How did you become a writer?

Taking a course with the writer Bharati Mukherjee, and reading her book, The Middleman and Other Stories, made me want to write fiction. Her book was the first time I'd encountered fiction about contemporary immigrant life that felt urgent and necessary, and I wanted to contribute to that conversation.

Name your writing influences (writers, books, teachers, etc.).

Bharati Mukherjee, Chang-rae Lee, Peter Ho Davies, Tobias Wolff, John L'Heureux, Jessica Hagedorn.

When and where do you write? 

I do my best writing when I have long stretches of time, in places far away from my apartment in San Francisco. Artist/Writer residencies such as Yaddo, MacDowell, the Bogliasco Foundation, etc., were instrumental in helping me finish my novel.

What are you working on now? 

Still figuring that out.

Have you ever suffered from writer’s block? 

I'm not sure if it's writer's block so much as it is my process. I'm a slow writer, and sometimes it takes years to understand what it is I'm really working on. 

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

"A story is not a story until it's two stories." Also, "It's about the language."

What’s your advice to new writers?

Writing is work. It will always be work. 

Lysley Tenorio is the author of the novel The Son of Good Fortune and the story collection Monstress, named a book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Award, a Stegner fellowship, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Bogliasco Foundation. His stories have appeared in the Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Ploughshares, and have been adapted for the stage by The American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Ma-Yi Theater in New York City. He is a professor at Saint Mary’s College of California.