I am blown away by the compressed beauty of your language in each of these flash pieces. There is so much said between and within the lines. Can you tell us more about how you work with the sentences and decide on a structure?

I am very much an ‘out-loud’ writer--I read and re-read each sentence over and over; it’s chiefly how I do most of my editing.  If something gets caught in my mouth as I am reciting, it gets immediately cut.  I like to use simple words as they have a more universal emotional response, I feel.  Also, each sentence has a hidden logic to it--it’s kind of formulaic and I can’t quite describe it, but I try to make sentences and the pieces circular--that there’s a roundness to it all.

“Missed Connection” is quite emotional and has so much charge in it. Talk a little bit about how cyberspace has affected how we relate to one another or not.

The internet is tricky--in one sense it is a giant artifice:  we can pretend to be someone else because we are offered the ability to keep certain things private and we can mold what we’d like to say.  For example, this interview is not conducted in real time--I can take the time to shape what I’d like to say in order to improve my persona.  I think we all know someone whose online persona varies incredibly from their actual personality:  I’ve gotten to know some friends extremely well utilizing technology--the first thing we ask is to find them on Facebook in order to get to know them better, instead of taking them out for coffee or to grab a beer.  I think as a result people can be more emotional while utilizing technology because there’s a bit of a barrier there--you can’t see the person and it gives that person the ability to think about what they would like to say.  Missed Connections are perfect examples of this:  they say what the person wished they said in real life--they wished they could’ve talked to the person but they were too shy, and so they’re utilizing this distance to say what they couldn’t say face-to-face.  There’s an honesty there, and there’s also a dishonesty.  It’s pretty fascinating.

Can you share a little about “Red Drew Avenue?” Such an exquisite piece that moves us from one image to another with the narrator in first person singular and his or her counterpart as “you.” Does the anonymous presence of these two characters help to draw in the readers to their own experiences? This piece also seems to move through time zones and alternate realities. Any comments on this?

I’m a big proponent of utilizing “I” and “You”--I think it allows people to fill in the gaps that way:  either with themselves or someone else, or myself as the author, or any of those things.  To see a name or something incredibly specific can sometimes take the reader out of the piece.  This particular piece operates differently than a lot in the collection, as I wrote it immediately after it happened:  I walked home by myself (about a 15 minute walk) and tried to document everything.  I’m a firm believer in the concept of worlding:  that you can be taken from one world quickly and placed in another.  So, when you have a long walk home, your mind takes you elsewhere, to different places, to different times--anywhere that’s not where you are.

Tell us about the inspiration for “The Proleg.”

The Proleg piece is the beginning of a translation project that I've started working on--my grandfather wrote a book on long-distance running in Catalan during the 1970s.  He passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer's in 2005.  The project is less about

translation and more about collaboration:  my knowledge of the language is spotty at best, and so it is operating mostly on the feel of the language and what moments I can extract.  As for the other pieces, I wrote a Missed Connection and posted it on Craigslist every other day for 45 days.

Do you have a set writing schedule that works for you?

I don't have a particular writing schedule, but I do see writing as a reward:  that way when I get all of the other stuff out of the way and have time to write, I feel as if this is something that I deserve, and it keeps me focused and dedicated to my work.

What book or books are you reading at the moment?

I've been revisiting some old favorites lately:  Olena Kalytiak Davis' Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities, and Albert Goldbarth's Many Circles.

What writers do you feel you were most influenced by?

I was most influenced by Joy Williams, Lia Purpura, & Lyn Hejinian--their ability to pull emotion out of tight sentences and use simple words to make a beautiful and often sublime connection is something that I aspire to do in my writing as well.