What book feels like home to you?

“The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s the book I most remember my mother reading to me as a child. To this day, I tear up at the first few lines. ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or eat: it was a hobbit-hole and that means comfort.’”

Which living author do you most admire?

"I recently had the chance to be in conversation with Maggie O’Farrell in Nashville while she was on tour for her most recent novel, Land. I was nearly beside myself. She’s such a gorgeous writer and a generous person. Meeting her was a dream. I think, ultimately, it’s the way she so fully immerses us in her stories. Finishing one of her novels is like waking from a fever dream."

What’s your most unusual writing habit?

"I cry a lot. Perhaps that’s not a habit, but an affliction. Regardless, I usually need a good crying jag to really get into the meat of my stories."

What’s the first thing you do after finishing a draft?

"Talk myself out of burning it with fire. I’m always convinced it’s a wreck of a book that no one will want to read."

What is your favourite word to use in prose?

"I’m awfully fond of ‘petrichor’ and also ‘perspicacious.’ I don’t fling them around in prose willy-nilly, though when they easily slide into a sentence, I’m pretty self-satisfied."

Where do you most like to write?

"In my office at home in Nashville. My husband turned our old, unused dining room into an office for me. He laid wood floors and built bookshelves and every time I walk in that room I feel both at home and quite loved."

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever researched for a story?

"Um … there’s a scene at the end of The Frozen River that I often refer to as ‘the big chop.’ Needless to say, I warned my husband away from my search history. Not that he’d go looking, mind you, but still. He would have been alarmed."

If your characters could critique you, what would they say?

"That I procrastinate too much and have the unfortunate habit of making them lean on things all the time. Walls. Cars. Light poles. Each other. You’d think the whole lot of them had inner ear issues."

What’s the strangest thing in your workspace?

"A piece of gray speckled granite. It’s flat on one side, rough on the other, and has an edge sharp enough to cut. You can still see the strike marks from where it was used to make arrowheads hundreds and hundreds of years ago. It fits in my palm, and I hold it sometimes when I’m thinking about the book I’ll be writing next."