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I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.

My father was a writer; I've known a lot of children of writers - daughters and sons of writers, and it can be a hard way to grow up.

I came from a family of incredible storytellers, but I didn't start writing children's books until I was 41 years old.

There are dozens of great American writers who write about the family.

I was the typical little sister who wanted to be just like her older brother. When I was growing up, my brother wrote phenomenal stories, so I wanted to write them, too.

All my siblings became artists. One's a novelist, my brother is a painter, my sister was a costume designer.

I've had a family my entire adult life; I started raising kids when I was 21. I suspect that being part of a family has probably informed my life as a writer as much as anything else has.

My parents were avid readers. Both had ambitions to write that had been abandoned early in life in order to get on with life.

Unfortunately for my family, they have a writer in the family.

Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.