Before I got my present job, I spent many years teaching writing part-time, so-called, at community colleges and universities. It's academia's versio….

With the historical fictions, I was already doing so much research, and so much of the stories was anchored by historical truth that the move to nonf….

I kept writing short stories and sending out my manuscript, and it kept coming back like a bad penny. It was rejected all over town, quite often in v….

Once I had started, I discovered the secret pleasure of writing a novel. It's such an immersive, deep commitment. With short stories, you're continua….

Along the way, I've worked as a waitress, I've done phone surveys, and worked as a receptionist, and for the last twenty years I've taught. When I wa….

I haven't written anything yet that makes me think, This is it! and I don't imagine I ever will. I don't know how it is with you, but when I finish s….

Peculiar as I was, and remain, I was trained to be practical. I'm still amazed at the radical temerity of my friends, you included, Julie, who choose….

If anything, I've found nonfiction a little easier. You don't have to make anything up. Of course, that's the inherent difficulty as well: when you h….

If you had told me twenty years ago that I would write a novel set in Russia, much less two, I simply wouldn't have believed you. I had no familiarit….

The trajectory of my writing has moved further and further away from autobiography. My first stories in Confessions of a Falling Woman worked familia….

Unless you're Stephen King or Joyce Carol Oates, no one's going to recognize you on the street, and you're promoting your book, not yourself..

If you have some other profession that allows you your evenings or weekends, terrific, stick with that. Having a profession other than writing also h….

I loved short stories, and they were all I wanted to write. I love the compression of them and the exactitude needed to get a whole world into such a….

That requires quite an imaginative leap because it's hard for me to imagine that my biography would be of much interest to anyone, and because I'm a ….

I always think, OK, this is good, but I'll do it better next time. "And so we beat on, boats against the current. . ." It may not be the recipe for a….

You're unusual. That's better than popular if you have some courage..

Whatever one may say about the perils of workshops, they help writers internalize an awareness of audience..

As a writer, the ideal job is the one that allows you time and mental space away from it. Teaching seemed to me like the obvious choice - those summe….

One of the nice things about moving from acting to writing is that your work can be in the public eye without having to be in the public eye yourself….

I think I was also afraid of the novel. I write line by line, proceeding at snail's pace, rewriting as I go and paring the excess away. This is again….

I figured that to be a writer I would need to have been born in the nineteenth century, be British, or have three names. So I turned my sights elsewh….