The dilemma of a fangirl writer

The other night I went to a Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures event to see Tea Obreht, the author of The Tiger's Wife. I enjoyed that book, particularly the magical realism elements, and was astounded at the maturity of a writer who is only a year older than I am. It's people like Tea who make me feel inadequate.

Throughout the day of the event, I watched some online interviews with Tea in order to determine what I could ask her that hadn't already been asked a million times. I came up with a nocturnal writing question. It appears that we're both nocturnal writers. If I didn't have a daily, full-time job, I'd be writing from sundown to sunup, like she does. But whereas she succeeded and had the semi-exotic life to back up her subplots, I got wrapped up in school and writing was put on hold. I also learned that we both make soundtracks for our characters and novels, and listen to them and daydream in order to get inspiration. Finally, someone else admitting to it! Someone who was a famous published author! There are many other things that we have in common, things I learned about in the interviews as well as the event itself, and I became excited to meet her.  I don't know what it is... She just "gets" being a writer in her mid-20s. It's one thing to listen to a writer in his/her 40s who have been writing his/her entire life. It's quite another to listen to a writer who is my own age and has succeeded with my same habits.

Tea represents the kind of person I could so easily be. If she could do it, then one day I can, too.

(horrible shot of horrible angle, but you get the idea)

So, by the end of the event, I turned into quite the little fangirl. I was able to say hi to her with my question (which she remembered later) and was then able to chat a little while she signed my book. I told her how I listed her book as one of my inspirations for my thesis, to which she was shocked and then congratulated me on the degree. And then I told her that we were very similar and that I would love to just chat with her, even if it's online. Yes, I went there. Stupid me. But, she wrote down her email address and told me that it usually takes her a long time to respond to messages.

So now I have an email that I haven't looked at yet--because it's probably the one the publicists give out on her website--and don't know what to do with. How do I proceed? Propose a string of questions for her to answer and hope that a conversation can spring from one of them? Or perhaps I should throw the thing away and hope that we meet again under better circumstances in which we can actually talk as equals? Further incentive to be published, I suppose, or return to journalism.