There are things I don't like, like sitting at the head of the class. It makes me uncomfortable. I'll do it in a seminar if I have to, but with a workshop, I try to put myself in the circle somewhere. Because that hopefully frees up some people by making somebody else sit at the nominal head of the table.

People are very comfortable when race relations get looked at retrospectively. Slavery, the civil rights movement, etc.

The other thing [my psychology professor] said to me was that I was always very mindful of the person who was away from the group, that I was always trying to bring them in.

I think there's nothing new going on. Except that, you're even more public than you've ever been.There's some good and some bad to that.

I'm very fortunate. I'm not much of a self-promoter or anything.

Like when you have the right title for something you're writing and you get lost - you can always go back to the title and go, "Yeah, that's what this is about."

My British publisher has this independent press. It's pretty small; they actually won last year. And she's got this great energy, and she's fiercely independent, and you know this book was a hard sell. No one wanted to buy this book. But she did, and so it's paid off for her, I hope.