Butterfingers
Anderson, Lisa-Marie

LISA-MARIE: When I was a little girl I lived in Cyprus, California which is a pretty heavy place to live as a child and there was a small library that was probably about two or three miles away from my house, seriously, and I used to ride my bike to get there and I would stay all day long and read. We had these reading logs and I would fill them all out and then after they were about to close they would need help putting up chairs or dusting things off and I would help and they would give me a Butterfinger candy bar afterword. So I spent many days trying to get that candy bar at that library in Cyprus, California. Some of the books that I liked to read, the thing that got me really starting to read is of course all of the Judy Blume books, "Are you there God it's me, Margaret", the one book that changed my life as a child was "Go Ask Alice". Right now I think the thing that shapes me as a teacher and just as a person as a whole is probably Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" and I read it every year with my AP kids. As far as me as a writer, I remember me being ten years old and I used to write poetry and of course your parents think you're great and everyone thinks you're great when you're that young but I actually got to get published in this anthology and I was the youngest writer to get published and I thought it was so cool. So I knew that one day when I grew up I would have something to do with reading or writing. Now that I'm wrapping up my master's degree in nonfiction writing and writing a memoir, it's probably the best times of my life.