I have almost never been compared to male writers in any review. All women.

I try to tell student writers to read as much as possible, not only literature but philosophy, theory, and to form obsessions. There's a big taboo in fiction creative writing workshops against using the self at all, and I think I try to encourage students to write the self, but to connect the self to something larger, which is to be this thinking, seeing, searching, eternally curious person, and that writing can come out of investigating and trying to understand confusion, and doubts, and obsessions.

Patriarchy is having the power to name.

I hope what I do when I draw from other people's lives is pay tribute. To try to understand what it means in our society to be silenced. To try to understand how class and gender intersect with that. To try to understand how being named and classified within the context of psychiatry can intersect with all that, as well.

On the whole, most biographies about literary women tend to diagnose them.

My writing has always been considered extremely important, even though I make slim-to-no money at it.

I think that writing and publishing are different. I think I will always write; I might not always publish. The idea of not publishing is wonderful!