I was invited to give the Freshmen Convocation at Florida Gulf Coast University on October 24, 2004. My book The Open Space of Democracy had been selected as one of the "common readers" for the university's 1,050 entering freshmen. On October 6, William Merwin, the president of Florida Gulf Coast, made the decision to "postpone" the convocation. He cited negative statements I had made in print about President Bush. If our colleges and universities are no longer the champions and protectors of free speech, then no voice in this country is safe.

To hear something asks very little of us. To listen places our entire being on notice.

Water is nothing if not ingemination, an encore to the tenacity of life.

Stories have the power to create social change and inspire community.

We mask our needs as the needs of others.

I don't set boundaries for myself when I am writing; if I did, I would be paralyzed from the start, unable to write a word on the page.

To me, writing is about how we see. The writers I want to read teach me how to see-see the world differently. In my writing there is no separation between how I observe the world and how I write the world. We write through our eyes. We write through our body. We write out of what we know.