No matter the genre or category, it’s not easy to innovate in a hits-driven industry, especially when books are bought and sold on the idea that they are similar to other books that have performed well. To be innovative, writers should tap into what is original about themselves specifically (“diversity”), and then figure out a way to channel that through their work. I’m a fan of the writers who (after thorough research) say “I didn’t find a book like this out there, so I wrote it.” Do that.

While the project itself is a major factor, the biggest quality I look for when deciding to represent is found within the writer. I want to work with writers as partners, in a situation where we are both bringing something solid and unique to the table (including but not limited to our skills and experience). I work with a lot of nonfiction where platform is especially important, and I’m drawn to writers who are already executing other types of projects and spreading the word about their work. I also hope to see a writer who is active in some type of community (in real life or on the Internet).

Before signing a new client, I typically discuss some of the general edits I’d have in mind to make sure the writer and I are on the same page. Then we’d talk further about those edits and brainstorm some possible directions, I’d send over an editorial letter and page notes, and we may have another chat before the client dives into the revision stage. There may end up being a couple of edit rounds, but pushing my clients to do their best work is part of what I love about this gig. With nonfiction, it’s more about the nuts and bolts of the proposal and getting the sample chapters looking good. This does tend to vary on a client-by-client basis, depending on the working style of the client and how much development of the project is needed.

One of the best parts of this whole agenting thing is my ability to email a person I notice on Twitter or Instagram and be like “You should do a book.” I love the spark it ignites and I’ve signed many of my clients this way. It’s amazing when, months later, a client will mention that they’ve printed out my original introductory email and put it in their scrapbook. I’ve gone back to those emails myself a few times and it’s fascinating to see how far they’ve come and how much they’ve grown. I’m always so impressed and ultimately that’s what I’m looking for in a client!

Yes, they very much did. Even now, when I re-read some sections of the book, I’m amazed at how far people will go to keep their dreams alive or hold onto the dream lives they have. I suppose that’s just part of being flawed humans—we make choices which we think will benefit us in the short-term, forgetting that the choices might come back to haunt us, and all four of the main characters have to deal with that.

I mostly relied on my experience of having lived in New York City for years as an immigrant from Cameroon—Jende and Neni are from my hometown of Limbe, Cameroon, and they live in a Harlem neighborhood where I used to live. Much of their story, however, was inspired by other immigrants I’d met and with whom I’d discussed the joys and woes of an American immigrant experience.

As for Clark and Cindy, I mined the brief encounters I’d had with people who seemed to be from their world, as well as conversations I had in parks with nannies and housekeepers who worked for people like them. To better understand what went on at Lehman Brothers, I read excerpts of the report prepared by the court-appointed examiner who investigated the firm’s collapse.

I write at the dinning table in my living room. There really isn’t much to it—a wooden table in a typical far-from-spacious New York City living room.

I generally sit at my dinning table and write whatever I’ve been inspired to write. With Behold the Dreamers, I’d been inspired to write a story about the relationship between a Wall Street executive and his chauffeur and I began doing so the day I got the inspiration, learning everything I needed to know about the characters along the way. As for quirks, the only place I’ve been able to write in the past five years is at my dinning table, though I do fantasize about someday having a “writerly” writing space.

Before my agent sold my novel, I’d been unemployed for several years so going through the publishing process felt like finally having a “job,” and a really wonderful job at that.

The biggest challenge I’ve encountered is how incredibly difficult it is to write a novel, especially a first novel. I’m still in awe of how difficult it was—I’d never considered it would demand so much of me physically, mentally, and emotionally. And yet, given the chance, I’d do it again.

Keep writing. It was the advice given to me by agents who saw potential in my earlier work but rejected me so I could become better. The rejections hurt, but the advice was invaluable.

It has definitely made me slow down. When I’ve put a lot of work into a story, my impulse is to send it off as soon as I’ve completed it, rather than to let it sit for a few days (or even weeks). Working at magazines has helped me to control this impulse and wait until a story is the best I can possibly make it before submitting. This is not easy for me—I’m a very impatient person. But I also know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a rushed story. I read a lot of pieces in slush that have great elements but don’t feel entirely finished. Maybe there’s a fascinating premise, for example, but there’s no ending; or the dialogue is spot-on, but the characters need a little bit more fleshing out. The writer might have talent but the story just isn’t there, and I have to decline the piece. While slowing down means that I’m not churning out stories as quickly as I was before working at a magazine, I’m ultimately happier and more confident about the work I’m producing.

There’s also a lot to learn about the craft of writing from reading the work of others, especially unpublished work. It’s illuminating in a different way than reading the published work of accomplished writers can be. When you read a piece before an editor has had a chance to polish it, you notice where the writer succeeds and can also identify their missteps. You become more critical of your own work, and in turn become a better self-editor. You also discover what your tastes are. I highly recommend spending a couple of months volunteering as a reader for a magazine, if you have the time.

