![]() ![]() Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? I have a novel due to my editor at Knopf soon. It’s the place where I’m most comfortable, and I find that I can do very long stretches when I’m comfortable. I have a desk in an office like a nice, normal person, but mostly I write in my bed. ![]() Suddenly, school felt not only meaningful but critical. At the same time, I was taking a survey course on William Faulkner and Toni Morrison and another course on absurdism and another on dark documentary films and another on poetry in translation. He had us reading Mary Gaitskill, Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor, Isaac Babel, Amy Hempel, Barry Hannah-writers whose sentences changed everything I thought I understood about language. Robert Nelsen, taught an intro to the short story course that set my brain on fire. A professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dr. I took AP classes and made decent grades, but it wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I felt a real sense of purpose. I was a lazy high school student without a lot of drive. Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.). ![]() Originally, I thought I wanted to write literary criticism, but in 2005 I applied to an MFA program with the idea that if I got in, I would change my life and start seriously writing fiction. Now I say what I want, but it took me a while to get here. I’m also a reformed shy person-for much of my life I felt I could only have an opinion on the page. ![]() I was an early and voracious reader, and even as a very young kid I loved telling stories. ![]()
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