I hold an MA in creative writing from Northwestern University, where my instructors included Aleksander Hemon and John Keene. I previously interned with Words Without Borders and spent this summer fine-tuning this manuscript with Jamie Gordon, Robert Eversz and Stuart Dybek in Prague. After four years of living and working in Hong Kong, I split my time between the US and Istanbul, where I have been working at Robert College. While I graduated from a program that took us through the standard writing workshop paces—although Hemon offered a different pedagogical approach—I was drawn to more experimental work. My own reading list included J.M. Coetzee, Javier Marias, Orhan Pamuk, Don DeLillo, Herta Muller, Nabokov, Borges, Calvino, Cervantes and Shakespeare. Aesthetics occupy my mind. I make collages, compositions that tend to be both dialogical and personal.