In December 2011, a wild gray wolf set foot in California, the first sighting in almost a century. He'd wandered in from Oregon, looking for a mate.

Some suggestions for you :

Do we seek delicate phraseology in politics or other forms of public life? We do not.

African elephants have long been thought of as a single species, but a critical mass of genetic studies now proves there are two.

I don't tend to picture my characters as actors and actresses.

For almost two centuries, American gray wolves, vilified in fact as well as fiction, were the victims of vicious government extermination programs. By the time the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, only a few hundred of these once-great predators were left in the lower 48 states.

In 1805, the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, making their way across the West, were warned by American Indian tribes of grizzly bears' awesome strength.

I think the best fiction is a form of psychological suspense, even though I don't really write in that idiom.

In October 2014, for the first time in almost three-quarters of a century, a gray wolf was seen loping along the forested North Rim of the Grand Canyon, in Arizona. She had walked hundreds of miles, probably from Wyoming or Idaho.

Domestic realism has dominated the American marketplace for decades now. It leeches into literary fiction, and I don't think it's that rich a vein.

I had hoped that going to Hiroshima would reveal something small, gritty, and precise to countervail the epic quality of historical accounts.

In Hiroshima, bombed Aug. 6, 1945, no warning was given of the air attack, and thus no escape was possible for the mostly women, children and old people who fell victim.

I wanted to go into the tropics and save animals - and write, of course.

It seems to me that the time for subtlety in our American life has passed.

People from the rest of the state tend to hate Phoenix, with that typical resentment of the boroughs and the towns for the big city.

I think that young readers have very strong stomachs.