Where he lives: Robert Boswell, 55, and his writer wife, Antonya Nelson -- also a Writers' Conference faculty member -- share the Cullen Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Houston, Texas. Right now he's finishing up a teaching position at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, while his son finishes high school. Next January he'll be back in Houston. Boswell and Nelson also spend summers at a cabin in Telluride, Colo.

Background: Boswell grew up in western Kentucky and moved to Arizona when he was in fifth grade. He went to the University of Arizona in Tucson and met Nelson in the master of fine arts program at the University of Arizona.

How he became a writer: "As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a writer," Boswell said. "I can't remember a time I didn't want to be a writer."

In western Kentucky, he had a boyhood friend, Brady. They would play elaborate games like the War Between the States or being pirates -- with a twist, though. "We would always play our games in chapters, ending on cliffhangers," he said.

Boswell remembers his extended family gathering in the kitchen or around a campfire and telling stories.

"My family has a lot of storytellers," he said. "Telling the stories of their lives, the primary aim always to make people laugh."

Living with a writer: Boswell and Nelson celebrate their 25th year of marriage this summer.

"We have a tremendous amount in common. She is my first reader and I'm her first reader," he said. "Raising kids we had to work out ways where we could trade off so each of us would have time to write. We've always tried to find situations where we'll both be professors there sharing a job and have time to write."

His advice to new writers: "I encourage them to take pleasure in, and put all their focus on, the act of writing -- not publication, not anything else, just the act of writing," Boswell said.

"I encourage them to write in transitional drafts, that every draft is meant to take them to the next draft, and that draft is to take them to the draft after that," he said.

Student writers come out of workshops with all sorts of ideas, he said. "They try to put them all in the next draft. That paralyzes them."

In his work he often does 30 or 40 drafts. Boswell advised writers to try one idea at a time.

"If I see a secondary character whose dialogue is merely perfunctory and stereotyped, I'll go back and do a draft of the whole story or novel where I focus on that character's dialogue," he said. "By that one method, one can write stories that are stronger and more complex than you realize."

His publications: Boswell has had six novels published, including a science fiction novel, "Virtual Light," published under the pseudonym Shale Aaron. That novel came about after he'd spent five years on a demanding novel, "Mystery Ride."

"When I finished that I gave myself permission to do something different," he said. "I had an idea for a science fiction story, and I wrote it."

His most recent novel is "Century's Son," published in 2002. Out this month is a short-story collection, "The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards," published by Graywolf. In a review, Publisher's Weekly wrote, "Boswell conveys the sordid but hopeful inner lives of average people with insight and care; his shorter stories showcase his pleasure in language and invention, and his longer tales pack the emotional weight of a novel."

A nonfiction book, "What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak," co-written with David Schweidel, is about a treasure hunt in the White Sands Missile Range in Nevada.

"I wound up crawling through caves and taking a ladder down 200 feet inside these mountains. It was great fun, like being 12 years old again," Boswell said.

He also has a book about writing, "The Half-Known World."

"In literary fiction we try to create a world the reader can enter but never fully know, which is like the experience we have in the real world," Boswell said -- the "half-known world."

In other genres, characters never really change.

"I compare it to fast food. You know you're not going to get a full meal, but you know what you're going to get. I argue that literature can't be cut from that mold. It has to take great risks and attempt to do more interesting things."

Other interests: Boswell and a brother own an old mining ghost town in Colorado, complete with an old post office. They've been restoring the post office into a cabin.

"I call it a ghost town, but there's hardly any town there. There's a lot more ghosts than anything else ... The veins dry up and the city burns down," he said. "It's a ridiculous amount of fun."

- Compiled by Michael Armstrong, staff writer