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I love stories that give me a perspective on how easy American life has become in the 21st century.

I've been religiously reading the O. Henry Prize anthologies every year since college, when I first began trying to write stories. Many of the authors whose work I cherish the most were people I first learned about through The O. Henry Prize Stories - and then I'd go search for their books.

Ultimately, a timeless story has to be about the human condition.

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

I like stories in specific time periods. 'The Revenant's' era of American history was fascinating because it was this lawless no-man's land. It defined the idea of the American frontiersman as man conquering nature. In a way, the story of Hugh Glass is about man dominating nature.

I'm a writer obsessed with remembering: with remembering the past of America above all - and above all, that of Latin America, intimate land condemned to forgetfulness.

I don't concentrate on any one period of history; I like to locate my stories in wildly different eras and places. I seem to be drawn to large, sprawling, uncomfortable swaths of American history, finding embedded within them a tight narrative that involves strife, heroism, and survival under difficult circumstances.

For a long time, I've been interested in cultural memory and historical erasure.

My novels are about a generation of Americans who lived between 1940 and 2000, who resisted the postwar political and cultural forces by choosing a wandering life of impoverishment and wonder. Inevitably, race and economics are a big part of their stories. Childhood, childishness, and children are never far.