I see so many talented writers of color struggling to get their work out to an audience. I know that's the case for all writers - everyone's struggling for attention - but I do think that for writers of color it's harder, and for women it's harder, and for regional writers it's harder, too.

My mom worked as a housekeeper, and I saw her relationship with her employers - how on the one hand she spent more time with these women than with a lot of her friends, and how in certain ways they were friends. But then they weren't.

I hope that if the people who read my work encounter people in the real world who are like the characters that I write about, that maybe that might make them feel empathy for those people. I know it sounds idealistic in a way, but I do hope that my work maybe changes some minds, and that my work makes readers see people as human that maybe before they read my work they might not have seen as humans, and those people include me and my family and my kids, people in my community.

I think that I'm trying to hopefully change my children's ideas about what is possible, and about what is possible for them.

When you have a family, even though you might move a lot, you collect all of these things. It's the detritus of your family and they become the symbols of your family life, and your unit out in the world. In that moment I wanted to allude to the fact that the way my parents' relationship was falling apart was impacting me and my brother, my parents, but also our symbols.

I read the last Harry Potter, and I cried for at least the last 70 pages. Awful! I was curled into a ball and I just kept sobbing. It was embarrassing. I was loud, and I just kept wiping tears away so I could see the page.

I think that we need to be more aware of how we are all interconnected, and how we actually need to invest in safety nets and in education, and that we need to come to the realization that health care is a human right and try to provide that for people.