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

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.

Characters to me are like sonnets, they have limits that you obey which allow a force to enter in, an invention that makes the novel possible. Change the limits and the force leaves. The novel becomes impossible.

PhD, MFA, self-taught - the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.

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

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.

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.