This project has a couple of different aims. For me, the first and most important goal is to reach an audience with my writing. Everything else stems from that.

But the trip itself was a chance to kind of re-create myself, take stock of things while looking into what it is to be American. It's not the type of thing I want to do over and over again as a writer. Maybe three of four times over the course of my life. It's a way of laying my soul bare in a really intense and interactive way so that I can free myself up as a writer to create stories.