I think of myself as Rebecca Wells from Lodi Plantation, in Central Louisiana, a girl who was lucky enough to be born into a family that encouraged creativity and didn't call me lazy or nuts when I dressed up in my mother's peignoirs and played the piano, having painted a small sign decorated in glitter that read 'The Piano Fairy Girl.

At the beauty of what she had stumbled onto, at the fear that something terrible would happen because she was not vigilant enough. She cried at the fear of something so good that she would not be brave enough to bear it.

A scent that disturbs me and delights me. It smells like ripe pears, vetiver, a bit of violet and something else- something spicy almost biting and exotic.

I come to writing from hearing great stories as a child in Louisiana, where the mark of a person was his or her ability to be a raconteur. I also come to writing as a professional actress whose body has been trained to listen and smell and inhabit characters without judgment.

we have to suffer mosquitoes the size of blackbirds.

How wide and sweet and wild motherhood and sisterhood can be.

When I'm reading, wherever I am, I'm always somewhere else.