I will say in open adoption, all these choices you make about race, about the amount of mental illness you can deal with, about special needs and physical maladies, you have to lay all this out there before you know anybody's story.

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

The birth mother is placing the baby out of love. I still believe that. Well, the ones weve dealt with who were actually pregnant, anyway.

I feel like if writers used writing as therapy we'd have a ton of happy writers.

I wanted a baby of color, to be honest, because I wasn't attached to the idea that I look like the biological mother. I liked the idea of the adoption being clear; it was and is not something I am interested in hiding.

Idea of the generations continuing is really important. And that's interesting to me. I write about families; I'm interested in families. Even though I think a family can be just two people or two people and a dog, I really wanted children for that reason.

I find I have to touch what I am working on every day, or a deep-seated dread kicks in that is very hard to overcome.