Listening to Zadie Smith on Radio 4 this morning talking about how much she owed to her local library when she was young reminded me of my short story, A Born Writer . I wrote it some fifteen years ago, but which is just as relevant now as it was then; more so with the threat of library closure ever present. Children may get their information in other ways today, but the ones who are going to be deprived are the ones whose parents don’t have books, don’t care about books; the ones who say they have a book and it is a copy of a celebrity magazine. Some of those kids will never care anyway, but if one child is like Nolly in this story, surely books should join the queue of things which should and must take precedence over the extra high salaries of some of those running our councils today.

This story is already in my archive at http://www.barbara-erskine.co.uk/short-stories/a-born-writer_1.htm, but I thought it worth putting up again on the home page too in case you missed it.