“I was fortunate that Yale has a very open and creative law school. I t...” — Matthew Pearl Quote

I was fortunate that Yale has a very open and creative law school. I took many courses outside the law school, and every semester, the students had a literature reading group. I was asked to lead one on 'Dante and the Concept of Justice,' and it was around that time that I began writing the novel.

My high school English teacher in junior year, Dr. Robert Parsons, assigned us some Poe stories, including 'The Black Cat' and 'The Purloined Letter.' Being an animal person, I had trouble with 'The Black Cat!' I got hooked instead by 'The Purloined Letter,' a Poe story with detective C. Auguste Dupin.

Up until the final decade of the nineteenth century, the United States and the United Kingdom did not recognize copyright in each other's creative works.

One thing I incorporated in my novel 'The Poe Shadow' was the little-known fact that documents show Poe inherited a slave and decided to free him.

Every since my wife, Adri, got pregnant with our now-eight-month-old daughter, Alicia, I regularly get asked what my plans are for feeding her. How can someone who writes about food and tests recipes for a living meet the picky and precise needs of an infant without losing his mind?

I never really had a job, because I've been cycling from such a young age: there was never really a time to have a job. My mum went into Starbucks once and asked if they had a job for me, and they offered me one - but I never took it up because I couldn't fit the job in with school and cycling.

We had wonderful wood-fired chicken in Dallas. We asked if they had a vegetarian option and the guy just said, 'We have chicken.'

I grew up reading thrillers, science fiction, fantasy - you name it - and one day I asked myself if there was a reason why a fear of spiders was so common. Was there something buried deep in our evolutionary history that made being scared of spiders a survival instinct?