The road of writing--and where it's taken me

Words and language compel me. They've had this effect on me as long as I can remember. I literally teethed on the alphabet. My grandmother, an elementary school teacher with a 40-year career, saw to that. She gave me a set of plastic sign letters when I was a year old. I carried them around, tasted them, looked at them, felt their contours.

By my third year of life, I had learned to read. Every word I read, each new word I learned, opened a door for me. It seems inevitable that I became a writer.