Want to live in the world that you imagine? Good: Write a novel. Better: Work on public policy. Best: Do both as Stacey Abrams does, with the help of Selena Montgomery. Not-acting hasn't turned out so well, Ms. Abrams notes, so why not act? There's a moment and a place for every person, whatever you do for a living, to step in and to make change, she is certain.

Ms. Abrams used to be a tax lawyer. When offered the opportunity to make a lot less money by going to work for the City of Atlanta as a Deputy City Attorney, she jumped at the chance to work for a Mayor and City Council in creating a great city, one policy decision at a time.

Whether carefully evaluating policies for Atlanta's Mayor and City Council and making sure they adhered to the laws they'd set for themselves, or writing award-winning romance novels under the pen name “Selena Montgomery,” Stacey Abrams is convinced that actions matter. So do words.

Selena Montgomery does not hesitate to use a fifty-cent word as juicy as the love scenes and alternative realities that propel romance novels to the top of the world's best-seller lists. Stacey Abrams' words are grounded in action, not dictionaries, shaped by strong parents and enriched by experience with other Truman Fellows, exploring "The Content of our Character -- Ethics and Leadership in the 21st Century."

Morality?  It's the moment-by-moment, daily decision to be of help to others, to see the world as it could be, she believes. Integrity? Doing the hard work to integrate what you believe and how you act into a consistent whole. What about leadership? It's about acknowledging a problem at the moment it exists, and then doing everything in your power to solve it.

Novels and policy can look surprisingly similar. Want to address the issue of homelessness? You can't avoid issues of housing. Address the issue of housing and issues of watershed management arise. Think about watershed management and the environment comes front and center. Each solution, each achievement, necessarily creates for itself another problem, she readily acknowledges. With a bow to Aristotle, Ms. Abrams continues -- in really solid writing and stores, you create a problem. Then you complicate the problem. You solve the problem. But in the solution, you immediately have to create a new problem. Sound familiar?

So, the best novels and the best work of an attorney have a great deal in common, Ms. Abrams found. Both must acknowledge that each new problem is not a "bad" thing-- there is nothing inherently wrong with a problem, as long as one is willing to attack and solve it. Recognize that life is lived best when you are trying to complicate it and find a new solution each time.

This kind of hopefulness fills Stacey Abrams/Selena Montgomery's romance novels -- travails happen, mountains are scaled, in the end there's some happiness -- just as it does the public policies she promotes.  Both embrace life's adventures, both demand action, and both advance visions of worlds worth imagining.

[This Program was recorded March 10, 2005 in Atlanta, Georgia, US.]