"My earliest reading memory The Little Engine That Could. My mom used to read it to me at night and then one day I could read it myself. I read it over and over in bed, the story of a valiant little train making it over the mountain when all the bigger ones refused. The thrill of that never got old. I must have been four."
"My very favourite, theone that made me think about being a writer for the first time, was It's Not the End of the World. It's told in the first person (which was a revelation to me) in the voice of a 12-year-old whose parents are divorcing. The dialogue is funny and sharp. It was the opposite of going through the Looking-Glass: Blume helped me see at age nine how all the drama and craziness and humour and meaning is right here in everyday life."
"I read Sherwood Anderson's short story cycle, Winesburg, Ohio, when I was 14 or 15 for a high school class. Like George Willard, I lived in a small town and was an observer. Like him, I saw a lot of bizarre behaviour and wanted to get away. I think it was a book in my youth that really solidified my desire to be a writer, that made me feel it wasn't a weird thing to want to do. And the writing in that book made me ache to do it even more."
"I went to grad school for creative writing having written a lot of pithy, voicey, minimialist short stories, and as soon as I got there two things happened: I met my dear friend Laura McNeal and I read Virginia Woolf for the first time. The writing of each of these women changed mine. I'd been skating on the surface before. I came out of that programme a very different writer."
A valiant train story became an early reading memory and a lasting thrill. Growing up, a favorite author used a sharp, funny first-person voice to show that drama and meaning exist in everyday life. As a teenager, a small-town observer’s experience in a short story cycle strengthened a desire to write and made the ambition feel normal. Later, creative writing graduate study brought new influences through a friend and through reading Virginia Woolf, changing the writer’s approach. A return to a childhood book about divorce led to a clear decision to write, aiming to create books for kids like it.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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