Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her novels include Passing On, shortlisted for the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, City of the Mind, Cleopatra's Sister and Heat Wave. Her new novel is Family Album.

From her Q & A with Anna Metcalfe at the Financial Times:

What book changed your life?

WG Hoskins’ The Making of the English Landscape. It taught me how to see the presence of the past in the world around me.

Who are your literary influences?

Everything I’ve ever read, some in a negative sense, of course. Elizabeth Bowen, Henry James, John Updike, Carol Shields, Dickens, among many others. I admire precision, stylistic energy and the ability to use exactly the right words.

Read the complete Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue