The Campaign for America's Libraries

In this interview, Helen Schulman discusses the importance of libraries to her and her family.

She said visiting the library as a child was "a special time between me and my mother."

During the summers, she and her son have visited the library together to read.

"You would think we would be at the beach," she said. "But we're two peas in a pod that way."

Schulman is the author of the New York Times best-selling novel, This Beautiful Life, "a painfully honest novel that examines with precision the delicate balancing act needed to nurture a family through these manic times. Reminiscent of Anita Shreve's Testimony and Anna Quindlen's Every Last One." - Library Journal (starred review)

Schulman's previous novels are: A Day at the Beach, P.S., The Revisionist and Out of Time, and the short story collection Not a Free Show. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Vanity Fair, Time, Vogue, GQ, the Paris Review, and the New York Times Book Review. She is an Associate Professor of Writing at The New School.