(slow music) (typewriter dings) - [Andre] Hey, this is Andre Dubus III and we're talking about my book, Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin.

(calm music) - Some writers choose to write fiction because you can protect your secrets, but still write about them.

- Yeah.

- But in nonfiction essays, such as what you've written in Ghost Dogs, you have to bear your soul, so why do it?

- Well, I'm kind of a boundaryless guy.

I mean, I'll ask you how much you make?

How's your prostate?

I'm gonna ask these kind of questions of people.

- I appreciate that.

I'm a fellow question asker, so I get it.

- I'm deeply interested in people and I tend to be pretty transparent.

I don't know, I love the essay form.

If you speak French, you know that the word saa means to try or to attempt, and the word essay comes from that verb.

And so each essay is an attempt to make some sense of something that you've gone through.

What I discovered early in my writing life is I do a lot better creatively, Jeremy, when I go far afield from my own life circumstance.

But every now and then, I would, you know, I'd finish something, it takes me three to five years to write a novel say, and there'd be an experience in my life that I really felt I need to explore with language, and that'd be an essay.

- I do want to ask you finally about your children and how that changed you as a writer.

I wonder what you think it does to men and our writing when we become fathers.

- My true life began when I became a dad.

I mean, and I've been a dad for thirty-one and a half years.

All I can say is that it opened my heart in a way that I don't know if my heart would've ever opened otherwise.

And my first feeling as I lay eyes on our first child is, oh, it's you.

Like I recognize 'em from another life or other lives.

I've never felt more joy than I've felt being a father.

And I've had some wonderful experiences outside of fatherhood, and I've never felt more fear.

You know that line from Hemingway?

- [Jeremy] Yeah.

- When you have a child the world forever takes a hostage.

- Right.

- Forever and ever, but look how much love you have.

I can't get over it.

- Andre, it's been such a pleasure.

- Likewise, man.

- And thank you for watching A Word on Words.

I'm Jeremy Finley.

Remember, keep reading.

(typewriter dings) - [Andre] I don't own an iPhone.

I've never sent a text.

I've never been on social media.

I couldn't get breakfast in the hotel this morning cuz you have to do a scan.

Well, you can't do that with my flip phone.