Elizabeth McCracken

The thing that most interests me about writing - there are lots of things, but the thing I can't do without - is the hit of happiness a lovely sentence delivers.

I work in my office on the campus of the University of Texas. It's the sort of place described as 'book-lined', but it's recently tipped over into 'fire-hazard' territory.

It's hard to know which made me more aware of the impossibility of protecting children - having a child die or having had two live.

Shaft was a pop culture figure along t he lines of, I guess, Dirty Harry - except that he wasn't as much of a racist. So yeah, I was always a fan.

I was so pleased to be at university to do physics and mathematics.

It is good to be in front of the lens to appreciate more being behind the lens.