I am deeply interested in stories by captives in colonial America—people who didn’t want to be where they were forced to be or do what they were forced to do. The texts by these people—many of them not professional writers—include captivity narratives, slave narratives, criminal confessions and trial accounts, and many early melodramas. I am also interested in the history of the book in colonial and early America. In recent years I’ve been writing children’s and young adult fiction. My first novel, The Remarkable & Very True Story of Lucy & Snowcap, was a historical fantasy set in 1787, involving a boatload of escaped convicts. (My early American interests definitely inform my creative writing!)