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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal. Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblad, and today my guest is DaGoberto Gilb.

He has published three books with Grove.

The most recent is a book of short stories called Woodcuts of Women.

His first book was Magic of Blood, and he wrote the novel, The Last Known Residence of Mickeyacuna.

I wanted to begin by asking, when did you start writing?

You've been writing a very long time, it seems, before the first book got published.

Yeah, I started pretty quickly after, you know, when I got out of college, I sort of decided

to be a writer. I was one of these in the new, in this old way, which is now totally new.

I didn't want to be a writer when I was in college. I was like after college. So I was in my late

20s by then. And what were the inspiration points for you? The first time I decided to start

writing, and I joke about this, but it's kind of serious was when I took a remedial English class.

I was tutoring remedial English at the University of California. And once I

figured out where commas and periods went, I just sort of like got excited that I could write.

But then also, you know, and I almost hate to admit this in some respect because it's not like

the influence in certain respect. But, you know, Jack Kerouac, just because he had a human

voice, just, you know, opened the world to me. I just, because, you know, going back to the

remedial English, I didn't understand, you know, when I'd read English in which I, you know,

...