What were you like as a child?

I was one of those children who didn’t quite fit. Perhaps it was that my parents were both teachers and we lived in a low socio-economic area, or maybe because I was intense, academically gifted, and subject to passionate enthusiasms, and other children didn’t know quite what to make of me, nor I of them.

I spent a lot of my time alone, and I didn’t mind, because the company was better inside my head. My dolls were props in my endless stories, which were largely mishmashes of book, radio, or TV stories. No dolls’ tea parties for me, or at least not until they had escaped the kidnappers, conquered the pirates, got out of the jungle, and brought down the evil prince.

Even with family—I had a huge group of cousins—I was mostly the odd one out. A couple of cousins were on the same wavelength as me and if they were not around, all the relatives had books.

Were you a big reader? What do you think influenced your love of reading?

I read a lot, and from a very young age. My parents were both great readers, and I grew up surrounded by books. My mother was a teacher at a time when teachers were trained to believe it was harmful to children to learn to read before they were taught at school. Nobody told me. I had taught myself to read by four years old. From then on, I was never, by choice, without a book in my hands.

Books were my friends and books gave me my adventures. Christmas and birthdays always brought me new books—my favorite type of gift, even today. My library card was a magic passport to my version of heaven. Indeed, when I was old enough, I got a job at my local library, shelving books. I must have been the slowest book shelver in the world, because I always found something to read.

                                                                                                                                  TO READ THE FULL INTERVIEW, FOLLOW THE LINK TO PURCHASE THE NEWEST ISSUE: https://issuu.com/indtalemagazine/docs/2023-nov-ind?fr=xKAE9_zU1NQ