In This Time Of The Internet And

Fiction Is More Dangerous Than Nonfiction Because It Can Seduce Better. I Think We All Know This, Know That Deeper Truths Can Be Approached In Fiction Than In Fact. There Are Risks For The Reader, Because After Reading Certain Books You Find You Have Changed Irreversibly. There Are Risks For Writers: In China, Now, And Ethiopia And Other Countries Right Now, Writers Face Real Persecution.

My Mom Taught Me To Read When I Was Two Or Three. When I Was Five I Read And Wrote Well Enough To Do My Nine-year Older Brother's Homework In Exchange For Chocolate Or Cigarettes. By The Time I Was 10, I Was Reading Orwell, Tolstoy's War And Peace, And The Koran. I Was Reading Comic Books Too.

I Think That Most Writers Who Are Trying To Write Important And Difficult Books Are In Many Ways Putting Their Own Humanity Into Question. Sometimes The Journey Is Finding Out Where You Stand In Relationship To Your Own Humanity And To The Humanity Of Others.

In This Time Of The Internet And Nonfiction, To Be On An Actual Bookshelf In An Actual Bookstore Is Exciting In Itself.

My Search Is Always To Find Ways To Chronicle, To Share And To Document Stories About People, Just Everyday People. Stories That Offer Transformation, That Lean Into Transcendence, But That Are Never Sentimental, That Never Look Away From The Darkest Things About Us.