As writer pay declined and teacher pay also, we all started hanging out online. You could say online social networks cheapen our friendships or you could say we were cheapened by a plutocratic power grab and this is all we can afford.

Throughout my reading life, I've enjoyed many memorable meals-if only fictionally. The oysters at dinner near the beginning of Anna Karenina, the dinner Nana throws for her overflowing guests in Zola's Nana, the walk through Les Halles for breakfast in Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, and nearly every meal in Monique Truong's The Book of Salt.

Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA.

I have lived for a long time inside a series of coincidences that most people would find implausible in a novel.

The way some were entrapped into lives of prostitution, the way that something like marriage could rob them of their rights.

Whenever people say a coincidence in a novel is implausible, I think, Do I have a story for you.

My interest in women's voices started when I was in the boys' choir and we were singing in opera choruses. That was my first close-up experience with the female soprano voice. I was amazed at how it could be within the same scale but so different in quality.