ROBIN BLACK: I can't say anyone was an inspiration. When I was 19, it was the early 1980s, and all us college girls who wanted to be writers read Virginia Woolf constantly. And I wanted to be Virginia Woolf, except for the part where she walks in the river and kills herself.
So she was always there as a beacon of, specifically as a woman who was not just writing, but was also an intellectual and really a thinker and very inspiring. When I went back to it, when I was just about 40, it was different.
It was-- what I needed weren't figures out in the world to emulate or to try to be. What I needed was help. So I have a mentor named Steven Schwartz, who was my teacher in graduate school. And in some ways, that's the inspiration, are the people along the way who really show you how to do this, show you how to stay sane while you do it-- most of the time.
And not so much the outside figures. I mean, there are certainly many, many writers I admire. But there's nobody that I think, boy, I want to have their literary career. But it's very important for any writer to have a very strong, caring community of other writers. And those are my heroes.