Let me preface this by saying that I’ve been in this industry for under a decade. However, I have noticed that number literary magazines, small and large, are diversifying and becoming not just showcases for talent but incubators. Some are offering classes, both in person and online. Some, like Tin House, One Story, and Slice, offer multi-day writing conferences. A Public Space offers a writing residency in their office as part of their fellowship program. These classes, conferences, and fellowships are put in place partly to generate income and/or increase the visibility of the journal, but they also build a community of writers. Oftentimes they provide more affordable alternatives to MFA programs and are useful places for writers who may also work full-time jobs to meet and work with editors and industry professionals. It’s also a great way for magazines to discover new talent.

Another change I’ve observed is that more publications are actively seeking out work by marginalized voices (with some, like The Offing and Apogee Journal, making this part of their mission statements). There’s been some incisive critique and discussion around equity in publishing and I think that literary magazines and their editors are in many ways at the forefront of creating this change, since they can be instrumental in launching a writer’s career. I’m hoping that we’re heading in a direction where diversity on mastheads and in tables of contents is the norm, but I also think that there is a lot of work that remains to be done.

The most important thing is to read the magazine you plan on submitting to, and if you really love it, show your support by subscribing.

It’s also important to remember that rejection is a huge part of the writing life. It can be incredibly demoralizing to put time and energy into writing a piece only to have it turned down over and over and over again. I don’t care how many times this or that famous writer was rejected, it still stings to get that email informing me that the story I just poured my heart into was “not quite right for us at this time.” However, a rejection letter is not necessarily a closed door. Hannah Tinti, the Editor-in-Chief at One Story, once said that a rejection letter is the beginning of a relationship with an editor or literary magazine, which I think is a great way to look at the whole submission process. Take the personalized or encouraging rejections seriously—if you get a letter asking to see more work, that’s something to be proud of, and to follow up on.

Some new writers think that they won’t have a chance at publication in a magazine unless they’ve been published elsewhere, when many magazines are actually eager to publish writers who have never published or who have only placed their work in a few small magazines. Don’t be afraid to mention that you’ve never been published in your cover letter.

Definitely Charles, the patriarch of the Wang family. The first sentence of the book, “Charles Wang was mad at America,” came to me and I immediately knew who he was—I knew that he was brash and angry and funny, that he was larger-than-life and unapologetic about his desires. I wrote the first chapter, which is essentially a setup of the novel in the form of an internal rant from his POV, pretty much all in one go, and the momentum of his voice carried me through the outlining of the book.

I was very lucky to have worked at Goodreads for a couple of years before I sold The Wangs, so I had a pretty good idea of the process. I’d say that I was pleasantly surprised more than anything else. For example, I was very happy that my publisher really listened to my feedback on the book cover—which I love!—because I’ve definitely heard sad stories about authors who ended up hating their covers.

It’s a little too early to answer this question, I think. I’m sure that in November or December I’ll realize all the things that I should have done differently! One thing that I’m glad I did is reach out to friends and acquaintances who have recently published books to ask for their advice and to get the occasional reality check. That’s been enormously helpful!

I didn’t get an MFA, but I did take several fiction workshops in college and tried to write short stories, but I never truly enjoyed writing fiction until I started writing a novel. The Wangs is my first piece of fiction that will be published. It wasn’t hard to shift from journalism to fiction, but I definitely had to make a choice between the two. I kept supporting myself as a journalist, but I had to make a decision not to pursue serious, long-form journalism and to try fiction instead. There are people out there with much more mental stamina who can do both, but I found it too difficult!

Nope! There’s a lot of emotional truth in this book, but none of it is based on events from my own life! But it would be equally as true to say that every single thing that one of my characters sees or thinks or feels is based on something that I’ve experienced or heard about.

A set of Wang family bobbleheads that will sit on your dashboard and accompany you on road trips? A vintage 2008 private label champagne? A line of cosmetics? There are so many possibilities! My top choice, though, would probably be a recreation of the Tyvek jackets that Saina made for her Art Basel Miami stunt—that would be amazing.

I tried out a number of jobs before I became an editor (I worked as a fundraiser for The Nation, the ACLU of Southern California and the Liberty Hill Foundation in Los Angeles) but the one constant in my life has been my deep interest in reading to better understand the world. I think this is why I became an editor working in nonfiction.

A book has to signal clearly and profoundly on two fronts: the author’s knowledge of her subject, and the author’s point of view on that subject. If a book has both of those elements, is written with precision but also a searching intelligence and imagination, and is also about a subject for which I have some interest/curiosity/knowledge, then I will be interested. For this reason, I try to stay interested in a broad array of subjects, admittedly a pretty easy thing to do.

Knowing when to stop editing has to be one of the hardest—if not the hardest—parts of the job. In some ways, editors are the guardians of the book in its most ideal form. Our job is to hold a standard in our minds and find ways to help the books we edit reach that place. When you as an editor are working very hard and closely with an author, sometimes it is easy to fall victim to mission creep: you can take a book from point A to point R and not realize that you should have gone all the way to point Z. I try to always maintain perspective on how far an author has come without forgetting how far she still has to go. Getting a grip on your own standards, and putting in the work required to maintain and even advance them, is a part of being an editor and in some ways the most interesting part.

There is so much riding on a first book—it really is a terrifying leap into the dark. So preparation is the best policy—whether that is dogged reporting, long and hard thinking or just a very clear sense of what you want to do and how you want to do it. But if I could give any prospective author advice it would be: read a lot. Figure out how the authors who you love perform the tricks that make you love them. And, as much as this is possible, find a way to reproduce that magic yourself, not in an imitative way but in an inspired and generous way. Devote yourself to the highest form of entertainment, which I consider to be the creation of worlds vast and beautiful enough to get lost in.

