Elizabeth McCracken

The thing that most interests me about writing - there are lots of things, but the thing I can't do without - is the hit of happiness a lovely sentence delivers.

I work in my office on the campus of the University of Texas. It's the sort of place described as 'book-lined', but it's recently tipped over into 'fire-hazard' territory.

It's hard to know which made me more aware of the impossibility of protecting children - having a child die or having had two live.

Under the previous regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, I was detained. So was my wife, Serkalem Fasil. She gave birth to our son in prison in 2005.

I'm not afraid of wanting money at all. Money will give me more power to do things that are truer to my spirit than what I'm already doing.

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.