Fashion is about fantasy.

That's part of fashion's promise: that a girlfriend or boyfriend or a promotion are just one tie or sweater or pair of shoes away.

Family is whatever you say it is.

When I was somewhere between child and adult, my father left us. My first family broke apart, but this liberated me to create a new family as I pleased.

Genre is a useful thing when organizing texts in a bookshop but immaterial to the particular exchange between writer and reader.

Uzodinma Iweala is a fine and confident novelist.

Contemporary families can be made in many ways. You might step up when relatives or friends are unable to meet their obligation to their children. You might marry someone who is already a parent. Or you might, as in my case, yearn to create a family and decide to adopt.

There is a tendency to presume autobiography in fiction by women or minorities. Guys named Jonathan write universal stories, while there's this sense that everyone else is just fictionalizing their own small experiences.

It's my own personal hang-up, but I find adults who are picky eaters to be the worst. I don't mean food allergies or preferences: I mean picky eaters. We all know one, and they're impossible to go to lunch with or invite over for a dinner party.

When we had our first son, four different people gave us the same present: a copy of Ezra Jack Keats' 'The Snowy Day.' A new child often inspires duplicate gifts - we were given a dozen mostly useless baby blankets, just one more thing to spit up on - but this one was different.

Obama-as-dad is my favorite Obama. Obama-as-executive, with his stubborn faith in reasonableness in times absent of reason, presided over the country during its descent into madness. I find it a comfort that Obama-as-dad presided over a family that leaves the White House healthy and happy.

My husband and I adopted our children through a private agency, Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children. As a nonprofit organization, it relies on client fees as well as donor support to do its work.

Years ago, I worked at a fashion magazine. I was the lowest man on the totem pole, one of the only men on that particular pole: a little brother with a dozen older sisters whose grace and glamour I so admired.

I live in Indiana and teach at Purdue University, a wonderful school with some of the brightest students I have ever had the privilege of working with. My colleagues are powerful and intelligent and kind. The cost of living is low, the prairie is wide, and on clear nights, I can see all the stars in the sky above.

I live in Indiana and teach at Purdue University, a wonderful school with some of the brightest students I have ever had the privilege of working with. My colleagues are powerful and intelligent and kind. The cost of living is low, the prairie is wide, and on clear nights, I can see all the stars in the sky above.

We have to believe that we can hold different points of view without labeling each other bad feminists.

We have to believe that we can hold different points of view without labeling each other bad feminists.

I want to take the time to think through how I feel and why I feel. I don't want to feign expertise on matters I know nothing about for the purpose of offering someone else my immediate reaction for their consumption.

I want to take the time to think through how I feel and why I feel. I don't want to feign expertise on matters I know nothing about for the purpose of offering someone else my immediate reaction for their consumption.

Day after day with them, I see more and more of my parents in me. I see where all my quirks come from. I see my future.

Day after day with them, I see more and more of my parents in me. I see where all my quirks come from. I see my future.

My parents have been married for 42 years. Their marriage has been - from what I can see - a happy one.

My parents have been married for 42 years. Their marriage has been - from what I can see - a happy one.

I was in love with the idea of love, so I created elaborate fictions for my relationships - fictions that allowed me to believe that what any given paramour and I shared looked a lot like love.