One of the most powerful westerns ever written was The Misfits by Arthur Miller. She's right, but she can't win, which is both poignant and tragic. These are all issues in which I'm very interested. There are a lot of anthologies out on western writing, but they're predominantly male. I are very interested in finding women writers who confront the issue of western frontier mythologization.
Art is a long conversation with the past.
If you don't know where you belong, you don't know what to say. I came to full-time writing rather late in life, and since I wanted my writing to matter, it was difficult. The other big influences, of course, are Flannery O'Connor and Ernest Hemingway.