Summary

In "There Are No Children Here," while "speaking at an Important Book Festival with an author [Patchett] admired," the writers got into an argument about having children (127). The other author insisted that "You can't be a real writer if you don't have children" (129). He believed that children taught a person how to love and thus how to write. Patchett was not a mother, and insisted that "people without children have known love, and . . . are writers" (130).

During an interview on her essay collection, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, the interviewer interrogated Patchett on her decision not to have children.

While Patchett was on "book tour in Seattle," a friend told her that "at some point" she would want children (133). Patchett insisted she would not. Then Patchett flew to Portland, where she met "a media escort...