Yes, writing is essential to me. It's my way of living in the world.

Life's funny. You have to find a way to keep going, to keep laughing, even after you realize that none of your dreams will come true. When you realize that, there's still so much of a life to get through.

And then, into the fantasy, as into a dream, would come the thought: it's not like this anymore; the world has changed. Just the way, even at that time fully two years after my mother's death, I'd catch myself thinking about her as alive; and would suddenly remember, an admonitory finger of grief upon my breast, that she was gone.

To my mind, Guernica is the most important online intellectual and literary journal in America today.

We live in a culture that wants to put a redemptive face on everything, so anger doesn't sit well with any of us. But I think women's anger sits less well than anything else. Women's anger is very scary to people, and to no one more than other women who think: Oh, goodness, well, if I let the lid off, where would we be?

I've always felt that if a project seems easy, or even attainable, why pursue it? I'll always find the hardest path.

I wanted to write a voice that for me, as a reader, had been missing from the chorus: the voice of an angry woman.