I started writing stories around age eight. At Harvard I studied writing with Ann Beattie, Monroe Engel, and Grace Mojtabai. Following college I didn't write for six years, but at the end of 1987 I started a new story, and by 1992 had more than enough to publish a collection, The Light of Home, with Atheneum. In 1995 my novel Tree of Heaven was published by Soho; my novel The Soldier followed in 1996. My writing career was interrupted in the late 1990s. The publication of my novel Swift River in November, 2014 represents the beginning of my renewed effort to write and be read. I have lived in