While the industry has changed a ton, how I work with my clients has, happily, been relatively consistent. It’s true that working with authors who do a hybrid of self-publishing and traditional publishing isn’t something I would have considered a decade ago. And I answer more questions about social media than I did before. At the same time, though, the essence of the job hasn’t changed at all: I sign on people whose work I find extraordinary, I work with them editorially, and I look for opportunities for them to maximize their readership and their earnings while continuing to improve and grow as authors.

I’m best known for doing YA, and I’m very actively seeking in that category. But I would also really love to see literary fiction and narrative nonfiction in the areas of history, pop culture, and current events. A book like Matthew Desmond’s EVICTED or Yaa Gyasi’s THE HOMEGOING would be a dream for me right now. I’m also very open to middle grade, which some people don’t think of me for. I love a big-hearted adventure, and a sense of humor goes a long way for me.

I think writers need to remember that they’re very much in the drivers’ seat. No, agents aren’t lacking options for writers—we all see a ton of material. But once we want to work with you, we’re actually working FOR you. Keep that in mind and be willing to ask questions like “How long does it take for you to get back to your clients?” or “What happens if my first book doesn’t sell?” I’m always happy to answer these questions because I know what a partnership the agent/client relationship is. And I hear horror stories about people’s experiences with some other agents sometimes. So, yeah: bottom line? Remember you can push, and ask questions accordingly.

With fiction, in particular, I don’t know that I believe it’s ultimately as important as some publishers seem to. Yes, it can pay to be engaged. But I’d rather see people not use these platforms at all rather than use them badly. My advice is to test different platforms and see what you respond to. If you love something image based, give Instagram or Tumblr a whirl. If you like to be pithy, try Twitter. See what feels natural. If it’s a chore to use? Skip it.

Whatever you do, think about who your readership is and try not to alienate them—I’m not saying not to be political or socially conscious or have strong opinions. But also think about why people are following you, and give them what they’re there for. As authors, people will want you to talk about books and writing and process—make sure you’re hitting subjects often enough to keep your readers involved. It can be tough (especially in an election cycle) and it’s something I know I personally struggle with. It’s just a good thing to try to keep in mind.

I work with debut authors all the time and still find more than half of my clients in the slush pile. And things can go so many different ways with debut authors. For one, I submitted her book on a Friday and closed a pre-empt deal on Monday. For another, I submitted to about 40 editors and got no traction, then sold the book three years later when the assistant of one of those editors started acquiring projects and still remembered that submission and having loved the book.

In other cases, first books don’t sell, and then I’ve worked on a new manuscript closely with the author. For one, the first manuscript I submitted didn’t place. The second I sent out ended up being my biggest first deal ever. For another, it took three tries and fails before we finally landed on the book that convinced an editor to take a chance—and she now has a third book published.

Sometimes it happens nearly overnight. Others, it’s a longer road. It’s why I’m always very wary of agents promising the world when they offer representation, because you can’t REALLY know for sure how things will work out. All I can ever offer are my best efforts. Happily, while it can take differing amounts of time, more often than not, it really works out.

I try to skim each query letter the day or day after it comes in, if possible. (Sometimes that can be wishful thinking amongst everything else…but I do my best!) I’ll mark those that look like they’re especially up my alley, and I’ll know to prioritize, and pay extra attention when I go back to those letters and sample pages. Once I take a closer look, I’ll request a partial or full manuscript if I feel like the project might be a fit and I’d like to see more. In the end, I do read all query letters, and even if a project isn’t right for me, at times I’ll refer the writer to a colleague who might be a better match.

The biggest, of course, is submitting an unfinished manuscript or proposal. Aside from that, I don’t know if I’d say red flags, exactly. But I do think it’s important to have readers you can trust, and to have those best readers agree that noticeable plot and pacing problems have been addressed, for example. What you submit to agents, and then what’s submitted to editors, should be the strongest material you have. This is different if an agent or editor approaches you and asks to see your work-in-progress, but otherwise your book should be at the point where you don’t know what to do next, and your readers don’t know what else you can do. And this isn’t to say that the agent won’t then have editorial thoughts—that’s very likely, and a good thing to get fresh comments! But you shouldn’t send something in if you know that significant work needs to be done, and you’re rushing to get the writing out in the world, even though you know it deserves more time.

In the writing workshops I was in, I remember more than one professor saying the best resource you can leave a writing program with is a group of ideal readers. Sometimes you’re lucky enough to have three or four ideal readers.  If you have one ideal reader, you’re still lucky. Whether you come from a background that includes organized workshops or not, find that ideal reader, whoever he or she may be. That ideal reader isn’t the person who says the manuscript is great every step of the way—it’s the person who always appreciates what you’re trying to do, but knows when you’re doing it and calls you out when you’re not. She knows how you might go about solving the problems you have. He has edits that can help you take your manuscript to the next level.

