Q. How did this story come about?

A. This short scene came to me pretty much fully realized as if I’d been walking around with these two all night. I like this couple and their dreamy, drunken, imperfect togetherness and I wanted the prose to feel dreamy, drunken and imperfect as well. I was going for that particular sound. Also like the couple’s odd affection for one another. I’m pairing this story (or maybe it’s a prose poem) with Joni Mitchell’s song “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio” because her voice in that song has a sort of lazy, sexy comfort to it. I imagine the couple making out in the corner while the skinny woman on the stage sings the line “it’s been dirty for dirty.”

Q. Why is fiction necessary for you?

I’m a quiet person with lots to say. Writing fiction is how I say it.