And if you read the interview and came here to find out more about me, welcome! Help yourself to free fiction here on the site:
• The first chapter of Solitaire

And, from my collection Dangerous Space:
• “Strings”, collected in the World’s Best Fantasy and Horror
• “And Salome Danced”, a Tiptree Honor Story
• “Dangerous Space”, a Nebula finalist and Tiptree Honor Story (in PDF)

Enjoy.

U2 is home in Dublin for three shows, and you know I’d love to be there in person. But I’m not — so many thanks to Pat McGrath of RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann — Radio Television of Ireland) for letting me be there in voice and in spirit, by including me in a segment about U2 on the Morning Ireland radio show aired Friday morning, July 24. The focus of the segment is joy in U2′s music, and Pat found me through this essay on the joy in U2′s live performance of the song “Elevation” at Slane Castle in 2001.

The segment includes excerpts of my interview as well as interview/music clips from U2. It’s a little over 5 minutes. Give it a listen here, or at the Morning Ireland archives.

If you’re at a U2 show this weekend — or wherever you are — I wish you joy. Ná bog ar an gcaoi a bhfuil eagla ort; bog faoi anáil an ghrá, bog faoi anáil an lúcháir. (Do not move the way fear makes you move; move the way love makes you move, move the way joy makes you move.)

If you’d like to hear it, you can find your local station here, or use this direct link to the mp3 of the show. My segment starts at about 38:30.

And in the spirit of it all, here’s a little something I’ve always loved. You don’t have to go far to find the wild side — it’s right there between your ears. Have fun with yours today.

(Click here if you can’t see the audio player.)

I talk in the interview about how special it was for me to put together the collection and have the chance to consider years of work in a contained way. It turns out the same thing is true for me with this interview. Dave gave me the chance to talk about things I’ve been thinking about for a while, and to string together a number of different ideas and perspectives about my work into a single conversation. Very fun for me, and illuminating in ways I didn’t expect. Kind of like writing that way (grin).

Dave, thanks so much for the chance to be part of Reality Break. It was a genuine pleasure.

Here’s my interview with Matt.

Enjoy. And be sure and check out the rest of the interviews, it’s a very interesting collection of responses. Matt, thanks for supporting all of us this way — I really appreciate it.

I love this format — a roundup of writers answering similar questions in so many different ways — and I’m honored to be in the company of all these writers. Sarah Waters is brilliant, Val McDermid is a funny, gracious woman in whose company I’ve spent some really good time, Nancy Garden is one of my YA writing heroes, and so on… It’s very cool to read the thoughts of so many smart, intense women who are so diverse as writers.

The link at the top of the post is the direct link to my part. But please don’t stop with me — here’s a link to Part 1 of the article, and the entirety of Part 2.

They’ve also posted an interview which, as my editor at Aqueduct has pointed out, does not mention the word “gender” a single time. I get the impression she thinks this is a miracle for me. But in fact it’s not all about gender, really. Sometimes it’s about sex other things.

Enjoy.

The Seventh Week, the Clarion West newsletter, published a brief interview in their Spring 2007 issue. The interview was edited for length (I’m sure this surprises no one who has ever talked to me), but they graciously gave me permission to post the entire interview here.

The interview includes talk about why I write, and my advice to Clarion students (and by extension anyone who wants to learn to write).

Read the interview on the Aqueduct Press blog, and wander back this way if you’d like to talk more about it.