On a completely different note, once you get to the query stage, the best advice I can give is this: do research. It’s exciting that a draft is ready to go out to agents, but it’s so, so important to make sure you’re reading guidelines on agency websites and/or Publishers Marketplace profiles to be sure you’re not submitting to more than one agent at an agency, for example, or anything else that’s specified as being a “please don’t.” Make sure you’re submitting to an agent who handles your project’s genre. Be sure to look up how to write a query letter. Practice. Have your readers read that, too.

Pitch your book in a way that would make you and your friends want to buy it at a store. Follow the sample page guidelines, or any other agent guidelines that might differ per agency. Personalized and directed query letters really help—but more importantly, why do you want to work with that agent and agency, specifically? It’s so important to have the right advocate and career partner. It’s in your best interest to reach out to agents who seem like they’ll be a good fit for your current project, but also your body of work in general. You want to end up with someone who will support you every step of the way, and champion your work wholeheartedly as your career progresses.

It’s a little bit case-by-case, honestly! But if I fall in love with a submission, I generally ask to set up a call with the author. Assuming we’re on the same page, I’d sign the writer as a client and we’d move on to editorial work. If I get a submission that’s full of merit, and the writing is wonderful, but I’m not completely sure if we’re a match or that our visions align, or there’s a lot of editorial work to be done, then I’ll request revisions first.

The line between what makes something young adult and what makes it adult is very clear. If it is from an adult perspective in any way, even if it is an adult perspective looking back on a childhood moment, then it is not Young Adult. The agents I work with know the difference and know what I am looking for, so I very rarely run into a submission that straddles the line. If it does, I send it back. My imprint publishes true Young Adult.

Again, the line between what makes something Adult vs. Young Adult is very clear. Adults may read Young Adult, but that doesn’t make it any less Young Adult, just as when teens read Adult novels, that doesn’t make it any less an Adult novel.

This is a hard question to answer as each project is different, but generally you can determine an audience based upon market trends vs. market saturation. What’s working in other mediums like TV, movies, fashion, et al. can be a determining factor. But ultimately, I look for writing that isn’t just good, but outstanding, compelling, and timeless. There’s always a market for something that is truly good and standout.

Trends do play a role, or in the case of vampires or other well-worn literary tropes, themes, or genres, I consider market saturation and reader fatigue. If I’m going to consider publishing a vampire or dystopian novel, there will have to be something exceptional and distinct about it that will rise above the saturation or fatigue. The passage of time also helps.

These days everyone has the ability to build a platform. It takes hard work and dedication, but between Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Youtube, etc., a debut author can work towards building an audience before his or her book is even published. Building a social media presence is much more important (and frankly imperative) for non-fiction. It’s the first place agents and editors look to determine what kind of following an author has, or what makes him or her an expert.

A platform can also take the form of a well trafficked website or blog posts that have gone viral or even guest posts on some of the bigger sites. Basically, you can’t write in a bubble. Even for fiction, agents want to see that authors are out there making connections, are part of organizations relevant to their work, and are tapped into the audience that will buy their book.

Building a “platform” can take as much hard work as writing a proposal or a manuscript. It’s a slow and strategic build. A few ways to accomplish this are: aligning yourself with people who have an existing audience (cross promoting), guest posting on blogs, placing an essay in a long lead magazine/blog/newspaper, or becoming part of an organization that will send your info to its members. A platform is considerably more important for non-fiction than fiction.

A lot of people throw around the word platform. Platform, in the most basic sense, is something that will elevate your book (put it on a platform) above all the rest when someone sees it in a bookstore. What makes you the expert to write a book? How will you reach an audience in a crowded market? A substantial social media presence definitely helps this and constitutes as a platform. Someone who has been able to grow a sizable audience through social media is presumed to be able to reach a wide audience when their book comes out (although the two don’t always correlate). An essay or a post that has gone viral can also constitute a platform—if you write an essay on the topic your book is about and it’s the #1 shared article or lands on a prominent website, that could be enough. It all comes down to the material you’re selling.

I find clients through referrals, existing clients, editors, conferences, reading articles, coming up with the ideas and reaching out to potential authors, social media, TV—basically anywhere and everywhere.

I have fun stories about how no one wanted a particular book that then went on to make millions, or books that I’ve passed on that have gone on to be huge bestsellers. I always remind people that the industry is so subjective. That’s the beauty of it.

To be honest, I often find that this is one of the hardest parts of the job. Sometimes I might love something, but I don’t see a way to publish it so that it will find a large audience. And other times, I receive a submission from someone with a terrific platform, but the book idea is not there yet or the voice isn’t coming through on the page. My job as an editor is to find the sweet spot between sale-ability and quality. I wouldn’t say that one drives the other — I’m always looking for both — and the best part of my job is when I find that project that I think has terrific sales potential and is a worthy and necessary piece of writing.  If I’m passionate about a project due to its artistic merit, I then need to think about how to position it in the market. Are there comparable books that have sold well? Who is the readership for the book? Should we publish it in hardcover or trade paperback? What should the cover look like?  If I don’t have good answers to these questions, that usually means I don’t have a strong vision for how to publish the book, and therefore should probably not pursue it.

