>>BURKINS: It was about four or five, probably closer to five. I first started wanting to read because of my brother was two years older than me and he was learning to read. So I was entering kindergarten and he was about in second grade and he was learning to read at school and I thought that was cool so I wanted to do the same thing. So my mom would draw pictures of animals or, you know, just different objects like houses or buildings. She would draw a picture of it and write how to spell it below it and I already knew how to pronounce a lot of different letters from knowing the alphabet and she would teach me to read from drawing the pictures and helping me how to spell the words. Between that and her teaching my brother I would just sit there while he would do his homework and he was learning his spelling words so I would learn from just observing just because I thought everything he did was pretty cool so I wanted to learn it too. I basically learned along with him at the same time.

My parents always bought a lot of books. Things that we'd share and things that were more girly and individual for me. They always had a lot of magazines around and sometimes my parents would read them to me which would depend on what the article was but definitely there was a lot of books and they also did a lot of workbooks. Things that would help you spell out different words or they would show pictures and you'd have to figure out what the difference was. There was always a lot of educational materials that were around for us.

>>INTERVIEWER: With you a lot, when you were curious and wanting to learn with him, did he reciprocate that or was he kind of on his own plane?

>>BURKINS: He was kind of on his own plane. He would get a little jealous sometimes because I might learn something before he did. If he was trying to remember how to spell a word and he got it wrong, sometimes I would say "no brother, that's not right!" And I was just trying to help him but sometimes I think he would get a little more jealous because I might catch on more quickly than he did. That came into play a lot so sometimes my mom would say you can learn with us or you can play with us but you have to be quiet because that's your brother's time. We have to make sure that he's learning and that he understands this and then, you know, she would help me out later or if I had questions, later on, or if he was at school or I was at home during the day with her, then she would follow up on those things with me. So there was a little bit of jealousy.

We read a lot. We read every night, before bed we'd always read stories. And I also had a neighbor who would come over and read to me. Her name was Jasmine. I think she was my brother's age. Either two or three years older than me. And she had other little brothers and sisters. And so sometimes I would go to her house, sometimes she would come over and she would read to me because I liked to listen to it and she just liked to read. And I think she just liked to kind of pretend that I was her little sister, so she would come over and read a lot. My brother didn't really read to me, but we were so close in age. He wasn't really strong in his reading skills around the time that I wanted people to be reading to me.

>>INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me about a favorite book that you had when you were younger?

>>BURKINS: My absolute favorite book was called Grandpa Bear and it was by Barney Pryor. It is the best book in the world. It's about this little girl, I think her name was Sam or Sammy, and she was too young to play with her older brother because he was, like, three or four years older than her. So she was too young to go out with him and do the things that he did and then she had a baby sister and she was too young to be a baby and be treated like a baby so she felt left out. And then her grandpa came and lived with them and then she was just the perfect age to do everything with him. The book was is how they go on all these different adventures. They go on the moon. They build some sort of space ship. They do all these different things in the book. It's just about her spending time with her grandpa and being the right size and the right age to do things with him. I don't know why I love that book so much.

>>INTERVIEWER: But you remember it.

>>BURKINS: I do. I'm not a middle child. I definitely loved spending time with my grandpa when I was younger. So I think maybe I identified with that but that's definitely my favorite book.

My favorite subject was language arts. So reading and writing. And I would say my second favorite was probably art.

>>INTERVIEWER: What do you remember about learning to read in school?

>>BURKINS: When I was in school I remember being a little bored at first because going into school I was a little ahead because I had been learning with my brother. So when I was in school and we were learning how to spell words, for me it was kind of like I already knew that, so it was a little boring for me. So sometimes my mom, my teacher would have to say "just hang in there, it's going to get more fun... trust me." So at the beginning it was a little boring but actually being in school, once we started to get to the point where we were learning things that I hadn't been exposed to yet, then I loved it. I had some really good teachers between kindergarten, first, and second grade that I still remember. And I had all the same teachers that my brother had so there was already a connection there and so I felt that they probably gave me a little bit extra support than maybe some of the other students got. But actually being in school, beginning learning to read it was a little boring but once we started doing a little more stuff it was more fun. But I have always liked reading, I always liked writing as a child, so I was never the type of child who didn't like that. I always thought it was fun. It was always something that I was interested in.

