I didn’t want this book to end, and in a certain way it didn’t. Do you plan to write a sequel?
I don’t plan on it. I never want to write the same book twice. What keeps me awake at the wheel, as a writer, is the thrill of trying something completely new with each book — new ideas, new settings, craft challenges I’ve never handled before. What makes my heart race is to dream up […]
What does “prodigal” mean?
Recklessly productive, wastefully extravagant, lavish, prolific. I thought it was the perfect word for describing nature in high season, when a maple tree is whirling thousands of seeds into the air. It does not mean “returning home.”
What was your point of origin in writing a book so steeped in biological processes?
I’ve been trained as a biologist, more or less from the beginning. I grew up chasing butterflies, went to graduate school in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and still look at the world through the eyes of a scientist, I suppose. Leaving the halls of science for the world of literature and the humanities was like […]