Q: So what made you want to write?

A: I wanted to write not so much by telling a story I already knew but with the idea that language could lead you to a story.

When we talk about poems, often you don't know how its going to finish. It's not that you don't know anything about it, but that some kind of discovery has to happen in a piece of writing for it to be engaging. It happens and what you thought was going to be the climax happens quicker or more stunningly or deeper than you imagined. What you thought was going to be the ending was not.

Q: Was it difficult to make a transition from poetry to fiction?

A: It was as difficult as anything, really. But it did get harder as it went along, actually. It's like learning another language or another dialect. In the beginning it's very difficult to switch back and forth.

I actually began writing short stories right after grad school. It's different way of looking at the world, but in the end every word in a novel counts too; it just doesn't have that kind of starburst quality of poetry. I do think the rift between prose and poetry has been made greater than what it really is in this country.

Q: How do you feel about your success? How do you account for it?

A: I find myself continually amazed at it. It makes me incredibly happy, and I also realize that prizes and all those kinds of things are great, but it still doesn't mean anything. Still, when I go in and face the page, it's just me and the page. And it's still as difficult and scary and exhilarating as it's always been.

I think it's just a shame that it's taken this many years for another black American to get the Pulitzer in poetry. I don't think I'm the best of all those people; I was in the right place at the right time with some poems that people liked.

Q: Would you agree or disagree with being classified with other African-American women writer? How would you classify the novel?

A: Well, I wouldn't go against it; it's true. I think there are many different ways you can classify the novel. I think it's more meditative than some. It's not really a coming of age. It's more about how she goes from being a young adult to an adult, a second stage perhaps in growing up.

Q: Would you say you have a particular audience in mind when you write?

A: I don't think about audience when I write, and I don't really presume to think about audience after I've written, because I find that I'm always wrong. What I'm trying to get at every time I write is that I'm hoping someone will pick it up and read it with the kind of absorption that I read as a child...There's an incredible intimate bubble of life when you read. I write for that individual reading the book.

Q: Is there any poet or novelist who particularly inspired you?

A: Not just one. I think influence kind of goes underground. You think that you're influenced by someone and then you find out that it's someone else who influenced you. There have been influences throughout my life. One of my earliest influences was--this sounds really highfalutin, but it's true--was Shakespeare. I read Shakespeare before I was told it was difficult and it felt remarkably alive. I felt it was incredible that this man could write poetry and tell a story at the same time.

He influenced me because that's what happened with Thomas and Beulah [the collection of poems for which Dove won a Pulitzer], and the novel certainly has its lyrical elements. In terms of poems, I remember deciding that certain people were pretty cool, like Langston Hughes, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, and then later on Adrienne Rich and Derek Walcott and in terms of novels Toni Morrison and Garcia Marquez and Kundera, but that list keeps growing and changing.

Q: You're reading in Cambridge soon. Do you enjoy giving these readings?

A: I like to read. It's one of the final acts after writing in my room alone to finally connect to a larger audience and to see if in fact it moves someone. If it moves someone it's the greatest feeling in the world. You don't feel so alone anymore. It's kind of like saying I know how you feel, and isn't that what we all want, for someone to say 'yeah, I know how you feel.'