I miss my former teachers, John Hersey and James Alan McPherson. I would love to see either or both and ask what I could do to improve, to deepen my writing.

My parents didn't know how to provide me with the encouragement I needed to achieve my dreams.

We still raise girls to look to other people for assurance they are attractive and smart, while boys are raised to determine their own value. Many girls are still made to feel it's not feminine to be good at science or math.

When parents ask why there are still so few girls in advanced science and math classes in high school, I tell them, because girls still need way more encouragement than boys to take those courses.

When I was growing up, I wanted passionately to be a physicist.

I write and teach creative nonfiction. I was a reporter.

When I left Yale, it was so painful to me. I had worked so hard, gotten so far, and just walked away.

Writers find common ground not through the homelands they once inhabited but the thematic questions with which they grapple.

Most applicants to creative writing programs submit stories about the angst of their suburban childhoods.

The world is a complex place.