another.

Valerie Martin was my mentor in college and she liked fiction that said something. That made it essential to have something to say. This seems obvious, but it's not. And she's taken on a wide range of subject matter: each book poses new challenges, and that's something I think about when I'm embarking on a project.

In this cultural moment, many of us are feeling inadequate to solve societal problems - fascism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, the list goes on - and are unsure of how individuals can affect real change. We don't know what effect we will have on the current political climate as we strive to effect change. All large historical decision draw from a sea of smaller decisions. One never knows what will make the difference in the long run.

In some ways, Valiant Gentlemen grows out of Tales of the New World, my collection of short stories about explorers who lived "great" lives, but whose experience of it was in the same register as all our lives are - we feel the same extent of human emotion regardless of how exceptional our actions are: nothing is more exceptional than one's own life.

What does literature do for me? I think I solve problems in my writing. They may be my problems, but perhaps others share them, and in the process of working these through, I hope to entertain.

Roger Casement is an intriguing figure - humanitarian, Irish revolutionary, gay - and much had and would be written about him, there was something about his character as a conflicted man, an Irish Protestant who spent much of his time representing England in different African nations, a gay man who, true to the times, kept his sexual orientation to himself, that kept playing in my head. I read on and around him, but a historical figure is not a story - it's not even a character - so my story, the one that I would develop into Valiant Gentlemen, had yet to reveal itself.