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I do a lot of writing about my family.

I come from a working-class family. They're the people I know and the people I love, I guess. I do not write about them for political reasons, but because, as I see it, most interesting things - social, political, emotional - take place there. It's a bottomless well for an author like me.

I'm a family-based person, even though we didn't exactly have a very happy family. I was never in any doubt that this was a centre of writing.

There are dozens of great American writers who write about the family.

I never thought about what I would write. I just come from such a big family of storytellers.

I grew up in a working-class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know.

I belong to a specific category of writers, those who speak and write in a language different from that of their parents.

I feel like the kind of people I write about are the kind of people I grew up with, the families that I know in my community. Most everyone is working-class, and there are some intact families, but a lot of families aren't.

Looking back, I see that I write books about brothers and sisters, about what makes up a family, what works and what is nurturing.

I write about my life.