He's going to have to stop putting his foot in his mouth and start talking about the things he wants to talk about.

She's going to have to overcome that. Thus far, she's pointing out the problems with him, but I'm not sure she's giving them a good alternative, or at least making them comfortable with the alternative.

I don't think that's enough for her to win. There are people that are irked about DeMint, there are people who wonder about DeMint, but I don't think he's done anything yet to completely alienate the large number of people that are predisposed to vote for him because he is a Republican.

That only takes you so far. If he were to turn the attention on her ideas, again, that puts it back in his hands and it's his to lose because I'm not sure that she has formulated her ideas as clearly as perhaps some of us would like.

What is important in talking about the culture of violence against women is that it is hard to talk about it - because a lot of people want to pretend that it doesn't happen, and that particularly in colleges, where you have very close social networks, it's something, if a woman is raped or sexually assaulted, she's not going to want to talk about it, because it's going to affect her friendship network. And the guy who does it might be in one of her classes - or be the friend of a friend.

My dad is very ill right now [with cancer], and I was talking the other day with a social worker from the hospice. And when I told her about what I was writing, she said, 'Oh, I know what memoirs mean. You just make it all up.' It's shocking that people who aren't in the literary community have such a reaction now.