I couldn't really experience being an author when I was still working in publishing - I was trying to negotiate being both. Sometimes the knowledge doesn't translate between the two roles.

Publishing in a way doesn't have a lot to do with writing, and writing doesn't have a lot to do with publishing.

The past always sort of haunts us and perhaps inspires us in some ways.

I couldn't really experience being an author when I was still working in publishing - I was trying to negotiate being both. Sometimes the knowledge doesn't translate between the two roles.

I think we think that parenthood is confined to the country of mothers, but I think a lot of the men I've spoken to and the men who have read my books - I've been surprised by this actually - have a fierce attachment to being parents and to being fathers. And just as we, a lot of women I know, want this, men too want to pass down what they have to pass down.

My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me to find my way into my story and my characters through research.

As writers, we don't just need to write about poverty or war or the immigrant experience.