You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblatt.

Welcome to Bookworm.

My guest today is Stephen Dobbins, author of Aftershocks, near escapes, recently published by Viking Penguin.

He's a three-hatted individual.

He's published at least seven books of poetry,

most recently body traffic.

He writes novels,

and he's the author as well

of the Saratoga series

of thrillers, most recently Saratoga Hexameter.

In any case, there's a sort of ongoing grisliness in your preoccupations,

and I wondered where it came from.

Well, I think as a writer or as a human being,

there's that constant question of how do you live, where are you going,

and that forces one to focus on one's own mortality.

And that's the issue of my mortality or human mortality

is something that is constantly addressed in all of my work.

Just that mystery.

...