COVID has book lovers reading more than ever. Is your COVID reading list different from your regular reading list? If yes, how has it changed?

My list is now pretty short: mysteries and things I have been meaning to re-read (Persuasion, The Stone Diaries, the short story “Silence” by Alice Munro, Alison Lurie, Othello)

Where do you get your inspiration?

Lately, it’s more a matter of showing up than being inspired.

Who made reading important to you?

Superman—I learned how to read on those comic books, on the floor of the barbershop.

What is your favorite book to give an adult or a child?

For other writers: Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials.

Where is your favorite place to read?

In my office or in bed.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

A reader.

What’s your favorite comfort food?

Toast and jam (just like Frances!)

Bio

Amy Bloom is the author of Come to Me, a National Book Award finalist; A Blind Man Can See How Much I
Love You, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Love Invents Us; Normal; Away, a New York
Times bestseller; Where the God of Love Hangs Out; and Lucky Us, a New York Times bestseller. Her stories
have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Short Stories, The Scribner Anthology of
Contemporary Short Fiction, and many other anthologies here and abroad. She has written for The New
Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, Slate, Tin House, and Salon, among
other publications, and has won a National Magazine Award. She is the Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of
Creative Writing at Wesleyan University.

Amy Bloom, author of White Houses. Photo: C. Elena Seibert.

Purchase via Bookshop.org.