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My father loved biographies. He loved the true tales of interesting people that were shaping our culture. I get why he dug 'Vanity Fair.' You feel smarter, somehow, for reading it.

I've always enjoyed reading history, particularly presidential biographies.

I love biographies. I read Patti Smith's 'Just Kids.' I'm into that time frame in New York, the '70s and '80s. In art school, I read 'Close to the Knives,' the autobiography of the artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz.

I've always been fascinated by books. When I was young, my grandfather used to hand out a book - which would be anything from a biography to a classic - to me every week and ask me to write a piece on what I thought about it. On the other hand, my mother used to love reading thrillers and bestsellers.

Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

What I did do a lot as a child was read, and I particularly remember reading all the 'Hardy Boys' books, a set of history books called the 'Landmark Books,' and a series of science books called the 'All About Books.'

I teethed on books of heroes such as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and King David.

I enjoyed reading all the classic authors like Isaac Asimov and Bradbury.

I love biographies. I'm especially into stuff about Hollywood in the '40s and '50s. I find it fascinating and terrifying.

I'm aware of what kids like because I'm constantly in touch with them. Also, they say that a lot of people who write for children can remember their own childhoods vividly and I can remember my childhood very vividly.