I don’t think I’ve ever bought a project that was absolutely perfect. That said, I do think it’s become harder to buy fiction when the novel needs a lot of editorial work. That’s because most publishers are less willing to take big bets on novels that require a major leap of faith, editorially speaking. If the novel’s brilliance is not shining through strongly enough in the original submission, there is less willingness to move ahead with it. But again, it’s on the editor’s shoulders to convince their publishing house that they have a strong vision for a project and with the right editorial work, they’d be able to make it fly.

Nonfiction is usually a different story. Since you are most often buying a project on proposal, it’s easier to shape a project with an author even if the proposal is not quite where it needs to be. I will often have a meeting with the author prior to acquisition to discuss how I envision the project and what sort of direction I think an author might take once they start writing. Obviously, the author needs to be on board with that direction, but if they are, I think it’s easier to convince my bosses to take the risk than it is with fiction.

If I love a submission, I will often ask for a few reads from my colleagues – perhaps some of the assistants or my editorial colleagues who I know are good readers for this type of project. If the reads are mostly positive, I will then take it to our editor-in-chief. If she’s in favor of the project, she will then talk to our publisher who will most likely read the submission, and if she is on board, then we go to the president of our group to ask for money with which to make an offer.

With certain projects, we also will ask for publicity and marketing reads. If a project is going to rely on a major publicity campaign, we always want our publicity director to weigh in and get her buy-in before we acquire a book.

Every project is different, and of course, fiction and nonfiction are very different animals. That said, I think the best advice I could give that applies to all writers is: be open to listening to an editor’s suggestions. Never agree to anything that you are uncomfortable with just to get a book deal, but do take seriously what an editor and the publishing team are suggesting and make it clear that you want to be a good partner in the publishing process. In a similar vein, if an author is in a meeting with a publishing team, the author should do their best to be prepared for hard questions and they should be willing to speak openly and articulately about their book. The meetings and phone calls with an author prior to publication count for a lot – it often becomes clear in a meeting that an author doesn’t have a strong vision for their book, or that they are unwilling to do a lot of editorial work, and that can often prevent the publisher from moving forward. Conversely, a good meeting or call can go a LONG way.

A lot of writers want to know if having a social media following or a few terrific blurbs will help them get a book deal. Obviously, these things never hurt, but if an editor isn’t in love with the material, these things won’t move the needle. It’s the editor’s reaction to what’s on the page that counts the most. Everything else is ancillary.

I had been chasing an author (for a cookbook project) for a long time. Finally the proposal came in and it was terrific. My whole team loved it, but my publisher was less convinced. We entered the auction but when it came down to our final bid, she didn’t want to spend as much money as I knew we would need to win the day. So I wrote her an impassioned email about why I wanted to buy the book and why it would be good for our list. She heard my passion and let me increase my offer. It ultimately came down to us and one other publisher, and I had to take a call with the author over the weekend to make my case. When the agent called me an hour after my call to tell me we’d won the book, I was thrilled and felt a great sense of accomplishment. Passion can go a long way in this business — that’s what makes it fun!

I decided to write a memoir when I almost died. That’s not when I started writing what became fragile, but it is when I first focused the jumbled mess of narratives and images into a single story, into a real memoir. For several years, I had been working on a fragmented and lyric series of pieces about place and nature—rainforests and quetzals and macaws and monkeys—but they lacked a story. They wandered. A connecting and controlling thread was missing. Then I ended up in the doctor’s office with heart problems, serious heart problems that required surgery. Facing the heart problem meant facing a real and consequential moment in my life. But it also echoed back through the years and my experience in the wild. I realized that I had a few other similar near-death moments hiding in the work I had been doing about Costa Rica and Alaska, these stories hiding in plain sight. Those moments—properly developed—became the ground for the memoir to stand on. Solid ground.

So then, the process of the memoir, really, became a twofold challenge for me. First I had to find the central story that gathered all my wanderings together and then, second, I had to really learn how to write prose. I had to focus on not just one image or metaphor or line; I had to focus on scene and narrative. I had to bring characters to life and to think about setting (always setting). I desperately want my readers to see the different worlds I bring them to. Poetry is insistent while memoir is persistent, says Tracy K. Smith. And that’s right. But I didn’t know it until I taught myself that lesson.

The answer to this has to do, somewhat, with what I just said. I found the central narrative of risk and threat and needed that full arc—from biking up Cerro de la Muerte as a 20-year old through my adventures in the rainforest and finally into an operating theater in Boston—to tell the story. But another aspect is the idea of place. I am very interested in place—not just one particular place—but place as a concept that creates and defines how we as human see and experience the world. I think the places we inhabit—and everyone inhabits place somewhere—not only act as the staging ground for our stories, but these places define the kind of stories we can, in fact, tell. Americans tell certain kind of stories not just because we share a linguistic or cultural background (we don’t, really). We tell certain kinds of stories because we live in and encounter and create a certain kind of landscape. So when I am moving across the Americas (the wild, wilderness, open and natural space) I tell a particular kind of story, but with each return to the central narrative that story deepens. Then when I end the memoir in Europe—old cities, deep with memory and history—I tell a different kind of story, but one that hopefully resonates with the American stories.

Place. As I said before, I am desperately invested in place. I dislike writing that doesn’t do the necessary work to place a reader in a world (even if that world is fully imagined) and I respond like a child to writing that does the opposite. That fully immerses me in a specific locale with its the rich and quirky possibilities. That’s the writing I love.

