Sometimes You Have To Let Time Carry

I Feel Like In American Fiction We're Moving Out Of A Period Of Intense Irony, And I'm Very Glad About That. I Feel Like Irony Is Fine For Its Own Sake But Shouldn't Be The Sole Reason To Write A Book. It Has Been An Ironic World View: That's The Best Way I Can Describe It. I'm A Fan Of Earnestness. I Feel Like There's A New Wave Of Earnestness And I'd Be Happy If I'm Some Small Part Of That.

Even Still, We Run. We Have Not Reached Our Average Of 57.92 Years Without Knowing That You Run Through It, And It Hurts And You Run Through It Some More, And If It Hurts Worse, You Run Through It Even More, And When You Finish, You Will Have Broken Through. In The End, When You Are Done, And Stretching, And Your Heartbeat Slows, And Your Sweat Dries, If You've Run Through The Hard Part, You Will Remember No Pain.

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.

Parenthood Means Becoming Comfortable With The Fact That There Are Things Outside Your Control, Things That End And Fail, Just As Most Utopias End And By Some Measure Fail. And Just Because They're A Failure Doesn't Mean There Isn't Value There.

I Had A Series Of Terrible Jobs, Whatever Would Allow Me To Write For Four Hours During The Day. During That Time I Wrote Three Novels - All Of Which Were Extraordinarily Poor. I Decided After That To Go And Get My Mfa.