Heather Rose

I thought it would be kind of flimsy.

But in fact, I found a depth and a richness in that that surprised me and really delighted me, I have to say.

Have you read City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert's new one?

I have read City of Girls and I really enjoyed it.

I loved being back in New York and I had no idea that that whole area of the terminal was that.

I had no sense of that being the old theatrical district before.

desire and sexuality and lives that are defined by work as well as by love and family and isn't that the world of girlfriends i mean that's the experience i've had with women and i watched it with my mother's girlfriends too you know that that is the truth of us and we have been written in so many narrow ways i think because so much of the canon has been dominated by male thinking

Well, I would be remiss not to mention how powerful Yuval Noah Harari has been for me in the last few years with Homo Deus and then Sapiens.

I've really loved his work and it's helped me understand human history, the development of so many patterns and influences politically, economically, socially, artistically and

You know, I would consider those to be essential reading.

I wish that every young person had to read Homo Deus by the time they were in grade 10.

What else have you read in the last year or so that's made a big impact on you?

Madeleine Albright's Fascism, A Warning.

That had a big influence on me in writing Bruni, actually.

It's a really good account of the rise of fundamentalism and right-wing politics.

It's really well researched and also because she came out of Hungary, so she was a refugee twice, and she writes from that perspective of understanding what it feels like to watch your country overtaken by an ideology of fear and divisiveness and indeed cruelty.

So that had a big effect on me.

I would be very remiss not to mention the influence Margaret Atwood has had on my writing.

And what I've loved about Margaret Atwood is that she writes something different every time.

And because all of my books have been so, so very different and people say, how, why do you do that?