We're all entitled to our superstitions.

At the end of the day, it's about the reader's attachment to and belief in the magical elements that make or break magical realism.

The best fiction stays with you and changes you.

My road to publishing actually came through a colleague who connected me to my agent, and the faculty at Cornell was very supportive.

A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.

In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.