The American author on finding sympathy for Ted Hughes, a Palestinian take on Hamlet, and the joy of cookery books
My earliest reading memory
Probably The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum, read to me when I was perhaps three. It is very different from the movie and so was my first introduction to distortions and improvements in screen adaptations, and buried treasure in original texts. The mouse queen in the book completely enchanted me and of course is nowhere in the film.
My favourite book growing up
Nine Days to Christmas by Marie Hall Ets and Aurora Labastida, a story of a star-shaped piñata that becomes an actual star in the sky. I suppose it’s about death and eternal life, and magic and grief. It felt powerfully, wonderfully sad to me, though the end involves a kind of resurrection which perhaps through my tears I wasn’t buying.