My characters' addictions are what makes them a bit stylized or "grotesque" - not just in appearance but through what drives them. Addiction is what ….

9/11 was just an enormous event in so many senses of the word - I mean, we are still in the "post-9/11 era" and perhaps will be forever? Sometimes it….

Time kept on and on like the cheapest toilet paper..

I always read the Latin American writers. I love so many of them: Gabriel García Márquez, José Donoso, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, Clarice L….

I love outsider stories. And I also like a lot of genre fiction, too. So I wanted to write a literary book that flirted with thriller and fantasy and….

It [9/11 tragedy] was the spectacle, what al-Qaeda gets its main power from - why their terrorism truly earns the word "acts." They are very theatric….

Maybe in writing about and through trauma it was therapeutic in a way, but it didn't feel like it at the time. I was in a very dark place, in lots of….

It [9/11 tragedy] has affected us on so many levels: economically, morally, spiritually, ethically. It's been all over the place. A new American iden….

I wanted to literalize the surreal here. Those are my favorite kinds of stories. I love when Gabriel García Márquez does that, for instance - it adds….

There are so many reasons, but a big reason is that the literary world is simply too white. When there are more professors of color being employed by….

The radical is simply being given more room in the mainstream. And I think young people - I'm talking about the very young millennials - they are bor….

Because for me to go fully experimental, it would turn into an artist book actually. And I'm not opposed to that. But I wanted to toy with the conven….

I just see in pop culture, music, visual art, books, etc., a real hunger for the new and different, and I think that's amazing. Satisfying this hunge….

There is less gray area there, less doubt. There is a security in being some thing all the way. Our culture, too, encourages this way of being - exag….

My interest, perhaps, came out of the trauma of being a young immigrant in this country and constantly feeling my "resident alien" status. I remember….

Addiction is a very compelling subject for literature - especially now that it's nearly impossible to come out of adult experience without some addic….

I love to read and teach experimental fiction but yes, neither this work nor my first novel is really that experimental. It uses some experimental te….

For me, every human is a little bit an exaggerated version of a real human - in most cases, they are versions of myself. I am someone deeply motivate….

I guess none of the sides of my hyphen are particularly subtle cultures. But perhaps there is also a sense that these characters are all parentless -….

I write first drafts feverishly fast, and then I spend years editing. It's not that sentence-by-sentence perfectionist technique some writers I admir….

The original Zal story by Ferdowsi gives a very moving account of an infant who had all odds against him - he was left to die in the wilderness and a….