In an age of global standardization, regional voices also remind both writer and reader that no life is lived generically. If the purpose of literature is truly, as the ancients insisted, to instruct and delight, then what better to understand and enjoy than the here and the now?

Raw artistic talent is abundant. What is truly rare are the cultural circumstances, attitudes, and institutions to develop and perfect it. Few American cities …

To speak from a particular place and time is not provincialism but part of a writer's identity.

America's first great surrealist artists were named Walt Disney, Max Fleischer, and Tex Avery. Their artistic medium was cartoon animation, though we must reme…

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

White Australians were sent to Australia as convicts on great big boats. The scum of the earth, sent to the arsehole of the planet. On the way they must have b…

When I came to faith, I thought I would have to stop being an actor, because it's all about artifice and manipulation. But we're living in a world where God do…