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" As we know all too well, our early years are formative in ways it can takes us a lifetime to grasp. Those years leave deep marks; in that way, the stakes of childhood are inherently very high. "

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" If you're working on a novel, whatever you do, don't say, 'I am almost finished with my novel.' It's worse than chanting Bloody Mary three times in front of a mirror. "

Laura van den Berg

You

I Am

Mirror

" I think that one thing about teaching is you're trying to communicate your thoughts about a work to a group of people who may or may not share that sentiment. This has forced me to become a lot more articulate about what I respond to and what I don't respond to in fiction. "

Laura van den Berg

You

Work

" In August 2008, I moved with the man who would become my husband from Boston to a cabin in rural North Carolina. "

" Unlike a novel, where you expect a different kind of arc that leaves us with a somber sense of resolution, I think a story in some ways as like a train window: being able to watch the landscape pass for a certain amount of time. And then your stop arrives, and you have to leave. "

" I teach fiction in my workshops, and some of the readings could be classified as horror. For example, 'House Taken Over,' a short story by Julio Cortazar, is a work I regularly teach. "

" To me, in general, something that's really rich in terms of identity about transit spaces is that they're so intimate. Especially thinking about long international flights when we're trying to sleep on the plane - we're total strangers, but we're sleeping next to each other. "

Laura van den Berg

Identity

Rich

" As a young writer, I was sort of sailing around trying to 'find my voice' - for lack of a better term - and I was really chafing against the very minimal brand of domestic realism that I'd read so much of in college. "

" The kind of dystopian books that I've always loved the most are the ones where you find yourself in a world that's less scorched-earth and instead a world that has just been made different. "

" In the novels I most admire, there is this sense that, within the confines of the world, the possibilities are always opening in new and surprising ways - that was a quality I strived to capture, with the hope that the reader would be willing to follow me. "

" I lived in Boston for three years, and during that time, I wrote my first collection of stories, 'What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us;' other stories that didn't make it into the collection; and several failed novel openings. "

" The moment when my husband and I clasped hands and turned from our officiant, newly wed, was the most light-filled of my life. "

" America loves a good comeback story! "

" My students are often asking me, 'What do you think are the most important qualities for a writer?' And one thing I always tells them is that it's helpful to be willing to sit in a space of uncertainty. There are entire years, especially with novels, where you really don't know where the project is going. "

" Normally I'm the type who wouldn't bail on a responsibility unless dead on the side of the road, and I believe deeply in the importance of continuing to follow our own paths. "

" If I leave the fictional world for too long, it's a bit like stepping through a portal, entering another reality, and then not knowing how to get back to where you were before. "

" For three years, I lived in a miniscule apartment on Beacon Street, less than a mile from the Boston Marathon explosions. "

" I love creating mysteries, but I am terrible at solving them. "

Laura van den Berg

I Am

Creating

" Early influences included Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Charles Baxter, Richard Ford, Alice Munro, Denis Johnson - writers who are important to me still and who I discovered through my teachers. "

Laura van den Berg

Teachers

Through

" I've had a somewhat typical experience in that many of the contemporary writers I was exposed to early on were white and often male. "

" In the world of the American creative writing workshop, I've encountered teachers who are tempted to place, or have actually placed, a moratorium on child narrators. Students love to write them, but children come laden with complications. "

" I was born and raised in Orlando, where the economy and culture has been powerfully shaped by tourism, and so I've long been interested in how we narrate the places we visit, how the gap between what we see and what we know manifests when we're traveling. "

" I tend to be drawn to characters who are not rule followers, who behave in unexpected and unusual ways. "

" When I'm absorbed in a work of fiction, time and place melts away, as though I've drifted away from my usual reality and been absorbed into another. "

" Often, contrasts bring art to life: the bright speck of paint on a dark canvas; the tightrope walk between humor and tragedy. "

" I lived in Florida until I was 22. "

" When I'm between projects, I keep a journal I call a 'thought log,' and it's my practice to write down whatever interests me. "

Laura van den Berg

Journal

Practice

" I think where a writer falls on the realism/non-realism continuum has a lot to do with their sight, as in, 'This is how I see the world.' And it seems my sight is off-kilter and kind of strange, but I come by that naturally; I'm not consciously pushing toward a particular point on the continuum. "

" I love many realists but very strongly resist the notion that realism presents a less stylized, more authentic version of the world. "

" I know some writers that have a million novel ideas, but I don't. "

" The short story has been here and is here and will be here as long as we are. "