The thing that grounds you, and the thing that really gives you a sense of wholeness, is your family, friends and your community. Those are the things that can mirror back to you what you're experiencing, and can affirm to you that the stories you are telling are true.

I still think about the writers I loved when I was a kid.

Writing about women's sexuality is very scary for me because I'm always afraid I'll get it wrong.

There's a lot of effort expended once you begin to completely trash your life. Sometimes, writing feels like this to me.

In some ways all of my fiction is like a conversation I'm having with the writers I read when I was first falling in love with books.

Here is the door of my mom's house, well-remembered childhood portal. Here is the yard, and a set of wires that runs from the house to a wooden pole, and some fat birds sitting together on the wires, five of them lined up like beads on an abacus.

It is not like a premonition of death. It is as if she died a long time ago, and she just now remembered it.