My first tattoo is a full-on Sailor Jerry situation on my hip - it's a swallow with big spread wings. When I got it I was 20 on St. Mark's Place in New York I just walked in in a frenzy. It's still there 17 years later and it's not a terrible thing to look at.

Brooke Berman's voice is utterly distinct, and her book, detailing her nomadic artist's journey toward both a successful playwriting career and a home of her own, through 20 years of cramped sublets, high-rise palaces, writer's colonies, and boyfriend's vans, is a hilarious, hopeful, and penetrating must-read.

I read stuff. Books are not my only friends, but we're friendly. So there.

I like monsters in general - that's what I like to write about. Somebody was joking with me that my body was becoming a manual for a role-playing game because I'm covered in little monsters. That's true. I could easily have more monsters on my skin.