If your teacher has requested that you e-mail a writer requesting
details about his or her life, please give your teacher the link
to this page. If you are a teacher who is considering making this
assignment, please read the following.
Dear Teacher,
I appreciate that having your students write to writers asking
for personal information about their lives must seem like an exciting
class idea. However, for those of us who write for a living, and
who receive quite a number of requests of this sort every year,
the prospect of participating in homework, with the added blackmail
that the student will do poorly if we do not agree to use
our work time or, more likely, personal and family time, to make
sure they get a good grade, is loathesome.
I graduated from the demands of teachers and their rights
to my time more than twenty years ago; I am a public person only
to the extent that I choose to be, unlike movie stars and others
who have given up their privacy in exchange for huge paychecks;
and I do not choose to discuss the intimate details of my personal
life, my childhood, or how both relate to my writing so that you'll
have something on your lesson plan for the semester.
Don't ask your students to do this. They don't enjoy it, and
we don't have time for it.
All my best wishes,

Holly Lisle