I had a Stuart Davis poster growing up.

Growing up, I was not told that there were women's areas of preoccupation or male ones.

Story and plot, not historical facts, are the engine of a novel, but I was committed to working through the grain of actual history and coming to something, an overall effect, which approximated truth.

I am occasionally enraptured by Western landscape. But I don't identify that state of mind as having to do with my own origins, having grown up in the West, although I certainly crisscrossed Nevada countless times growing up, and then as a young adult, in cars and on motorcycles.

I am struck by the fact that personal faith and political agendas are intertwined more closely now than at any other time in recent history.

God, I just love 'A Journey to the End of the Millennium,' by A. B. Yehoshua. My favorite novel by an American Jew is probably 'Humboldt's Gift.'

For kids who are struggling, who are of faith, just reconciling yourself to the fact that God loves you, accepts you for who you are, is a big step in the healing, especially when your biological family is unaccepting of you.

I've never felt the breath of God - you can take that statement literally or metaphorically - more than when I was yearning for a personal, intimate connection to something bigger than me.