I want to be identified as a writer, not a Southern writer, not a woman writer, not a woman from this or that place, but unfortunately it doesn't always happen.

I don't believe that fiction is dead. I know there are some people who believe that it's an outdated art form, and that to express truth today you need to work in different forms, to write books where it's perhaps not clear what's fiction and what's memoir. I have nothing against those books and love many of them very much. But we have enough space for everyone, traditional realists and hybrid writers, and experimental writers all.

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

I had a series of terrible jobs, whatever would allow me to write for four hours during the day. During that time I wrote three novels - all of which were extraordinarily poor. I decided after that to go and get my MFA.

A lot of my work comes from a place of despair or fear. I often write in order to gain some sort of control over aspects of my life or the world that seem too dark to look at directly.

As soon as you publish a book and the reader reads it, they're making an extension of your brain with their brain.

I love Twitter. It's like having a closet full of clever friends that you can visit twice a day, then shove back into the darkness when you're tired of them.