It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the…

- Akhil Sharma

I tend to think that we are all pretty much alike. We all feel despair. We all have problems with relationships. We all become afraid. We all look at…

- Akhil Sharma

People often need to describe things quickly and so they use a shorthand. The problem is that after they use a label, they begin to think only in ter…

- Akhil Sharma

Seven years into writing a novel, I started to lose my mind. My thirty-seventh birthday had just come and gone, the end of 2008 was approaching, and …

- Akhil Sharma

As a teacher, I can help my students see what is working and not working. I can show them certain solutions. I can guide them to books that will serv…

- Akhil Sharma

Ernest Hemingway has been the most important influence on me as a writer. But at a certain point as a writer, I realized that he was writing about go…

- Akhil Sharma

For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.

- Akhil Sharma

Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.

- Akhil Sharma

When someone gets a success, and we, too, have done good work and sometimes even better work than the person who has just triumphed, we wonder: Why d…

- Akhil Sharma