My earliest reading memory
I was on the tube with my siblings when I was around seven. I was reading Sue Townsend’s The Queen and I, which is about the royal family relocating to a council estate. We had to change trains, but I was so absorbed, I only realised as the doors closed that my siblings were shouting at me from the platform and I was going on without them.

My favourite book growing up
Ursula K Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy. I reread it recently because I wanted to give a copy to my niece, and it struck me how many of my beliefs and principles are actually things I learned from Ursula at eight years old.

The book that changed me as a teenager
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I’d never read anything so involving or expansive. I was 13, I think. Around the same time, I was given Wu Cheng’en’s Monkey. I carried that book around in my pocket until it fell apart. I don’t know if either book changed me. But they definitely made me more excited and less afraid.

The writer who changed my mind
When I first met James Joyce I felt like I’d been embraced by a lost parent. I was around 18. Ulysses illuminated everything. It was probably the reason I got interested in Greek mythology. Probably the reason I wrote Brand New Ancients. Joyce stunned me. Pushed me. Infuriated me. Accompanied me. Like the best ones do.

The book that made me want to be a writer
It was music that made me want to be a writer. The great rappers of the 90s and 00s, old-time country and folk, plus the political and religious lyricism of late 70s and early 80s roots reggae. But the landmark texts that made me sure I had to keep going were William Faulkner, Light in August; Knut Hamsun, Hunger; Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon; William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Shattered me, the lot of them, and put me back together more determined.

The book I came back to
The Bible. Hey, it’s a good story.

The book I reread
James Baldwin’s Another Country and EL Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel.

The book I could never read again
I used to read David Icke’s books. Before the internet. Imagine that. Not got the stomach for it any more.

The book I discovered later in life
Stone Butch Blues. I’d never heard of it until 10 years ago, but the jolt that went through me the minute I started to read was something I’d never experienced before and haven’t since. I’d been walking round dead a long time. Reading that book was the start of accepting myself and learning that who I was didn’t have to be a source of shame. It was like a shot of pure love that brought me back to life. Bless you forever, saint of my heart Leslie Feinberg, for loving us the way you do. When I think of how many lives that book must have saved I want to cry.

The book I am currently reading
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings. Sean Bonney, Letters Against the Firmament and Patrick Hamilton, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky. I read lots at the same time. I always have. I enjoy the cross-pollination.

My comfort read
Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton.