One minute with...Alice Hoffman, Novelist

Where are you now and what can you see? I'm at home [in Boston] and I can see my dog sitting on the couch.

What are you currently reading? I'm reading Kate Atkinson's 'Started Early, Took My Dog'. I love her. I've also just seen the BBC series based on the book, which I adored.

Choose a favourite author, and say why you admire her/him Emily Brontë, and 'Wuthering Heights' is my favourite book. I think she was a psychological genius. If I had to choose someone living rather than someone dead, it would be Toni Morrison. I feel I could read just one sentence and know it was her. She creates a world in the most spectacular language that you know is hers.

Describe the room where you usually write I usually write downstairs in the parlour which is filled with books. I have an office but I don't really use it as I don't want to feel confined in one place. I like to move around.

What distracts you from writing? Book tours, which I have just been on, and am about to go on again.

Which fictional character most resembles you? The four women from 'The Dovekeepers' [Hoffman's latest novel] who all resemble some piece of me, although they are very different - one is a witch, one a warrior, one has lost her child, and one has a father who doesn't want to have anything to do with her. I feel the character is a piece of me with every book.

What are your readers like when you meet them? It's a very strange thing. They feel they know me; I feel I know them. It doesn't matter if they're 16 or 80: there's something in them that I feel a connection with.

Who is your hero/heroine from outside literature? Anne Frank. She is the voice of someone trying to survive, the voice of hope, the voice of something so positive in a time of such evil and darkness.

A lice Hoffman's latest novel, 'The Dovekeepers', is published by Simon & Schuster