Memory as an article of faith often comes naturally to writers, who by temperament are likely to be diarists and record keepers, forever searching past events for elusive patterns - and forever believing that such patterns are to be found.

Commanded by God dozens of times in the Hebrew Bible to remember their past, Jews historically obeyed not by recording events but by ritually re-enacting them: by understanding the present through the lens of the past.

Sibling relationships figure in a lot of my books. You don't often see relationships between adult siblings explored in fiction.

I wanted to explore the kinds of hope and doubt, faith and disappointment, that shape the next generation, whether consciously or not. I suppose, in all of my work, I'm always going back in time.

I'm a person who always wanted to turn my life into an archive. Social media made my dream come true.

I have another aspect of my career where I'm a scholar of Yiddish and Hebrew literature, and I'll say that when you study Yiddish literature, you know a whole lot about forgotten writers. Most of the books on my shelves were literally saved from the garbage. I am sort of very aware of what it means to be a forgotten artist in that sense.