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| Maya Angelou |
I was an overnight guest
of Maya Angelou
Aaron Hicklin, editor-in-chief of Out magazine, recalls the time he drank whisky and talked Rabbie Burns with the great American poet and author
Aaron Hicklin
Sunday 10 January 2016 10.30 GMT
First came the instructions. It was recommended that I call her by her honorific, Doctor.
Also: she would typically retire to her bedroom no later than 10pm. I would be wise to follow suit. I can’t recall exactly why I – a mere journalist writing a profile for a Sunday paper – was invited overnight as a guest of Maya Angelou, but you don’t turn down such offers. So there I was, late in the summer of 2003, on a guided tour of her garden in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, hoping that my spotty research (I’d had to speed-read her autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, on the flight from New York) did not give me away as a dilettante.
