Anna Lawrence Pietroni Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Anna Lawrence Pietroni, author of Ruby's Spoon, talks about writing, prison, and embracing her roots.

Anna Lawrence Pietroni in her own words about writing, prison, and embracing her roots:

I’ve felt compelled to write since I could hold a pencil, but always stalled after a paragraph or two. Drawn to the symbols and structure of fairy tale, I stubbornly rejected the advice given to all aspiring writers: ‘write what you know’. I didn’t want to write what I knew. I didn’t even like the things I knew. I lived on the edge of the heavily industrial Black Country in the English Midlands, where my family has lived for generations. I’d had a defensive pride in my town, Halesowen - we had a Norman church, two Tudor black-and-whites, Industrial Heritage - but when I won a place at an exclusive high school in the city, this pride I’d taken in my roots soon evaporated and I would never, I was certain, write about my town. By the time I went to Oxford, I was all too glad to leave it far behind.

I studied English Literature at University College, Oxford, and was delighted and intimidated in equal measure by the literary endeavors of my predecessors. I had rooms beside the Percy Bysshe Shelley Memorial: a languid, drowned figure carved in marble. Compared with the works of genius on the reading ...