I think diseases have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone.

As people who are women, who are Indigenous and live on Indigenous lands, we know, and this is something I understand the older I get, that they don't visit the same way the postman may visit but they do visit. They visit in ways that our modern society often disregards and considers immaterial or unreal.

I was looking at a lot of experimental writers, and I was very intrigued by short-short fiction, writers who would write little things, what I call buttons now, little vignettes.

"You're next, after the feather dancers." And you had to get their attention, because otherwise people would go, "Oh, a poet." You really have to learn.

I don't know what the definition of a short story is, and I don't even care to answer that question. That's something somebody in academia would think about. I just want to tell a story, and if people listen, and if it stays with you, it's a story.

How can art make a difference in the world?

Many books that you read, they have those disclaimers that say that, "None of the events and none of the people are based on real life" and so on... Well, I don't believe that. I think that as human beings many people touch us, especially people we love the most and we can't help but do character sketches when we go to our art.