SOURCE: Moore, Lorrie, and Don Lee. “About Lorrie Moore.” Ploughshares 24, nos. 2-3 (fall 1998): 224-29.

In the following interview, Lee provides an overview of Moore's life, literary career, and fiction.

Lorrie Moore hasn't had a full night's sleep in three and a half years. It's not what you think, however. She has not, like one of her characters, fallen prey to love woes or obsessive-compulsive panic. If anything, Lorrie Moore is far tougher than most people would suspect. It's simply that she has a feisty three-and-a-half-year-old son. “This particular parenting experience has been like a large nuclear bomb on the small village of my life,” she says.

The author of two novels and two short story collections, with a third, Birds of America, due out this fall, Moore has lived in Madison, Wisconsin, for the past fourteen years. Since 1984, she has been teaching at the University of Wisconsin, where...