Isolation sparked his interest in reading. His writing influences are Langston Huges and Flannery O’Connor.

Question: Where are you from and how has that shaped you?

David Maine:The easy part of that question is that I am from Farmington, Connecticut, which is a suburb outside of Hartford. When I was growing up, it was quite a small town. I think 10,000 or 12,000 people; it's a lot bigger now. But I grew up in a pretty wooded street in a house fairly far away from the neighbors, and it was somewhere in between a suburb and a small country town kind of existence. I am not sure how it made me what I am today. Except that it was in some ways kind of isolated, and I had a lot of time, and so I read a lot and I got started reading quite young. I am the youngest of four kids and so, I always had a lot of books that my sisters and my brother were reading, and I kind of picked up on that maybe pretty early.