Interviews

I can make connections across different times in my life, connections between different selves, and somehow that makes everything feel more whole.

As a novelist, you have to decide, what doesn’t serve the drama at that particular point. Even biographers have had to make serious decisions about what to include.

There’s always so much happening around us—we can’t possibly take it all in—but certain things seem to be a beacon for my attention.

When women are in partnerships—being a wife or a girlfriend of a partner—we take on all these different roles but they’re always changing. Our jobs are always changing and evolving.

A writer isn’t in control of what’s on the page, the story is. But if you give a story something, it gives it back.

So many stories are written for/about male heroes with a traditional, predictable plot. That’s not to say that I didn’t and don’t hope other people would read and be interested in these stories, but I wrote them first for myself.

You could write about this weird thing, and people who like to read will be down to find out about this different world. It’s a very different situation in a nightclub or a theater.

Writing about illness is a way to push back against all the pathologizing and dismissiveness. It allowed me to be in charge of my own narrative.

It’s now my favorite way to write—in community. There’s something safe about it, you feel held.