“I came to writing compressed literature in a backward fashion—or perhaps it’s the natural order: novels, then short fiction, then poems. Turns out my aim is the same regardless of size or form; I want to tell a story, and want that story to mean something, preferably something accessible and entertaining at the same time, not weighted or bloated with its own importance. Freeing my writing from the tether of the probable liberates its themes—loneliness, love, death—and sets it free to shoot like a meteor across the stratosphere or like a bullet into the gut.” — Camille Alexa