I always wonder how other writers let go of their characters, because I can’t. 

Writing requires invention. Choosing which words, which scenes that will make the beginnings, the middles, and the ends is an inherently creative act. And yet we all know that writers cannot possibly invent the world.

My idea, then, was to write a work with a satirical tone but where every detail was grounded in reality (there are three lies in the book, of which two are uttered by characters and not the narrator, we’ll get back to the third), hoping that this would help loosen the springs of the genre.

The Hitch is about a woman whose life explodes when her six-year-old nephew confides he is possessed by the soul of a dead corgi. Last month a journalist interviewed me about the novel and, in response to a question about horror fiction, I rattled off all the books with possession plots I had read as…

My anxiety first manifested when I was a kid. I remember my mother sitting up with me at night, coaching me through paralyzing fears of humiliating band rehearsals and lunchtime bullies, instructing me in what I would now call meditation and mindfulness. 

I’m an old-time radio fanatic, specifically OTR detective shows. One of the things I love is their language. It’s deliciously pulpy, full of 1940s and 50s slang and over-the-top metaphors that a modern author could only wish to get away with.

A death march is what my teenaged students called it. In a literal-kind-of way, I guess they were right.

How does our mother tongue shape the stories we tell? What does it mean to switch languages in writing? Does simplification always lead to loss? Can I transform my limitations in English into opportunities for growth? Am I the same writer when I express myself in a foreign language? The same person? Who was I…

My novel Habitat started as a short story. I found myself curious about the world of that story and wanted to explore it more, so my focus shifted to writing more stories in that world.

Sitting in the back of my dad’s minivan, smelling the stench of my older brother’s hockey gear after a tournament in Buffalo or Neville Island, or some other place that boasted a hockey rink and nothing more, I didn’t know I was doing research for a novel that I would write three decades into the…

My novel Porthole took longer to write than any project I have worked on previously: the earliest scraps of it emerged fifteen years ago, or more, but it was interrupted by a couple of other books, which in their scope, were either more manageable or more immediate.

In those early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the future was formless and dark, I wrote the first story in what would later become my debut short story collection, It’s No Fun Anymore (June 2025, Apprentice House Press), I called it “Thumb Stump,” and it was good.