Brief Author Bio:

Why I write
I write because reading is one of my greatest pleasures in life, and I am indebted to all the wonderful writers and teachers who have shone the light for me, in one way or another. I write because I believe what John Gardner says in On Moral Fiction: “Art rediscovers, generation by generation, what is necessary to humanness.” I write because I believe that a well drawn character elicits empathy and compassion and can wipe out indifference towards those unknown to us. I write because I believe that “Art should cause violence to be set aside,” as Tolstoy states in “What is Art.”

One of the greatest influences in my writing life, Andre Dubus the elder, wrote that he had “always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have gone to war after The Iliad.” Part of me believes that he’s right; the other part of me wants to devote my life to proving him wrong. I also believe that a writer is a strange creature, naïve and pragmatic at once, wildly hopeful and deeply skeptical about the future—that’s me.