You are one busy woman as a public servant for so long.

How do you get time to write novels?

Stacey: writing is just as important as anything I do.

I try to balance my life, so tackling those issues, and writing is one of the ways I get to investigate those issues, kill off the people I do not like.

Christiane: do you have political visions when you kill off people and things you do not like?

Stacey: it is more vaguely cathartic than anything.

There are questions, there were issues that are out there, and through writing I get to investigate and go down rabbit holes to learn about topics not salient to my day job but are important to who I am as a citizen and as a thinker.

It is also an opportunity to investigate the outer reaches a possibility.

Christiane: investigate policy through what you write even infection?

Stacey: absolutely.

I began with suspense, children's books, legal thrillers but my mantra is I want to be curious, I want to solve problems and I want to do good, and writing helps me think about those pieces, especially areas that do not naturally occur.

In-state politics you are not thinking about the FISA court or cyber threats abroad, but it implicates what happens in Georgia, what happens to democracy.

If we are not thinking about these issues, the conversation about the Supreme Court is always relevant.

Christiane: you are not in elected office but you have been appointed at the chair for race relations at Howard University.

You said we are at an inflection point for American and international democracy.

How do you define that?

Stacey: democracy is incredibly resilient but we have nor the fact it is also deeply fragile.

If you look at the decimation of democracy at the hands of autocrats, look at Hungary, Poland, look at the questions in our conversations about elections now, we know democracy only exists as a construct, and we have to fight to keep it.

The challenges, we become so jaded about its existence or its inability to be perfect that we forget we have to protect it.

The conversation we have to have is how do we grow the next generation of defenders of democracy?

Had do we arm them to defend it in the United States but have a broader conversation about the international status of democracy?

We have seen a decline in democratic states worldwide.

I was recently privileged to observe elections in Nigeria.

There were deep issues but a deep passion to hold onto democracy, which is fairly new.

We have to sustain the democracies that we have and shore up those that are weak, and reclaim them were we have lost them.

Christiane: what should the younger generation learn from what you did?

Having lost those two gubernatorial races, and putting your energy into the same passion, and the process at a time when even in the United States the democratic process is being incredibly infringed?

Stacey: voter suppression is not new.

Part of my responsibility is to articulate what the problem is but demonstrate the solutions.

I did stand for office twice, and it is important to secure the jobs that have the greatest impact.

Not getting the job does not exempt you from doing the work of protecting democracy, the work of expanding democracy, that belongs to all of us.

As a young student in college years ago I signed up people to vote.

Now I am trying to protect that very right.

These are of a piece, I can be a candidate but I am always a citizen of the United States and a global democracy that requires protection.

When I think about the young people I work with, my job is to show them you may lose something or not get what you seek but that is not exempt you from doing the work that needs to be done.

Even more, it creates opportunities you did not see.

When I did not win in 2018, I did not imagine the full consequences, but I know I had the responsibility to keep pushing.

I was able to scaffold organizations that defend democracy and build our senses and do good work to secure public policy.

Christiane: you work with the full consequences?

Stacey: not winning means a lot.

The governor was able to pass more voter suppression legislation and ignore the needs of our citizens, but the larger construct was we were able to elect two U.S. senators who have the ability to help secure judgeships and leadership that guided us through what could have been tumultuous consequence to our previous president.

We were able to secure electoral college votes, that change the leadership of this country.

That has had an international impact as we address what is happening in Ukraine.

I shudder to think what would have been if we did not have President Biden in office.

There are domestic and global consequences to being able to stand up and defend the right to vote and turn out voters.