Grace Tiffany

I write fiction which is often set in a specific historical moment, occasionally from the first-person perspective of a character of the time period. Settings have ranged from early-modern Europe to the Stalinist regime of the 1930s-50s in Russia. My stories are strong on character, dialogue, and plot, and often end in surprising ways.

I was born outside NYC and moved to Arlington, Virginia, when I was eight. One indirect influence on my writing was the many visits made with family to see plays performed in Washington by a world-class Shakespeare company, since I am a Shakespeare scholar and my fiction frequently has to do with Shakespeare. It's likely that growing up in such a history-charged area as northern Virginia also influenced my interest in history.

Voracious. I loved checking out books from the library, from a very young age. I loved unusual stories like "Harriet the Spy," but I read all kinds of fiction. As an adolescent, I became interested in science fiction, especially the stories of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov.

I only want to write like myself, Grace Tiffany . However, I admire the writing of many authors, such as Tobias Wolff, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Marilynne Robinson, and Bobbie Ann Mason.

J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Tobias Wolff, William Shakespeare, and Charles Dickens, not necessarily in that order.

I don't "gift" books, but I do sometimes give them. :) I don't repeatedly give any book (I don't assume the question is whether I re-gift). One book I've tried to pass off to family members a couple of times is Richard Adams's "The Plague Dogs," but these books get rejected because my family members have already read them. A lot of us share literary tastes.

I don't have a personal story, just a regular life. However, if the question is, in which character did I invest most of my own thoughts and experiences, I'd say it was the character of Emilia Bassano in my novel "Paint."

That's a tough one. I love them all. Ha ha! I hope other people love them too, or at least like them. Among my favorites are "Will" and "The Turquouise Ring," but the one I actually think is the best novel is "Gunpowder Percy."

I have an old desk that is way too crowded with stuff and a little laptop computer. Reference books pile up around me on the floor as I proceed with whatever I'm working on.

I'm a big one for lying on couches with pillows. We have two in our house, so I'd say either one of those. And I like actual books whose pages you can turn. We have too many screens in our life. There's something great about a paper book.