1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Doll Palace put me in conversation with readers for the first time. it gave me a kick to keep going (tho i'd likely keep going anyway.) My forthcoming novel Hidden River actually feels closer to my first than others -- all have dealt with predation in some way, but these two really explore the set and setting (i.e. the perfect combo of socio-cultural-environmental factors) that prime the waters. Also, Hidden River is structured in flash-like sections, and it was flash that spurred my initial return to writing (years ago) in the first place.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
Ever since my first workshop in college, it's been fiction all the way. Careerwise, I started out writing for magazines, so I've done my share of nonfiction (although writing for men's magazines as a young 22 woman is its own form of fiction) but it was always the short story. I enjoy the ability to hide while telling the truth, to get out of my own way, to yield and recede in service to the story..
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It takes forever because I'm scattered and distracted and terribly disciplined. I work in fits and spurts. When I do sit down, I puke out a mess. So 90% of my writing is through revision.
4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I love this question. How do you know what container to lend to a particular narrative? I don't really know. I can share that the seedlings of this novel Hidden River were planted in a Kathy Fish flash workshop many years ago. I was just noodling around, playing. I tested the waters with a few flash pieces, a short story about this stuff. But there was more to say. It just kept at me, whispering in my ear. Then I realized the fractured flash structure actually made a ton of psychological sense for the internal makeup and movement of this project, so I doubled down on it.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
As a kid, I was terrified of public speaking. It's something I've written about, but ironically, it's become a part of my job, both as a former host of a reading series and now as magazine editor hosting events, and as someone who values those live connections with readers and listeners. It's all part of the larger conversation.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
How can we release from the grips of experiences that haunt us? This book concerns itself with the scars of private v. public trauma and the intimate and proximate experiences of both, so the ways in which our society is not only complicit but sanctioning, driving the predatory impulse is another central concern.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
The writer holds up a mirror and in so doing confronts and challenges the larger culture, but the only "role" of the writer as I see it is to grapple honestly with the deep mess of what it means to be human. Once the writing becomes moralistic or pedantic or cleanses itself of paradox, contradiction and nuance endemic to the human experience, I'm out.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I haven't worked with one though I often do work as one. As a developmental editor, my goal is to pave the paveway for deeper discovery and a fuller experience of the work. To that end, the experience of working with Jerry at Tortoise was so wonderful. The ways in which he engages closely and intimately with the text makes the writer feel seen. He's been a great partner: challenging the work where it needs to be challenged, and underscoring where it needs to be sharpened. I've also never had another editor riff hilariously and personally alongside the text in the margins, which solidifies the feeling, the hope that the work you're putting out, is fostering coversation.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
My thesis advisor in college, Meredith Steinbach, told me to sit up straight. Sure, I might have had crap posture. But she meant stop hedging or apologizing or shrinking but to take up space. Take what I had to say seriously. (not too seriously;) It's been some version of Own Your Shit ever since.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to non-fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
With my last book, LECH, I cheated on it with short stories so compulsively that I wound up pooping out an entire story collection (JERKS) alongside it. Which is to say, it all feeds the work. Go wherever the energy lies. I like to move between flash and longer projects, or stories and novels, flirting with the essay every now and then. Working cross genre can be energizing, especially when stuck in that seemingly interminable murky middle of a longer thing.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
When I am generating, I need to do it before the critical brain wakes and starts hollering that I suck. So if it doesn't get done first thing, it won't get done. At my most disciplined, I'm up before dawn. That hasn't been happening lately. But I do host these (free!) Ungodly Hour Writing Clubs periodically on zoom, which is a way to hold us all accountable as we show up for ourselves and our work.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I read. I pick up poems. I do morning pages. Maybe I'll play around with flash, my first love. I go for runs. I live life. I allow myself the space around the work. I have lonnnnnng fallow periods. I used to fight it or feel embarrassed by this, but I've come to accept, as my rhythm. It's okay. Plenty of writing happens while you're away from the page.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
My parents' house smells like old newspapers. My hometown smells like the inside of a WaWa.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Music. I was one of those kids who grew up with an ear glued to the radio, waiting for their song to come on to push play in the tape deck. I grew up in front of MTV, waiting in line outside the record store for tickets to concerts, attending live shows. When you get to my age you can't listen to a song without it triggering a specific memory, so it's that movement -- of being simultaneously in the present and in the past, that enveloping emotion, which is also akin to how I experience narrative, so I try to capture some of that time fluidity on the page.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Where to begin. Reading wise, A.M. Homes, Grace Paley, Roth, Malamud, Baldwin, Nabokov, Salinger, I mean so many of those formative writers turned me on to writing at a young age through their singular voices. Meg Wolitzer got me back on the writing horse after a long absence. Steve Almond has taught me more about craft than anyone. Peter Orner's work breaks me and puts me together again. I could go on and on.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
run a marathon. write another book.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Mental health. I'd probably go into clinical psych work or social work. Character work, how and why we do what we do, etc, it's all related to the work of a writer.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
The music.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I just finished The Tavern At the End of History by Morris Collins. I'll be his conversation partner for his NYC launch in February. It was fabulous. Brillant, challenging, gorgeously written and aching and wholly inventive.
As for films, I am hopelessly cinematically illiterate. It's actually a running joke between a friend of mine, a film critic, because I cannot keep up. That said, we just showed The Godfather to my kids when they were home from college over break. It was wonderful to revisit that classic, and to see it fresh through their eyes.
20 - What are you currently working on?
Sadly, I'm not. There is a new project calling me, but a lot of life and day job duties have been coming between me and the work right now and I haven't been touching it the way I want to be. I know, I know, discipline, habit, but I'm trying to be gentle with myself at the moment. This is my goal for 2026. To put down more words, one after the next.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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