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

When I was growing up, my house was filled with books. My mother was an educator, and my father was a history buff, so our home was a virtual library, covering every author from Beverly Cleary to James Michener.

What inspired me to become an author? I think it was the snow in New York. I looked out the window and I said, 'Well, I have to get dressed every morning to go to teach, but if I write a book, I can stay home in my bathrobe, eat candy corn.'

Our home had many books due principally to the educational interests of my sister and two brothers, all of whom where serious students engaged in professional studies; my sister became a doctor of medicine and my brothers became lawyers.

It's not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention to family. It's nice to write a book that does tend toward significance and meaning, and where else are you sure of finding it?

My mum was a librarian, and she brought home a lot of interesting books, and we just read and read. I suppose I didn't really think I could be a writer myself until I was working in editing in my 20s and discovered that actually, the books that came in were not very much like published books.

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

My mother was a reader; my father was a reader. Not anything particularly sophisticated. My mother read fat historical or romantic novels; my father liked to read Westerns, Zane Grey, that kind of stuff. Whatever they brought in, I read.

I've always been a reader and a writer.

Several elementary school teachers had described me as a 'future authoress or poetess.' Mother took me to meet Chicago's leading black librarian, who published a poem of mine in the magazine she edited for Negro children.