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.

I think the female first-person is still dismissed, demonized, especially if the book does not end on an empowering note, especially if the main character is perceived as unlikeable, or too privileged.

I'm just too lazy. I wish I could be someone that has wild affairs - all of my favorite nonfiction novels are about these wild affairs and postmarital agonistes - but to be honest, I'm someone that doesn't deal well with instability.

One of my moments of coming to writing, of needing to write to attempt to create myself, to attempt to absolve and understand my past passivity, came when a girl I loved very much, who I had been estranged from for some time, killed herself.

I always remember my childhood as traumatic, for various reasons; I always felt alienated, outside.

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.

I think so often, especially if the work is perceived of as being drawn from life, the woman, not her book, is reviewed.