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Lawence Sutin grew up in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. His parents, whose oral history he chronicled in Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance (1995), were Jewish partisan fighters during the Holocaust. “Given that I was raised in a family where there was a legacy of pain,” he says, “there was a middle time in my life where I simply needed to be on my own and find out who I was.” A Postcard Memoir (2000), his collection of lyric essays in dialogue with samples from his postcard collection, reflects a self-awareness that is gentle, affable, and dark. He is also the author of Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley (2000) and Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick (1989).

Though he knew from a young age that he wanted to write, he early on pursued a degree in law from Harvard University, he says, “out of fear of the world.” Currently he teaches in the MFA program at Hamline University in St. Paul and the low-residency MFA program at Vermont College.

Mr. Sutin was interviewed over lunch at the Silver City Grill, in Spokane, Washington.