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Interview with Maya Angelou, author of the autobiographical series beginning with I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

Interviewer

The books are episodic, aren't they? Almost as if you had out together a string of short stories. I wondered if, as an autobiographer, you ever fiddled with the truth to make the story better?

Angelou

Well, sometimes, I love the phrase "fiddle with." It's so English. Sometimes I make a character from a composite of three of four people, because the essence in any on person is not sufficiently strong to be written about. Essentially though, the work is true though sometimes I fiddle with the facts.

Interview with Isabel Allende

Allende

On January 8, 1981, I received a phone call that my grandfather was dying. I started in the kitchen at home a sort of spiritual letter for him that grew and grew and became The House of Spirits. I think that I waiting for a good excuse to start writing fiction and because I could not write as a journalist, I ended up doing fiction.

Interviewer

So when you were a journalist you weren't allowed to be very creative?

Allende

I think my journalism was pretty creative, I lied all the time - but it wasn't fiction, it was journalism.