I learned to be a regional writer by reading people like Flannery O'Connor. She was a huge influence.

The sounds and rhythms of words are really important to me.

It's always been the case that politicians want different things from children than good educators do. Good educators want imaginative, exploratory beings, but politicians just want economic units.

My work explores the frontier between rationalism and superstition and the wavering boundary between the two.

I have been reading crime books ever since I was a child, but I had never tried to write one.

I finished my higher education deeply in debt and with seven years of bad credit in my future.

After completing a Delaware State education, they were afforded opportunities beyond anything they might have imagined - and they opened doors for themselves that surely would have remained closed if they only had a high school education.

I'm just grasping everything, getting as much knowledge as I can, and continuing to learn and not being afraid to take challenges and actually take action.