I feel like in the reading I did when I was growing up, and also in the way that people talk and tell stories here in the South, they use a lot of figurative language. The stories that I heard when I was growing up, and the stories that I read, taught me to use the kind of language that I do. It's hard for me to work against that when I am writing.

One of the things that is so striking to me about the South, especially living here now as an adult, is that I see a lot more mixed-race couples than I saw when I was growing up in the 1980s and the 1990s. I feel like living across the color lines has become something that's more expected.

The UnAmericans' is a compassionate and brilliantly rendered debut - and for a book set largely in the past, these stories feel essential to understanding the contemporary world in which we live.

I'm always thinking about time. That's one of themes I return to in my work, the way the past bears on the present, the way that time is not linear, and how that expresses itself in people's everyday lives.

As children, we think our mother has always been a mother, but it is just one of the roles you may have the opportunity to play. They don't define you as a human being.

Thanks to my mother, people tell me I look younger than I am, especially without make-up. And I suppose my father had a part in making me more frugal with my money.

Above all, I believe every child, no matter their ZIP code or their parents' jobs, deserves access to a quality education.

I think, in real life, when we're facing death - that is, when we come out on the other side of it, whether it's death of a friend or a family member - you come out on the other side of the mourning cherishing your life that much more.