There's so much stigma around HIV/AIDS. It's a challenging issue, and the people that already have been tested and know their status find it very, very hard to disclose their status, to live with that virus, and to even seek out the kind of information they need. This experience of going to South Africa a decade ago really woke me up to the scale of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, how it was affecting women and their children. I haven't been able to walk away from it.

You can live with almost any condition if you're living within a community of people who can share a common understanding.

I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well.

I'm appalled that the word 'feminism' has been denigrated to a place of almost ridicule and I very passionately believe the word needs to be revalued and reintroduced with power and understanding that this is a global picture. It isn't about us and them.

I like where I live here, in London.

I can't understand why the front pages of newspapers can cover bird flu and swine flu and everybody is up in arms about that and we still haven't really woken up to the fact that so many women in sub-Saharan Africa - 60 percent of people in - infected with HIV are women.

I grew up in a middle class household with parents, went to good schools, and never feared for anything, never wanted for anything that was really important. For all of us living in this world, all of us who have the resources, for us to not dedicate ourselves to giving something back, is to leave the world a lesser place.