I did not expect Motherland to be mentioned in the same sentence as Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club and Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance, but there we are, and I’m grateful.

I talked about the history of Motherland to a group of new writers the other day—everything from wild advances and amazing reviews and reasonable expectations and completely hilarious/heartbreaking mishaps and crazy threats and agents (fired long ago) playing Angry Birds during marketing meetings (“Wheee!”)—so to see this made me smile. And on it goes.