I love short stories because I believe they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.

What's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy.

I think what I love most about writing is that feeling that you really nailed something. I rarely feel it with a whole piece, but sometimes with a line you feel that it really captured what it is that you had inside you and you got it out for a stranger to read, someone who may never love you or meet you, but he or she is going to get that experience from that line.

Berg writes with humor and a big heart about resilience, loneliness, love, and hope. And the transcendence that redeems.

House of Sand and Fog ... I suffer from migraines and when she curled up in the bathtub... I felt her pain. Also, I've met people from Iran and felt connected to their culture in the author's descriptions.

House of Sand and Fog,