To be read. To be heard. To be seen. I want to be read, I want to be heard. I don't need to be seen. To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones. Words have a weight to them. How you choose to present them and to whom is a matter of style and choice.

A pencil is a wand and a weapon. Be careful. Protect yourself. It can be glorious.

To withhold words is power. But to share our words with others, openly and honestly, is also power.

There is an art to writing, and it is not always disclosure. The act itself can be beautiful, revelatory, and private.

When Emily Dickinson writes, “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,” she reminds us, as the birds do, of the liberation and pragmatism of belief.

When I write, I put one foot in front of the other. It's an act of faith. I just follow my heart.

I write as a witness to what I have seen.

I write about nuclear tests in Refuge - "The Clan of One-Breasted Women." With so many of the women in my family being diagnosed with breast cancer, mastectomies led to one-breasted women. I believe it is the result of nuclear fallout.

I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.