Stefan Kiesbye and I first met at the University of Tampa, where I was a student in the low-residency MFA program. Stefan was a faculty member. While he was not my direct mentor, he taught many classes and workshops, and generously shared his views on fiction with me and other students. I felt I knew him.

But during this interview, I discovered new things: Stefan grew up in a superstitious household that believed in witches and ghosts; his answer to a flagging muse is to feed it rotten apples; he prefers to write by the seat of his pants; and he has an obsession with feet. Of course, there were other things: the success of Stefan’s previous book, Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone, cast a shadow for some time; the humor in Stefan’s books comes from a place of some darkness—he does not consider himself…