Sag Harbor' brought me a new readership - it's a coming of age tale about growing up in the '80s.

Even growing up the way I did, I was shocked by the level of poverty I saw as a college student. I thought the best way to understand it was to get close to it on the ground level.

I don't think we can fix poverty without fixing housing, and I don't think we can address housing without understanding landlords.

I teach at Harvard, and focusing on understanding this problem on a national level is a big priority of mine right now - where evictions are going up and down, what cities are actually instituting policies that work, what housing insecurity is doing to our cities, neighbourhoods, our kids.

My grandfather was from outside of Moscow, and my grandmother, although some of her family were French, was from Odessa. They met as immigrants in New York in the early '20s. My mother's family came over from Ireland generations ago.

Losing his wealth, his home, the life he had built, killed my father. He didn't die right away; it took four decades of exile to finish him off.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds, they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material.

I was a class clown. My father was a class clown. My son has been a class clown, and it sort of ran in the family.