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

I do think that memoirs by women are reviewed differently and considered somewhat outside of the canon.

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

With fiction, the works of women are often over-interpreted as autobiography, especially when the main character is a woman, especially if she is seen as privileged.

I'm exposing faultlines, dealing especially with rhetoric. Showing that heterosexuality is a disease, or at least its inheritance.

I think genius can have a lot to do with nerve. And permission.