A few months ago, a photographer friend came to my house to take some high-quality shots of yours truly. I generally loathe having my photo taken and loathe even more looking at those photos. More often than not, what I think I’m projecting to the world doesn’t quite square with what has been captured with angles and light. It’s humbling.

As women, we have tremendous capacity to wound and heal one another. Even in extending acts of generosity, we are filling our own pockets with something that satisfies the hungriest parts of ourselves. The central characters in my debut novel, God Bless the Child, are bound by what they crave and withhold from one another as they exist within circumstances that have been thrust upon them.