But I am also interested in violence. Violence and the human response to it. Social violence (the Troubles in Northern Ireland or the wars in Bosnia, for example.). Personal violence. Literary violence. But also the violence of language on experience. And the violence of beauty on time. Maybe a better world is extremity. Extreme situations. These are crux moments that carry deep levels of meaning. They carry their own meaning, of course, but they also echo back in time and pick up the vibrations of history. I guess that’s another theme isn’t it. History. When I talk about Led Zeppelin debuting “Stairway to Heaven” in Belfast, or my encounter with the grave of Brian Boru, first king of Ireland, those moments are also linked to multiple other possible moments in time and it is my job to find the right echoes and connect the threads so that the reader can hear the resonance.

Poetry is about finding connections and links—that’s metaphor, right? Saying that one thing is another is another. That’s a radical and weird way of communicating, but metaphor allows us to say more than the limited palette of words can do alone. And that’s what poems do best, isn’t it? They find the deep human heart of someone or something (maybe several somethings) and create for the reader an equivalent space in her own life.

Writing is about learning. Always. My writing is about me teaching myself what I think and how I think. And sometimes I can teach myself what I need to know to say what I want to say, but often times I can’t. It takes help. It takes another eye to see the new angle, another voice to sing harmony. When you join with another creative person to collaborate, it is more than 1 +1. Good collaboration is more like 5 x 1, because the other person, she brings not just her work to the table, but her life and her experiences and her complexities. And that comes with a challenge, as you say. I can’t simply dictate or decide. My narrative doesn’t always win. But that’s also a good lesson in life. Sometimes other people are smarter than me. Pay attention. Listen.

The American experience was forged out of an encounter with raw wilderness. But that wilderness was raw because Europeans introduced into the landscape a variety of diseases that killed close to 90% of the native human population (alongside other violent assaults). So as Europeans moved across the Americas (North and South), we moved into a landscape that had been suddenly freed of its human occupants and was rebounding. This world was full of animal life and abundant, but it was artificial in a way. So we encountered a wild and unnatural Eden. And we have, at many levels, been trying to get back to that landscape ever since. So when I talk about American stories, this is what I mean. Sort of.

There is a primal loss in the American way of being at home in a place, right? But at the same time, that loss drives us to define and recreate place in ways that are unusual. Part of the project of American environmental writing has always been salvation—not Christian salvation but the salvation of place and thus the salvation of the self. The first national park in the world—Yellowstone—was in the US. Yosemite is the second and its existence is due in no small part to a writer—John Muir. Ed Abbey in Arches. Margery Stoneman Douglas in the Everglades. The list goes on. Find a place that has been set aside and there was someone there telling the story of that place to the world. Standing in the road of progress, yelling, “Stop!”

But what Thoreau—the father of all nature writers—teaches us is that the salvation of wildness doesn’t have to come on a grand scale. It can come from the wildness of your backyard bean plot, from the local pond. There is always something worth saving. Sometimes it is just yourself. That’s my story, isn’t it?

Can I have two? If you are talking about my writing classes, I want the students to learn the lesson that language matters. The sound of the words and their sense. The way language—when put together just right—can make a kind of magic on the page and in the mind. This takes effort and attention. And patience. But it is worth it. When it clicks, for the writer and for the reader, fireworks happen.

If you are talking about my Costa Rica course, it isn’t all about the writing. It’s about place in general and the tropics in particular. I want to the students to learn that place matters. That there is a freshness deep down things (to paraphrase Hopkins) that rewards attention and persistence. That wildness is both grand and small—monkeys and volcanoes, quetzals and poison dart frogs and tarantula wasps. Costa Rica is particularly useful in this regard—there is such a profusion of species and landscapes, such a richness. But anywhere in the world the same lesson applies. Pay attention. There is something interesting going on.

I guess, if pressed, I can say that this is really the same lesson. Just spread out in two different ways.

I am writing a historical novel set in the mid-1700s in Scotland, Ireland, and the American colonies. The story is told in two voices—Anne and William—who are in fact my ancestors. But the facts end there, mainly because I have so few of them. I have created a whole new life for them and tried to imagine why William left his home—not just once but twice. He emigrated first to Ireland as part of the Plantation of the North, but then left Ireland with a wife and a child for the colonies. Why? I am really fascinated by liminal moments like this—moments of transition and change—and they lived them.

I am in the revision process and it’s a wonderful and complicated thing trying to revise something this large. You have to work small—at the level of sentence and scene and sensory detail—but then you also need to be thinking at the macro scale: How is this scene working to develop the story as a whole? That’s a complicated process and tough. It’s hard to hold it all in my head at any one time. But the process is teaching me a great deal about people and story and the way both come together.

Novels, it seems to me, are in many ways about empathy. As a writer I need to imagine someone else’s life as fully and as richly as I possibly can. The characters need motivation and complication. They cannot be mere cardboard cutouts that I move through the plot. The story flows through them and is them—as the arc of our human lives flows through us and our actions.

You know when you’re watching TV and you see something happening, and there’s a two second delay, and then you hear the audio? That’s kind of what the book was like. I started writing it right after I’d gotten married—I got married in September, so I was also back at grad school, and I had to write something. I started writing two or three chapters for grad school, and then I realized I had to keep going with this.

