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

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

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

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.

I want to say that, in general, when it works, open adoption is great.

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.