Last week, Kyle Semmel kindly interviewed me at The Writer's Center's blog, First Person Plural. The interview was long enough to require being broken into two parts (one and two), mostly because A) I'm overly long-winded, and B) Kyle asked some really great questions. We discussed the writer's responsibilities in historical fiction, my idea of the "hard win" in my fiction, what fiction writers can learn from poets, and my forthcoming collection, How They Were Found, including how Michael Czyzniejewski taught me to tell between a "book story" and one that wasn't:

At the time I began assembling the manuscript, I’d published about fifty stories, and had an

other half-dozen or so that were out making the rounds that I was pretty sure were among my strongest works yet. Michael Czyzniejewski, the editor at Mid-American Review and author of Elephants in Our Bedroom, was a great help to me during this process, reading the first long-list draft of the collection, which included every story that I thought might be something I’d want to include. One of the best pushes he gave me was to learn to distinguish between what was a “book story” and what wasn’t. That was a great way of thinking about things that helped me cut out stories which I think are good—like “BeautyForever,” which you mentioned earlier—but that, for whatever reason, probably won’t be collected and certainly didn’t fit into this book. In that story's case, it's maybe a little too derivative? That's a clearly Saunders-esque story, and the fact that I can so easily point out its literary ancestors probably means I was right to leave it out of the book, even though it’s a story I’m proud of and really enjoyed writing.

Thanks again to Kyle for interviewing me, and for everything else he does for The Writer's Center. Visit their website for more information about The Writer's Center and its impressive offerings and mission:

The Writer’s Center cultivates the creation, publication, presentation, and dissemination of literary work.  We are an independent literary organization with a global reach, rooted in a dynamic community of writers. As one of the premier centers of our kind in the country, we believe the craft of writing is open to people of all backgrounds and ages.  Writing is interdisciplinary and unique among the arts for its ability to touch on all aspects of the human experience.  It enrich

es our lives and open doors to knowledge and understanding.

The Writer's Center also hosts literary events, readings and conferences; sells books and literary magazines; and offers a con

genial, supportive environment for writing groups to meet. It is a voluntary, membership organization open to all skill levels.

The Writer's Center is housed in a 12,200 square foot facility in the arts and entertainment district of Bethesda, Maryland, with workshops also offered in Leesburg and Arlington, Virginia, and at other locations around the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.