I would like to believe I could write about the Pacific Northwest, which is where I grew up and where I find many writers who really interest me because they are writing about the place where I grew up, without really referring to anything specific about the place. I would like to think that a place could be abstracted into a kind of inflection in the way, maybe, that someone would write a Southern Novel set in Scotland or a Russian novel set in Florida. I guess I mean by this a place is less a geography and more of a collection of generations gossiping about each other. This communal talk makes for a place because it is reflected in language.

Part of the reason “ a sense of place” bothers me is that it gives too much weight to the idea that fiction must be rooted in “life experience,” and real, significant events…

~ Matt Briggs @ SmokeLong Quarterly

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