I think writers are often people who experience early dislocations and disruptions in their lives. When I was nine, my Irish Catholic family of eight moved from Ohio to Athens, GA. As we drove through Commerce, Georgia, there was a burnt cross in a yard. My mother said, “Turn the car around, Bill! We can’t live here.” But of course, he didn’t turn the car around. He had a new job as a professor in the Art Department of UGA. This was during the Civil Rights era, and the Catholic school was the first integrated school in the town. As I walked to school with my younger brothers and sisters every day, a neighbor would, without fail, throw stones at us, yelling, “Dance, n**** lovers, dance!”

Of that didn’t make me feel different enough, there was the fact that my father was a sculptor. Here we were, smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt, and our home was filled with nude sculptures and drawings. Friends who came to our home would ask me in breathy whispers why we had all those naked ladies in our house. It never occurred to me why, it was just what we grew up with.

I knew from an early age I didn’t fit in, and that made me an observer. I was drawn to the gap between what I was told was real and what I experienced as real. My inner life was at least as compelling as my outer life, and maybe more so. I had the example of my father’s expressiveness and the gift of story from my Irish mother. As painful as it was to be an outsider as a child, I am glad that I was. It made me turn to writing as a way to understand myself and  the world around me.