I wrote 'Little Fires Everywhere' and sold the book in 2015, still the Obama years. The possibility of a Trump presidency was not on my radar.

Buying new books supports the writer by providing both a royalty and an audience; a writer whose book sells well has a better chance of selling another.

I don't think of myself as a mystery or thriller writer, honestly. I am in awe of mystery writers and don't think I have what it takes to write such a book.

Spend too much time alone with your own words, and your writing grows anemic, in dire need of a transfusion.

Gore isn't required for a good story, but adversity is.

I was fortunate to have many teachers who encouraged me - one of the first was Dianne Derrick, my 5th grade teacher at Woodbury Elementary. She challenged us to write creatively and praised my work, but most importantly, she treated writing like it was important.

I don't think I know a single person who's a minority who hasn't experienced some form of discrimination at one time or another.

Of course, as a kid, I had no idea what was practical: I wanted to be a paleontologist, then an astronaut.

I began using the #smallacts hashtag on Twitter shortly after the 2016 election as a way to resist. To resist the intolerance growing in our nation, to resist an upcoming administration that I believe threatens to pull us backward and strip rights from those already marginalized.

As the Trump administration takes office - and we see acts of racism, misogyny, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination around the country - ask yourself, 'What's important to me? What do I care about? What have I benefitted from that I want to pay forward?' Then look for ways to spread help and hope.

Books by women, people of color, LGBTQ authors, differently abled people, and non-Americans are a great way of broadening horizons and building empathy.

Local politics is just as important as national - and often easier to influence.

In the case of 'Everything I Never Told You,' my goal was to make the experiences of a family that had always felt marginalised feel accessible and understandable even to people who'd never been in that situation.

I am a first-generation Chinese-American; my husband is white. We have a little boy, so I think a lot about what it's like when people from different cultures and backgrounds start families, and how the world sees them. Most of my friends are in interracial relationships, and I just wonder what the world is going to look like for their children.

My mother wrote a teen column for the South China Morning Post in the 1950s when she was growing up in Hong Kong. Her name was Lily Mark, but she sometimes wrote under her confirmation name, Margaret Mark. That was how she met my father.

My parents did give me a lot of books - biographies of Marie Curie - and I did read them, because I was interested.

Reading feeds writing: it presents you with new ideas to engage with.

I am not a contest-enterer by nature. But contests - and their entry fees - are often the main way literary journals raise money to, you know, publish their issues. So entering contests helps support the journal, which also helps support the writers they publish.

Every writer needs new material now and then, whether it's traveling to Japan, volunteering at a food bank, learning a new language, or trying a new food.

Every single day, authors read at bookstores and libraries - and coffeeshops and bars - all over the country. And these readings are amazing: you get to hear the book in the author's own voice, ask questions, and meet the writer. For free.

What's the best way to ensure a supply of good books in the future? Support up-and-coming writers now.

I'm ashamed to admit that I very seldom read poetry, even though many of my friends are poets.

If someone were to call me 'the next Amy Tan,' it would not be because - or not primarily because - we have similar themes or subjects or styles. Let's be honest: it would be because we are both Chinese American.

Let's stop reflexively comparing Chinese writers to Chinese writers, Indian writers to Indian writers, black writers to black writers. Let's focus on the writing itself: the characters, the language, the narrative style.

Stories work better when not everyone gets what they want.

Narratively speaking, innocent misunderstandings are disappointing. Arbitrary events are also disappointing. The stories that really grab our attention involve not accidents but people doing things on purpose - to get things they desperately want.

I play music on my phone to fall asleep when I'm on the road and as an alarm clock to wake me up, so I need it nearby - but there are never outlets by the bed in hotels!

I keep a writer's notebook and also put all my daily schedules and to-do lists in it.

I lose pens a lot, so I don't use fancy ones.

Whenever I travel, I seem to get sick - it's probably inevitable when you're on a plane every single day.

The first bookstore I loved wasn't a little independent gem nestled in a neighborhood: it was a modest Waldenbooks in our local shopping mall.

My parents used books as bribes: if I got straight A's on my report card, they would buy me one book. This was completely unnecessary, as I always got A's, and they bought me books all the time anyway, and we all knew it.

Now that I have a child of my own, I'm in awe of - and deeply grateful for - the time my parents spent in taking me to bookstores.

I resisted Twitter for a long time. To me, it was synonymous with networking, which in my mind means unceasing self-promotion and superficial small-talk with strangers. A little like wading into a river with a raging current - and I'm a terrible swimmer.

It's so easy, as a writer, to get stuck in your own head, to live in the little worlds you create. To forget that there are people out there reading your work, people who may be deeply affected by what you do, that you are writing not just for yourself, but for them.

In 2011, I didn't read a single book.

As a historically voracious reader - pre-baby, I averaged a book every week or two, and when I was a kid, I'd routinely read a book a day - I never understood how some people could not read. When I heard people say they didn't have time to read, in my head, I simultaneously pitied and ridiculed them: there was always time to read.

Spend enough time wrangling a toddler, and you get good at being kind but firm. Like your child, you must be doggedly single-minded when it matters.

Short of the dishonest, the illegal, and the cruel, there's only one thing my son could do that would really disappoint me: not liking reading.

My husband's parents were both English teachers for decades.

Before my son was even born, he already had two shelves of books.

A love of reading shows empathy, the desire to understand how others live or act or might act - and why.

Even if Pearl S. Buck hadn't spent most of her life in China, she'd have every right to write about it.

Browse Amazon reviews, and you'll see a surprising number of readers who believe one novel can summarize a country, its culture, and its people.

Can fiction teach us? Absolutely. Fiction has the power to illustrate place, era, and atmosphere in vivid detail. But it is not Anthropology for Dummies.

When reading fiction, we cannot automatically assume that what we read is fact.

Short fiction and the novel, nonfiction and fiction, electronic texts and books - these are not opposites. One need not destroy the other to survive.

The competitions between fiction and nonfiction, short and long, electronic and paper, are not battles in which there can be only one victor. After all, we exist in a world where more kinds of writing than ever are greeted with interest and enthusiasm.

You may not be a fan of Twitter-fiction. That's okay. There are novels out there for you - big ones.

The proliferation of styles, genres, and media need not be the death knell of anything. Instead, it's a sign that our acceptance for variation and experimentation has become wider, our interests have become more diverse, and our appetites have become more omnivorous.