I Love Writing From Enclosed Spaces: You

Fiction Is Always A Utopian Task, In That There's An Ideal You Hold In Your Head As You Write Which Inevitably Fails In The Moment Of Creation, In The Insufficiency Of Words To Convey Meaning, Or In The Way The Work Is Completed In The Reader's Head.

I Can Say That If You're A Writer Who Happens To Be A Woman, You'll Get A Book Cover That Depicts A Woman With No Head, Or A Woman Turning Away, Or A Pair Of High Heels. You Have To Fight To Not Get Stuck With These Covers. In The U.s. Women Are Chick-lit Writers Unless They Prove Otherwise, And That's Frustrating.

I'm Ambivalent About The Orange Prize. I Was Really Proud To Be Shortlisted Alongside The Other Writers, Whom I Admire. That Said, I Don't Know If It's Best Way Of Addressing Gender Inequality Problems.

Reading About Utopianism, And Eventually Creating Characters With Their Own Utopian Ambitions, Was The Way I Learned To Live With Being A Pregnant Person, To Stave Off The Sense Of Incipient Disaster. You're Bringing A Person Into This Overcrowded World, Knowing They're One Day Going To Die And There's Nothing You Can Do About It.

And She, The New Mother Of A Daughter, Felt A Fierceness Come Over Her That Seized At Her Heart, That Made Her Feel As If Her Bones Were Turned To Steel, As If She Could Turn Herself Into A Weapon To Keep This Daughter Of Hers From Having To Be Hurt By The World Outside The Ring Of Her Arms.