I was born in Ann Arbor. I lived for a while in Ohio; Pennsylvania, California for 10 years, and now in Boston. And I lived in Iowa for a couple of years, where I studied at the Writers Workshop.
I remember when I was at Brandeis, Geoffrey Wolff, he was a great fiction-writing teacher. He was the writer-in-residence, and for those of us who wanted to be writers, you were so excited to be in the same hallway as him.
I studied writing at NYU. I graduated high school in Nashville and then went to the creative writing program, and in the first year, that's when I wrote 'Kids.'
When I'm identified as a fiction writer at parties, the question comes pretty quickly. 'Did you go to school for it?' someone asks. 'Yes,' I say. 'Where?' they ask, because I don't usually offer it. 'I went to the Iowa Writers' Workshop,' I say.
A creative writing program is only as good as its teachers, and I was fortunate in having two great writers as mentors.
I went to Marion College for writing and I was kicked out of the writing school. I was asked to leave the writing program because I was corrupting the other students.
For graduate school I ended up going to the University of Iowa, which is, of course, the best graduate writing program in the country.
After working as a journalist I went to a writing program at Johns Hopkins. It was interesting because it was neither journalistic nor historical, but it emphasized writing style, and afterwards I was asked to write my first book.
I went to school for creative writing in college, and I wound up about six hours short of my degree.
