Kirstin Valdez Quade

"It has absolutely been romanticized; it shows up in literature and art. I think there is a sort of magic to it that draws people and yet I think the reality of it is that it's an extraordinarily compl…"

"I do think one of the reasons I’m a writer is that we moved around so much when I was a child, and I was always the new kid. I was always in a new environment and trying to figure it out. I was always…"

"When I read, if I don’t know where a story is set, I always feel unmoored. The same is true for my writing: Until I place my story in a specific place, I can’t get my footing in the world…"

"I love the short story: I love its flexibility, its distillation of language, the pressure it exerts on the moment. A story demands that the reader look closely. And yet, despite the intensity and con…"