My mother was wonderfully out about her dementia. She would sort of - she would say to me, I came out to the window cleaner about having dementia. You know, I love the way that verb for coming out of the closet has now become so socially useful for all sorts of situations, like when you need to explain to the window cleaner that you don't know if you paid him or not.

It turns up the heat under a narrative when you limit the characters in their movements or their freedoms.

I was anticipating that some readers might misread [the book] ROOM itself as a hymn to homeschooling.

I've been writing full-time since I was 23.

In the publishing world, most editors are probably women. So I don't see the publishing world as a male-dominated one, especially within fiction.

I think I know what it's like to have a family that the outside world sees as peculiar or lacking.

Writing is nearly always a matter of finding whatever your brain needs to trick it into being creative, and in my case, a tiny little bit of fact just seems to work.