Q. What inspired this story? A. This story is inspired by the irrational things I have done or other female friends have done in regard to their significant others. The feeling of wanting to know the past and the idea of how ridiculous it is to explore any of it. There’s actually a bit of…

It is the fear I will always be the other woman. It is the idea that though we are together, he is somehow more hers than mine. I feel sorry for her, the girl he belongs with. The girl he loves. I hack into his email account to send her a few words. I want…

Q. What was the inspiration for this story? A. I grew up in a tiny little town in central rural Michigan, a kind of post-industrial, post-industrial agriculture kind of place, where working-class meant you’d made it in life and rough was the norm. It’s a place with a lot of odd juxtapositions. There’s a lot…

Skinny little Leroy knows things. He knows to avoid the boys on the playground and their menacing sports even as he knows they’ll find him anyway as they always do. He knows they’ll pursue him into the scrub trees behind the school where they’ll catch him in the deep shadows. He knows no one will…

[Venn diagram]: a mathematical illustration that shows all of the possible mathematical or logical relationships between things. There is an order to where things do or do not overlap. My boyfriend Victor works at Applebee’s. He also sells weed. Sometimes, when he owes people money, he’ll pay them with stolen Applebee’s gift certificates. This is…

I am (for better or worse), always working on several writing-related projects at once. I don’t even really think in terms of “projects.” I’m not that organized or intentional most of the time. However, there comes a point after I’ve written several stories or snippets where I begin to notice a shape or a theme…

Q. How did Make Over come about? A. I’m fascinated by how putting on a costume can be such fun and so freeing. I love dressing-up for Halloween and host a Halloween party every year where all the guests come in costume. We have a blast. A costume somehow gives me permission to be sillier…

She was riding the bus, imagining herself in a boat on a shiny lake, singing with the birds, when she first felt the woman trying to get out of her chest. She jerked upright, her hand at her sternum, and scanned her fellow passengers, sure they could see the commotion inside. No one paid her…

And then my thumb just kept going. The children were playing outside and making noise, and my wife was in the kitchen reorganizing the pots and pans, and it just seemed easy to make it keep going. I would describe it as eighty percent resistance and twenty percent ‘wet give.’ Once it was in I…

Q. How did “Homesick” come about? I wrote “Homesick” after a long bout of not writing due to being pregnant with my first child, which for some reason took over my entire mind and I could not write, and his subsequent birth, which kept me very, very busy and exhausted from taking care of him.…

When John met Louisa, it was 1963. He was twenty-four years old, a graduate student from Middlebury College studying in Paris, and recently discharged from a mental hospital where he had recuperated from a nervous breakdown. His delicate features—fine bones, narrow face, and sensitive, liquidy eyes—accented his fragility. He chose to sit next to Louisa…

Once upon a time in a far away place far away from anything there lived a boy and a girl. No. This is an adult story. Once upon a time in a far away place, far away from anything, there lived a man and a woman. His name was Johann and hers was Elise. Johann…