I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book.

As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.

I feel like writing a book there's always a version in your head that's an amazing version, but then you write the version that you can write.

Many years, I would publish four books - an anthology, a book of criticism, a new book of poems, a book of essays.

It took me years to learn that sentences in fiction must do much more than stand around and look pretty.

I publish my own books, so there isn't a certain editor I owe the book to at a publishing house.