The myth works to make the very real things people don't want to look at visible for them.

Everyone would tell me they couldn't identify with sexual abuse. No one says they can't identify with the tales of the Greek gods and goddesses because they don't live on Mt. Olympus.

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

It's my experience that people don't think of fiction writing as being as intellectually serious as other kinds of writing in academia and so without a career as a critic or essayist you can be treated as something of a spiritual medium - a fraud - for "just" writing fiction.

With my family background - my parents were both activists - writing about culture and politics came naturally.

I was trying to make a novel about something no one wanted to read about into something they couldn't put down or look away from.

As I get ready to buy a new computer, I'm stunned at all the many micro drafts, of different chapters and scenes and whatnot, that litter the hard drive.