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I have published so many books in so many years. I can't complain about any lack of attention. But I've never been placed as a Southern writer, which I really am. So I was happy finally to be published by someone in the South.

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

Every famous writer was once an unknown writer. If publishers never published new writers, they wouldn't be publishing anyone at all after a while.

At first I read mostly books by Southern authors - black and white - because almost all the people I knew were born and raised in the South, starting with my mother. I remember I got a lot of Erskine Caldwell.

I had several publishers, and they were all the same. They all wanted salacious. And everybody is writing autobiographies, and that's one reason why I'm not going to do it. If young Posh Spice can write her autobiography, then I don't want to write one!

Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes.

I think it would be a shame for any writer to let their publishers in any way corral them into a single genre.

I'm a writer. I never expected to be recognised on the street. I never expected to get that kind of coverage, good or bad. I never expected to sell as many books as I have.

There's that unwritten schism that literary writers get all the awards and commericals writers get all the success.

I am very indebted to southern writers and not just Flannery O'Connor. Also Harry Crews, Larry Brown, Tennessee Williams, Barry Hannah and William Gay.