You're in a PhD program at USC. What has that experience been like and how has it impacted your writing?

It's been an incredible experience largely because of the time it's allowed me to invest in a long-term project. An MFA, while helpful, feels like it goes by so quickly in just two or three years. I'm a slow writer, and the magic, for me, is usually found in revision. Knowing that I have at least five years to focus on a novel and have plenty of time to draft, revise, and revise again, has been immensely helpful. Not to mention the fact that USC has a fantastic faculty that both pushes its students' writing forward and encourages them, as well as a vibrant, supportive community. I think what's been most impactful while at USC is how I've felt permission for my writing to be unabashedly focused on my unique interests, to tell the stories I've been bursting to tell for a long time.

In addition to your writing and work as a student, you're also one of the biggest readers I know. What tips do you have for people to put down their phones and be better able to get through books? 

Reading during this social media age is so difficult! I empathize with people who struggle to find the time to read, then focus during that time. I used to be such a laser-focused reader as a child, and now, not so much. What's helped me rediscover my focus in the last few years are really just two things. One, I silence my phone and put it in a completely different room from the room I'm reading in. Two, I read with a pen in my hand. Sometimes I'm actively taking notes on a novel and breaking down what the author is doing. But mostly I'm just underlining all the lines I love. If you're not opposed to writing in your books, I think that step is essential. It forces you to slow down and appreciate the language, to mark what you find beautiful or funny or poignant, to actively engage with what you're reading. 

I'm gonna steal that Nate Silver thing and ask if there are three books you'd recommend.

Oh gosh, only three?! I consider Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez a masterpiece. It's a big, epic, nasty, and scary book about Argentina's legacy of disappeared people, and the exploitation of the poor by the rich, with the added intrigue of a horrifying death cult. Every time I reread that novel, I find something new to love and appreciate. This is a cheat because it's actually four books, but Elena Ferrante's The Neapolitan Quartet is essential reading. However, if the whole series seems daunting, then just read the first book, My Brilliant Friend. The final lines of that book still devastate me, all these years later. For something shorter and quieter, I started the year by reading L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between and completely adored it. Hartley somehow blends a wizened, bitter adult narrative voice with the more innocent, naive voice of a child. The effect is quite haunting. And I love nothing more than a novel that haunts.