EXCERPT FROM THE INTERVIEW

I was a great liar. My third grade teacher was very attentive to this fact, and rather than call me on it, she arranged a little desk with pencils and paper in the back of the room, and told me that whenever I felt like I needed to tell something special to the class, I should go and write it down, and make a story. Also, in my little town, there was no public library. Each teacher had only a few books to loan out, so I thought that there were not very many books in the world. My introduction to the notion of being a writer really came from feeling that it was my job to add to the number of books so that everyone else who loved to read wouldn’t run out.