A lot of editors will tell you that 2004 and 2005 haven't been very good for fiction acquisitions. There weren't a lot of huge auctions or books that publishers got really excited about.

The criteria signing 'Julie and Julia' were very similar to what we would use for any book proposal: There was a strong voice; there was a freshness and a novelty to what she was doing.

Bill Buford has been one of the great fiction editors in the history of the magazine, bringing into our pages countless new voices, ... He has an intelligence and an imagination that has made itself known in the magazine all the time, and I know he will do that, too, as a writer.

They will have to think through their scripts and make their own judgments just as newspaper editors and TV producers do.

I do understand my limitations as a fiction writer, which is why my novels are always going to be close to home.

In a sense who you are has always been a story that you told to yourself. Now your self is a story that you tell to others.