On your nightstand now:
Two particularly teetering towers at the moment just waiting for me to take to my bed like a good Victorian: Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro, Bloodroot by Amy Greene, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, Freaks and Revelations by Davida Wills Hurwin, Punkzilla by Adam Rapp, Going Bovine by Libba Bray, Living Fiction by Annie Dillard. And for research and inspiration for my new novel: Field Guide to Meteors and Meteorites by Norton and Lawrence, The Secret Lives of Boys: Inside the Raw Emotional World of Male Teens by Malina Saval, Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore and the Occult Sciences of the World Vol. 1 & 2, edited by Cora Linn Daniels, Sculpture from Antiquity to Present Day (Taschen), A Life of Picasso: The Early Years by John Richardson, Chagall by Jackie Wullschlager, August Rodin by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Favorite book when you were a child:
My mother was so obsessed with Madeline that reading anything else was a subversive and clandestine act, even my most beloved: Harold and the Purple Crayon. When older, I went mad for Judy Blume, and then D.H. Lawrence--I was just consumed with his books as a teenager--all that dark roiling passion.
Your top five authors:
How about six? I can't eliminate any one of these! Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, William Steig, Zora Neale Hurston, Anne Carson.
Book you've faked reading:
I can't believe I'm admitting this: The Sound and the Fury! Never read it. Oh, the shame.
Book you are an evangelist for:
I'm pretty evangelical about all the many books I love. Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech was really my entryway into contemporary children's literature and it blew me away. I couldn't shut up about it. Same with Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Housekeeping by Marilyn Robinson is just so exquisite. The Passion by Jeanette Winterson, too. Recently I'm gung-ho for Confessions of a Heartless Girl by Martha Brooks. And always, One Hundred Years of Solitude because it's my favorite of all, hands down.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Most recently, Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch. Gorgeous cover--I'd like to live in it.
Book that changed your life:
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf changed absolutely everything: how I read, how I thought and perceived, how I reveled in language; it was an instant psychic overhaul!
Favorite line from a book:
"the thing perhaps is to eat flowers and not to be afraid"--e.e. cummings
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Waves by Virginia Woolf. Or Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. What a joy that would be!
