The fact is there are many women who nod politely, even agree openly within their male-dominated often highly educated cultures, but vote their own minds.

It's not that I bounce ideas off of my children as much as it is that having children has had a profound effect on the way I see the world. They have mined my soul. They've made me a better person and therefore a more empathetic writer.

Literature has done great work for feminism - writing and reading are a practice of empathy - and great literature will continue to do so.

The lessons learned in journalism also apply. Writing for NPR has taught me to cut a piece in half and then in half again - without losing the essence. Apply that to the swollen prose of a bulky novel and you might reveal a beautiful work.

Sometimes you meet someone and you know that your life will be different from then on.

You learn to exploit genre for the more important things - to my mind - like story, character, image, language.

I've left the Church - for many reasons that I've written about publicly - but it's still a large part of my identity, and I still have my faith, if not my Church.