Robert Cormier was of French Canadian extraction; his family settled in the USA around the turn of the century. His Roman Catholicism, he said, had been throughout his life ‘boon and burden, giving me moments of great illumination and moments of shadows, when I didn’t think I was doing good enough.’ He guessed (correctly) that this shows in his writing. He lived in New England all his life and, though he loved to travel, would never want to leave his central Massachusetts home. When he was eleven, his teacher, who was a nun, read a poem by him and asked, ‘Do you want to be a writer?’ The young Cormier decided this was just what he did want. His early writing experience included two years of composing radio commercials, ‘some of the hardest and most hateful writing I did, but some of the most benefical too – the discipline was amazing’. By his early twenties he was working in newspapers and had already published short stories. It was not until 1963 that he published his first adult novel. There were to be two more before he produced ‘The Chocolate War’, the success of which enabled Cormier to become a full-time writer. His three subsequent novels, all well received, tackled other difficult subjects. ’When I am writing’, he said ‘I’m only conscious that I’m a storyteller first. I’m interested in creating real people, dramatic situations that will keep the reader turing pages. Then, if I can say here’s the chance for me to explore ideas – like the dehumanization of society in ‘I am the Cheese’, where Adam becomes a cipher – great. I don’ t think of myself as a thematic writer, but as a storyteller. If they don’t work as stories, then no one will read them, so the message would get lost anyway.’ Robert Cormier died on 2nd November 2000.