What’s it called when you go tubing? The wake. I was writing in the wake of it happening. I couldn’t get myself to write about other things, because this was all-consuming. I went back to certain things—writing about losing the baby was one of the last and hardest parts I wrote.

I’m really surprised how detached I am. When I found out I was getting a book deal, my goal was: I have to be detached from this. And I have to work on it, I have to practice, I have to meditate, and all these things. And having children saved me. Most people go crazy when they have kids, but it grounded me. Because the book was going to be my legacy, and I had all my value placed on that book, and whether it was going to be read by people, and if that’s how I’d be known, but after having Theo and moving to Maine, and then having Moe, that’s what I care about. I used to feel like I need to be writing all the time—I’d be pissed if I had to get up and go pee and I was losing five minutes of my writing time! But now, harmony is so important to me. And the kids are so interesting and fun—they are my legacy.

I think it’s a really important topic, and I think it’s going to help a lot of women—I hope—and men. Because when I lost the baby, there were no books like that. I had no companionship. And this is something I gave to the world. But I’m moving on. It was my therapy, and my craft, and it’s what I do, but I’m less emotionally attached to that book now.

I was a little worried that my core values were going to be, like, fame and success. But when it comes down to it, the things I love about getting the book published are it helping people and, on the book tour, getting to see my friends. Having a conversation about reproductive rights was really important to me too. But the fame stuff—I don’t Google myself, really. Well, sometimes I do.

I think when you make it political, you take away the spectrum and you make it black and white. So if this book did anything political, I would hope that it made people even more confused about what their beliefs are. Even now, I’m pro-choice, but I don’t prefer abortion—it depends on the situation and ME. It’s my choice. It’s not someone else’s choice to make for me, and it’s not my choice to make for someone else.

I think this book is really important because it shows how complicated someone’s life is up to that point where they make a decision that takes two seconds, to say yes or no—there’s so much before and there’s so much that comes after it, that it’s more than just abortion. It’s so huge. For me to become really politically involved would sort of take that away. I still don’t know how I feel about abortion. I still don’t know how I feel about my own decision. And I don’t want to be known as an abortion activist. I’m a storyteller.

When I was on the Leonard Lopate Show, a woman heard me on the radio that day in New York, and she had also lost a baby, and she came to my reading in Brooklyn that very night. And as you know, living in New York, going all the way to Brooklyn to a reading is far! That was one of the best responses—a woman I didn’t know coming to my reading because she felt like it would help heal her. Anytime I get a response from someone saying, I’ve been through this, or my wife, my sister, thank you, it offered solace—it’s the best.

People always say, when you write memoir, “Aren’t you worried about what people will think?” And I always say no. Because whatever I include, I’m conscious of the reason I’m including it, and that those reasons are valid, and that the story is honorable because my intentions are pure. My intentions are just to help people and connect with people and make people feel better about being flawed humans.

It’s like working in a church, almost. I would like to know what a pastor would say about doing what they do, because I think it’s kind of similar. You’re preaching to your audience, but you’re also saying what you believe, so you’re reminding yourself of what you believe, and sort of questioning your beliefs and forcing yourself to find the answers through talking. And also your students question you, so it forces you to always be re-evaluating your beliefs. You have to answer for yourself. I think teaching is the best form of growing as a writer.

It’s also a double-positive thing because you get to see your students—I get to see you grow as a writer. I like teaching sometimes more than I like writing. So you have to check yourself sometimes and be like, okay, you gotta put your butt in the chair now. It’s your turn to write.

Teaching also pays. But not that much.

Vijay Seshadri taught me—here’s a quote. We were in class. It was the last day of my nonfiction class, and one of the students asked, “Vijay, what are we going to do if what we write about becomes boring?” And he was so mad. He was like, “Boring?! You’re asking me what to do when life becomes boring? You are the master of your own universe. You are consciousness. The question isn’t whether or not something is boring, the questions is whether or not you have faith.” And I was like, Preach! So he taught me that you have to be conscious of what’s going on around you all the time. Because then everything is fascinating. Everything Vijay says, it takes me like a week to process it, and then it sticks with me forever once I figure it out.

Ninety percent of the time, I don’t speak like that. It’s hard to pin it down, because I don’t remember any specific moments in my life when someone said that women don’t speak like that, but I’m used to not having assurance and still having confidence without questioning it. In parenthood, too. I think I’m a really good mom, but the minute I say that, I think of an article that says I should be doing this, this, and this, and I’m not doing that. I had my six-week postpartum checkup six weeks late. I was on tour with Simone, and thinking, “She’s going to ask me how nursing is going, and I’m just going to lie.”

I think I’m constantly comparing myself to who’s better, but when I work really hard, and I stop doing that, there are moments when I can think, I worked really hard at this, I’m good, and I’m just going to say it. And it doesn’t happen often.

But I do remember that moment. I was being so honest with you guys and I felt like being honest with myself was not indulgent. That being kind to myself wasn’t being indulgent. I knew I could say that about myself because I had put in the work. And the work I put in, the majority of it, was really sincere.

Yeah! Exactly.

