I'm Ambivalent About The Orange Prize. I

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 A Physical Learner. I Learn From Writing Drafts, Not Reading Them.

Sex Makes Things Strained. There Are Lovely People In Oneida, But Everyone Was Married To Everyone Else. And You Had Fathers And Mothers Watching Their Twelve-year-old Daughters Being Inducted Into The Group Marriage By Sixty-five-year-old Men. There Are Creepy Aspects Of A Lot Of Intentional Communities When It Comes To Sex.

Childhood Is Such A Delicate Tissue; What They Had Done This Morning Could Snag Somewhere In The Little Ones, Make A Dull, Small Pain That Will Circle Back Again And Again, And Hurt Them In Small Ways For The Rest Of Their Lives.

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.