My earliest reading memory
The deaths of Old Dan and Little Ann in Wilson Rawls's Where the Red Fern Grows were etched into my being as a first grader in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

My favourite book growing up
Stephen King's The Stand. I completely lost myself in the story. I don't think I realised at the time what a rare gift it is to have that experience.

The book that changed me as a teenager
When I was 12 or 13, I wandered into the modest poetry section of our local used bookstore and was drawn to the cover art of Dylan Thomas's Collected Poems. I flipped it open and read, "Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs …" I won't pretend I was a sophisticated reader of poetry at the time, but the music was undeniable. I wrote my first attempt at poetry that night and knew from that moment I would chase that music for the rest of my life.

I read GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy when I was in my early 20s. His framing of tradition as democracy extended to the dead was something I'd never considered, and frankly, found quite persuasive. My politics didn't change, but I discovered how essential it is to have your ideas challenged, and how foolish it is to believe your opinions are correct simply because you are the one who holds them.

F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, at school, when I was 15 or 16. I fell so deeply in love with the book that, and this is somewhat embarrassing to admit, I would type out sentences from it on my family's old desktop computer just to see what it felt like.

The book or author I came back to
I had a friend in graduate school who was such an evangelist for David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest that he would give me pep talks each of the thousand times I was ready to abandon it. When I finally got to Don Gately's portion of the narrative, the book completely opened up to me, and I now deeply admire it.

The book I reread
I moved to Texas in my 20s and was recommended John Graves's Goodbye to a River, a memoir of a final canoe trip down the Brazos River before it was meant to be dammed up. The writing is exquisite. For me it's the platonic ideal of a book as the record of a mind at work. I've reread it every year or two ever since.

The book I could never read again
Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel was another transformative work I read as a teenager. I'm afraid I wouldn't like it if I read it again, and I don't want to take that joy away from my 16-year-old self.

The book I discovered later in life
I read Pär Lagerkvist's Barabbas only a few years ago, and it has become a touchstone for clarity in my own writing. There are scenes that are among the most deeply moving yet plainly told as anything I've ever read.

The book I am currently reading
I just finished Foster by Claire Keegan and immediately ordered everything she's ever published.

My comfort read
If I'm honest, I think I read to be made uncomfortable.