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….

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….

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….

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….

Being unique seems more desirable than ever. People are exhausted by clichés, by platitudes, by mass-produced realities, by what's been done and done….

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….

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….

The Illusionist is the storyteller in so many ways. Symbols become his obsession. It's not simply about creating plot - one must also grapple with th….

I write very raw, ugly, illiterate first drafts very quickly (novels are always in first draft in under a year) and then I spend years and years fine….

I both loved and hated South Pasadena. On the one hand, it was so diverse - all my closest friends were immigrants or had immigrant parents. On the o….

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….

Be careful what you wish for, I guess. I believe - this will sound bloated, but I believe it - that true art, the potent stuff, can take the world do….

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

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….

In South Pasadena, artists were around but invisible somehow. Even though it was just a fifteen-minute drive from Downtown LA, it felt worlds apart. ….

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

But literature, I discovered, can also save you. Truly. Over the cliché and through the truth, it can save..

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 -….

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….