You studied with some impressive writers while getting your journalism degree at the University of California, Berkeley, and also worked in the journalism field early in your career. How has your journalism background informed your writing of THE YELLOW HOUSE?
The late Clay Felker was my writing professor and a great mentor; I started writing about my childhood friend Alvin in his course. Michael Pollan and Mark Danner taught me editing. Cynthia Gorney was an old school journalist from the Washington Post. All of my investigative rigor is due to her. Journalists approach their work with much more objectivity than was possible for me with this personal work, but I did try to ask hard questions, listen deeply, and be open to the answers. Not always easy. Often someone’s version of the story collided with my own preferred narrative. I regularly found myself fighting the feeling that by writing this book I was “telling on” my family or even my city, but I overcame that feeling by the end.