A family has its own rituals and its own superstitions.

At the end of the day, it's about the reader's attachment to and belief in the magical elements that make or break magical realism.

I am very interested in place, and the influences of place on characters.

I do no writing while I'm in Belgrade visiting my grandma.

I grew up in Cyprus and Egypt, these fantastic places I remember fondly.

I like dark subject matter. I'm not sure what that means about me!

I think the mythology of death really ran away with me when I was very young.

I've always written about animals. I'm still trying to process why that is.

In the mess of moving from place to place, I skipped two grades in the space of one year.

My family lived in Egypt from 1993 to 1996.

My grandfather and I were very close.

My road to publishing actually came through a colleague who connected me to my agent, and the faculty at Cornell was very supportive.

The best fiction stays with you and changes you.

What inspires me most to write is the act of traveling.

When you're in a place, the details you focus on are different than details you focus on when you're writing about it.

You never know what's going to happen in your life, and you never know what's going to happen in someone else's life either.

A lot of writers that I know have told me that the first book you write, you write about your childhood, whether you want to or not. It calls you back.

Being taken seriously, for a young writer, is a wonderful form of encouragement, but at the same time, I don't think one should ever feel like attempting a kind of artistic endeavor is beyond your scope just because of age or inexperience.

For me it was a lot harder to come to terms with the death of my grandfather than it was to come to terms with what's happened to the former Yugoslavia.

In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.