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For some 25 years, I worked as a librarian, first at the New York Public Library, then at Trenton State College in New Jersey. My life has always been with, around, and for books.

After a while, if you're a writer, you want to start appearing in the bookstores of the place you're living in.

Margot Livesey, my dear friend, reads all the drafts of what I write, and I read hers. We have an intense working relationship. I've been really lucky to know her. She's a great reader and teacher as well as an astonishingly good writer.

I make personal appearances around the country. I'm starting a book tour now, and I may be coming to Toronto with the Learning Annex, which I'm doing all through the United States, so that may come up just before Christmas.

'Some day,' I said, 'I will be an author.'

In addition to being a writer, I'm a librarian - professionally trained and everything.

I am hard-pressed to find a successful writer who doesn't have a similar story to mine - transformation through the public library.

Two days a week, I go to my office at The Grotto, a writer's collective in San Francisco. I get there at 8:15 and write until around 1 or 2 P.M.

I came to writing because I joined the North Clare Writers' Workshop, which met every week at Ennistymon Library.

I took up a sort of a hobby of just hanging around the local library. I'd pick out an author and I would read all their books.