Tea Obreht

Being taken seriously, for a young writer, is a wonderful form of encouragement, but at the same time, I don't think one should ever feel like attempting a kind of artistic endeavor is beyond your scope just because of age or inexperience.

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.

I think the mythology of death really ran away with me when I was very young.

For me it was a lot harder to come to terms with the death of my grandfather than it was to come to terms with what's happened to the former Yugoslavia.

I've always written about animals. I'm still trying to process why that is.