Sarah Hall

It's taken me 15 years to feel I might be able to write and publish short stories, and for the assiduous checks of the industry to allow some through.

I wander around the house and write in bed, at the kitchen table, by the window, in the yard.

I used to dislike bookshops immensely as a child and was won over only later in life.

There is no mistaking the dismay on the face of a writer who has just heard that his brain child is a deformed idiot.

I'm considered homophobic and crazy about these things and old fashioned. But I think that the family - father, mother, children - is fundamental to our civilisation.