I am a woman, and I am a Latina. Those are the things that make my writing distinctive. Those are the things that give my writing power.

Everything is holding its breath inside me. Everything is waiting to explode like Christmas. I want to be all new and shiny. I want to sit out bad at night, a boy around my neck and the wind under my skirt. Not this way, every evening talking to the trees, leaning out my window, imagining what I can't see.

You know how sometimes you meet writers that are so full of themselves? They feel really proud that they wrote something . But what they don't understand - and I like to tell this to writers - is that writing is like fishing. It's just like fishing. If you don't fish that often, you're not going to catch that many fish.

There are two things you need to ask for, to open up that channel, so you get the light. One is humility, because our ego is always going to block that guidance, and so you ask for humility.And the second thing you're going to ask for is courage, because what you're going to be asked to do is bigger than what you think you can do.

The truth has a strange way of following you, of coming up to you and making you listen to what it has to say.

I learn through listening and watching other performers that are very good, like Denise Chávez, Dorothy Allison.

Like all guests, after a fortnight, grief is best beyond the door.