"My first independent entry into the world of words, through reading, is associated inextricably with the cookies my mother used to bake when we were in Iowa. I acquired the written word more or less on my own; one might say I taught myself to read, although the groundwork was already laid for that grand activity upon which civilization is built. My earliest memories of toys are the alphabet blocks I played with. At the time when I discovered how to read, my parents – both writers five years out of the Iowa Writers Workshop – were finishing their Ph.D. in English in Denver, where, leery of babysitters, I tagged along to their classes under John Williams, Harold Priest, and Joe Billings."