I think that's what, to me, also talks about the silences in my work - as a woman, a woman writer, when you say, "no" or you have to say, "no" so often to the writing occasion, those occasions don't really come back.

Even my novels offer passages in which the major character is imagined as a writer. In Joss and Gold, Li An is a business writer who edits her company's weekly public relations magazine. And in Sister Swing, Suyin writes human interest stories for a free, local community paper, The Asian Time.

I'm not sure why my muse is female, except when I am deliberately playing against that figure.

I have some weak poems in that new collection, which is why I'm not ready to send the collection out yet.

The poem is not a physical body. It's a textual body that has life only insofar as it can act symbolically. It cannot physically act.

I only submit the poems I think are the strongest.

I had to do the academic writing. At a top research university, publishing of a certain kind is very important. So your friend is right. You can't do three things well.