Story is the umbilical cord that connects us to the past, present, and future. Family. Story is a relationship between the teller and the listener, a responsibility. . . . Story is an affirmation of our ties to one another.

I think about the poet Rainer Maria Rilke who said that it's the questions that move us, not the answers. As a writer, I believe that it's our task, our responsibility, to hold the mirror up to social injustices that we see and to create a prayer of beauty. The questions serve us in that capacity.

I believe a politics of place emerges where we are deeply accountable to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our home.

No separation between the spiritual and the physical. It is all one.

People talk about medium. What is your medium? My medium as a writer has been dirt, clay, sand--what I could touch, hold, stand on, and stand for--Earth. My medium has been Earth. Earth in correspondence with my mind.

I admire how she protects her energy and understands her limitations.

To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.