As a bisexual woman (who, as it happens, is faithfully married to a man and therefore living a “straight” life) I feel it is important to include hom… - Alisa Valdes

The biggest driving force in my life has been justice — and by that I don’t mean revenge. I mean fairness for all kinds of people. I think it comes in part from being the daughter of an immigrant who was grossly underestimated for most of his career and life, and the sort of despair you feel watching that happen, the sense that things aren’t fair from a very early age…

Never sat down and thought: “I’m going to create a new genre.” I just sat down and wrote a book that I wanted to read but couldn’t find. In retrospect, I don’t think it’s a new genre; it’s just a novel. There’s an unfortunate tendency in the publishing industry to view ethnicity as a genre and only for certain people. So if you are a minority, your race or ethnicity becomes your genre. Or if you are a woman, your sex becomes your genre. “Women’s fiction”: What does that even mean? Would we ever dare say “commercial men’s fiction”? I think these are marketing terms.

I think labels are generally used to benefit those who invented them, and those who invent them tend not to be those upon whom they are foisted. That said, labels can be tools of empowerment or marginalization, depending on who is using them and why…