Bobbi Hahn's Reading Interests

Pat Conroy and Tony Hillerman because both men are gifted with the ability to convey an astonishing sense of place: how an area looks, feels, and smells. Long before I visited the Southwest or the Lowcountry, I fell in love with each location because of the words of these two authors, who were so clearly passionate about what they wrote in every book.

Lisa Scottoline, Sue Grafton, and Janet Evanovich, for creating intelligent, quirky female protagonists.

Mary Alice Monroe, Dorothea Benton Frank, and Anne Rivers Siddons, for writing such great stories about the South Carolina Lowcountry I am now privileged to call home.

Kelly Corrigan, for writing so honestly of her life in The Middle Place. In what could have been a gloomy tome of sickness and possible mortality, she managed to weave a tale of optimism that is often laugh-out-loud funny. Her new book, Lift, is another example of how to write with courage and humor; what a blessing!

And all the writers whose work I read as a young child; their names may be lost to me, but their writing gave me the gift of worlds and people I could visit anytime I walked the few blocks to the closest branch of The Free Library of Philadelphia. With the simple acquisition of that magical library card, I could borrow more books than I could carry. Snug in my bed in the little cocoon of a bedroom my parents had created for me, I read and dreamed and thought how marvelous it must be to have the ability to put some words down on paper and make other people see what I was seeing, or imagining.