>>INTERVIEWER: Now when you talk about in writing, what kind of writing do you like, was it writing stories or was it report writing? What kind of writing really fascinated you?

>>BURKINS: What I enjoyed the most was writing stories. You know, being creative and coming up with my own thoughts and my own ideas so I would make, like, story books a lot. If you go to certain stores they had these books that you'd get and it was all white. They had a white cover and there was probably fifty blank, white pages inside of it. So you could draw on the cover, the front and the back and put whatever you wanted on there and on the inside it was completely white so you could write whatever story you wanted and draw your pictures. I would get those all the time and I would draw, you know, a front cover on it and then on the inside I would write my story and I would add all my illustrations. It was just all things that I made up. I'd write about fish, people, and other animals, or just stories about other little kids. Just completely, we'd make it up, and I'd write a story and draw some pictures and that was my book.

>>INTERVIEWER: What important political or social events do you remember hearing about or reading about in the newspaper, either now or when you were young?

>>BURKINS: Probably the first thing I remember really, just the presidents, learning about the presidents. I remember learning about Reagan, and then Bush, and then Clinton, and all the controversy that came along with that. I also remember the space shuttle, learning about that, I want to say it was Columbia, maybe, that went up. Definitely we learned about that a lot. And that was really interesting cause I really liked space a lot so I thought it was really cool. I also remember taxes, there was a huge tax cut, probably about ten or twelve years ago now. I remember people talking about that and everyone was so excited. All the rebates that people were getting. I wasn't really working much at the time, but I was about to be within the next four or five years so I was looking forward to it. And then I remember the anthrax, when they sent it in a letter to DC. People being nervous to open their mail. And then obviously Enron. And with me going to business school shortly after that, that was obviously a huge focus in school. Hurricane Katrina. September Eleventh.

>>INTERVIEWER: When you think about, you mentioned being in graduate school and even undergraduate, is there a time that you either, positive or negative, noticed yourself as a writer throughout your school experience.

>>BURKINS: Noticed myself as a writer. I'm going to say yes. Are you looking for one in graduate school?

>>INTERVIEWER: Undergraduate or graduate, it can be any time.

>>BURKINS: I remember 9th grade, I was in high school. We had an assignment to write a letter to a senator. I believe I wrote to John Kasich, I think he was senator at the time, or some part of the state legislator, and it had to be on a current issue or current topic. I had learned about a drug, it was called GHB. It was something that people would slip into drinks and then it would make you kind of black out and you didn't know what was going on. Not sure how I really knew about that as a ninth grader but I did and I wrote a letter about it how I thought there should be stricter regulations for how it was dispensed to people and I thought that they should do more research to figure out, maybe you could have your blood tested to figure out if it had been something that was in the individual's body. And that they should have stricter regulations for people that actually gave that out to people and did harmful things to them. And he got the letter and he read it and I guess he liked it so he called me and said I got your letter and I really appreciate your concern. Here's what I'm doing to have stricter regulations on this drug. And he was having a press conference or some sort of event and he invited me and he said I want you to come, it's going to be on this day or whatever, and I'll give you a copy of my book. Obviously, I got an A on the letter at school and I had arranged to go meet him and got a copy of his book. I would say that probably sticked out as a positive memory for being a good writer.

>>INTERVIEWER: I would never had known that about you.

>>BURKINS: I don't talk about it much.

[Laughs]

>>INTERVIEWER: Can you tell us a story about when you learned how to use the computer?

>>BURKINS: I think I was probably seven or eight and we had this big desktop and it was in our family room loft area. I remember there were these Disney programs on it and you could print out these Disney pictures and it was the old school paper that had things that you could rip off on each of the sides and I'd print these out and then you could color them, so I'd print them out and color, and then I remember there was Microsoft Works or something on it, and it was really slow, and it was the Dial Up internet so I couldn't use it if mom was on the phone. But I really liked using the computer because I thought it was really interesting, I thought it was cool. And then I started typing my stories on the computer instead of writing them on paper and then I would just draw my pictures to go along with it separately. So I kind of moved away from using the white books once I started using the computer. But yeah, I liked it.