Longtime Baltimorean Steve Luxenberg has been writing for all of his adult life, a process that began, he says, when he went to the library as a kid and absorbed lessons about character, plot and style from such masters as Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson. Luxenberg is a former reporter and editor for The Sun, and currently, for the Washington Post. His memoir, Annie's Ghosts, about his efforts to find out more about the life of a disabled aunt whom he hadn't known existed, received favorable reviews when it was published last month. (You can learn more about the book here.)

He recently spoke to Read Street about the "free, lifelong turorial" he's getting from the printed page.

  Q: How did he learn to read? My mother liked to tell this story. She claims that when I was three or four, I would bring her the paper and I'd read to her from it, and she thought someone had just told me the words. So one day, she brought me the newspaper and gave me an article to read that I couldn't possibly have seen. According to her, I read it, though I'm sure it wasn't with any comprehension.

Q: First influential book? The Secret Garden, which I read in the first grade. There's no way I could have understood it then, as you need to hear it in a Yorkshire accent. That showed me that a reader doesn't need to understand everything about a book to get something out of it. You can read it at one level at age 6, at another level at age 12, and another as a mature adult.

Q: How did you become a writer? I came to writing through reading. If I didn't have a book in my hands, I had a ball. When I read, I was on Treasure Island. I was the one who was being kidnapped. I sank the winning basket.