She came up to me afterwards and said she was a literary agent. One day, the mother of one of my students saw a play I wrote for the kids involving puppets. Eventually, I taught first, second, fifth, and high school at Saint Ann’s. So during the days I was telling stories to kids at lunch and recess and story time, and at night I was meeting writers and reading bags full of children’s books and thinking about how it all went together. I refuse to believe her.)Īfter graduating, I stayed in New York and took a job in a second grade classroom at Saint Ann’s School, in Brooklyn, while attending Bank Street College of Education in the evenings. I didn’t realize it then, but it was in that year that I discovered I could be a writer–me, a beef pasty, and my imagination is all I seem to need to be happy. That means I was free to do whatever I wanted 166 out of every 168 hours, or 98.8% of the time. If you’re any good at math, you’ll know that that means I only had to be somewhere for two hours out of every 168. I only had to go to class twice a week, for an hour at a time. I walked around the old university town and ate beef pasties and sat in parks and read John Keats all day long. I spent my third year of college in England. Also, you can’t beat the homework in English: “You’ll like this book! And this one! Try this book, it’s amazing!” I thought about majoring in religion, and then in philosophy, but ultimately chose English literature, because I think that the deepest truths about life tend to be written in works of fiction. I straightened myself out during high school and ended up going to college in New York City. There will be three hundred and forty-five thousand chapters. Maybe each chapter will be a different way to be sent to the principal’s office. One day I will write a book and tell you about all of the ways you can be sent to the principal’s office during middle school. Middle school career in the principal’s office.

Somehow, I found a way to break all of them. I grew up there, attending a school without very many rules. I was born in San Francisco in 1982, but moved to Baltimore when I was two and a half.

A tale dark and grimm author