Well, it’s interesting. Yes, I was writing about my home state, but so much of what’s in the book are things I had never heard of until I started doing research nine years ago, which was shocking and exciting. In terms of most interesting, it’s hard to top the story of John Brinkley, the Goat Gland Doctor. It is so fascinating and weird. I thought it had to be made up. And there were stories that deserved to be in the book but were left on the cutting room floor (or never even made it to the cutting room floor). Perhaps most notably would be Carrie Nation, the radical temperance activist, who was infamous for smashing up bars with a hatchet. I could never quite find a way to tell her story, which is a shame because it’s important. Also too, I would have liked to give a better, fuller accounting of the white war of aggression to remove native peoples in the state from their land.

One of my goals for the book was to write about a wide range of vastly different characters and that meant writing from the perspectives of people who’ve had vastly different experiences than me, whether due to material conditions and temporal distance or factors such as race, gender, sexuality, or class. And yes, this was incredibly challenging and at times made me very uncomfortable. And I think it should. It shouldn’t be easy for a thirty-six year old white, heterosexual, privileged male like myself to write from the perspective of an Exoduster in 1879, or a gay man in 2003, or an African American woman in 1962, or a Native American man in 1863, or a Salvadoran refugee in 1993.

However, I don’t think that means a writer should not be allowed to write from perspectives of people unlike him- or herself. After all, that’s what fiction is about, and it’s one of the civilizing effects of literature that it challenges us to make empathic leaps as writers and readers. So to answer your question more directly, I found it all very challenging (and illuminating), but particularly the stories that were more historical, simply because it was harder to imagine my way into the experiential aspects of being a human being, whatever your race or gender, at a time so distant from my own.

Given the lucrative short story market, I obviously did it for the money—har har har. No, there were a few reasons why I wanted this to be a story collection instead of a novel. It’s not that the thought didn’t cross my mind to make this a kind of Forrest Gumpian “one family’s bumbling journey through 150 years of notable events in Kansas history,” as awful as that sounds. I suppose it’s because I wanted I Was a Revolutionary to work on two levels. I love short stories and I think they can achieve an effect novels can’t because of their intensity, compression, and brevity. So I wanted these stories to be able to stand alone discretely and have their own individual meanings and experiences for the reader. But I also wanted someone who reads the entire book to see the way the stories have common thematic interests and subject matter, and thus experience how the stories talk to one another in a way that hopefully gives the book a novel-like unity and sweep. Basically I was trying to have my cake and eat it too, I suppose. It sounds pretentious and grand, but I wanted to write a story collection that felt epic in the way only a novel can.

And with respect to the second part of your question, I am working on a novel about the Goat Gland Doctor, who does appear in the story “The Americanist.” At the time of starting it I didn’t know I had a novel on my hands. I thought I was going to write a nice 25-page story about him, but it kept getting longer and longer and spiraling out in a Ragtime kind of way to include all these other people like Eugene Debs, Fatty Arbuckle, and many others, and by the time it grew to 150 pages it was just too big and unwieldy to cram into a story collection that already had a few long stories in it. So I took it out, which pained me because given the book’s overt interests in politics and radical Kansas history it felt like a crime not to include the Goat Gland Doctor, who was kind of like an ur-President Trump, if Donald Trump had made his money injecting goat glands into men to improve virility instead of real estate investment and speculation. At the same time I was also feeling anxious that I hadn’t found a way to capture the rise of the militant anti-abortion movement in Wichita and the assassination of George Tiller, so I tried to find characters and create a narrative that could touch on both of those things. It seems like a strange pairing on the surface, but I’m pleased with the way it turned out. That was the last story I wrote for the book and it started as a desperate last-ditch attempt to find any way to get the Goat Gland Doctor into the collection.

Yes, definitely. I hope that soon I’ll have Kansas out of my system so I can finally write about somewhere else, like the state I now call home, Mississippi. Much has been written about the ugly parts of its history, and rightfully so, but I’m kind of excited to write about its present, which is much more complex and, in some cases, inspiring than I suspect most of the country would think, given we’re generally seen as the reliable butt-end of most national jokes.

I like to have some sense of what I think is going to happen—in an incredibly rough plot outline kind of way—when I sit down to work on something. Doing a bit of that work up front, instead of free writing and seeing what happens, is just a hell of a lot more efficient than trying to do it on the back end. It also alleviates some of the what-the-hell-do-I-do-now anxiety that descends upon me each morning when I’m staring at a blank Word document and the cursor’s blinking, silently judging me. So, for example, knowing that by the end of this scene I’ll need to have this character get out of bed, go to work, and speak to her coworker is like having handrails I can latch onto and find my way into a story. It also frees me up to concentrate on the stuff that’s more exciting to me but harder to plan for ahead of time, like style, language, voice, and tone, which in my experience tend to come about most effectively in the act of creation (try telling yourself ahead of time: “In the first paragraph of page five I will need to write a kick-ass metaphor” and see what happens). But I do this rough plot outlining with the understanding that I am not beholden to it at all and that the story will inevitably change in ways I can’t foresee as it works to communicate its meaning to me. That’s part of the fun after all, the thrill that come when characters do something unexpected, and I need to be willing to follow them and see what happens.