Your seemingly off-the-cuff descriptions struck me as hilarious for their deadpan delivery and often unexpected placement. For example, Louise and Richard go out to dinner on a date. He “holds open the door, which is quilted with the red leather padding you might find in a classy insane asylum.” Do you push yourself to develop observations such as a character might have, or do you have to restrain yourself from doing too many?

I have to restrain myself from doing too many.

Other descriptions seem thematically important, either as foreshadowing or well, multivalent metaphor. When Ames identifies the beautiful purple flower as loosestrife at their pond rendezvous, that was the final blow. I knew their relationship was irrevocably doomed. Likewise, comparing Ames’ home to a turtle was one of the book’s high points for me. Can you comment on your use of metaphor?

I love metaphor. That’s why I write — because I get so much pleasure from finding connections between the concrete and the divine. Years ago, in graduate school, I discovered Bruno Schulz and Flannery O’Connor and Grace Paley and Nicholson Baker and fell in love with their use of metaphor. Their metaphors gave me so much pleasure, I just wanted to do what I saw them doing. I’ve been trying to join their company ever since.

Which do you enjoy more: writing the first draft or revising? Do you revise a lot?

I love to revise. My first drafts aren’t even first drafts. They’re zero drafts. They’re worse than zero drafts — they’re huge, disgusting messes. Once I get a draft, though, I can make it better. I love revising. What’s not to love? You get up every morning knowing that you have a rough draft of a story or a novel and you get to spend the day making the manuscript better and better and better.

Do you prefer working in long or short forms of fiction?

Longer forms. I can’t write short. You’ve heard of minimalists? I’m a maximalist.

You’ve also worked in nonfiction. What draws you there?

Nonfiction is for when you want people to believe that what you’re writing actually happened.

What are you working on now?

A memoir about my childhood ambition to grow up to be a theoretical astrophysicist and the years I put in trying to become one and the reasons that even today so few women go on to succeed in the hard sciences.

What is your writing schedule?

I try to write every morning, if only for an hour.

What would you say to your readers?

Thank you, thank you, thank you!