In recent years I’ve gone back to read some classic fiction that I was first asked to read in high school, 30 years ago, books like The House on Mango Street, The Great Gatsby, and… 

I could never name just a few books that have changed my life. Reading in general has made that difference, as I come from a working class family that includes many immigrants. My paternal grandparents… 

When I was about eight years old I owned several collections of poetry for children. I still remember many of the poems I read then, and though I rarely can remember where I put my… 

When I was 18 years old, the author Ray Bradbury wrote to me. I’d told him that I wanted to be a writer more than anything else in the world, and while I was already… 

As a child, I learned the small words first – the ones that were easiest to enunciate and that encompassed my life experience: Mama, Papa, food. As I grew, so did the words and the…