I'm Ambivalent About The Orange Prize. I

I'm A Private Person, A Shy Person. Sometimes, Reading For Eleven Hours Straight Feels To Me Like The Perfect Way To Spend A Day.

I Feel Lucky. I Do Love It, Mostly. At College I Had It In My Heart That I Wanted To Be A Writer But I Didn't Want To Tell Anyone About It. Then I Graduated And Became A Bartender In Philadelphia, Writing During The Day. I Was The Worst Bartender In The World.

Our Human Impulse Is To Control Everything, But Fiction Seems To Me To Be About Allowing An Element Of Mystery Into The Text.

In Terms Of Writing, I Think What Most Fiction Writers Treasure More Than Anything Is The Feeling That They're Living For The Length Of A Book Inside Another Person.

Writing By Hand Is A Way Of Letting Mystery Into My Writing. But I'm Constantly Trying To Figure Out How To Do This Job. It's A Work In Progress.