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Pupils from a Maidenhead school have been given the chance to interview award-winning author Nick Hornby.

The students from Desborough School came into 大象传媒 Radio Berkshire to talk to the About A Boy author and Fever Pitch director about his career and how to get involved in writing.

大象传媒 School Report gives 12 and 13-year-olds from UK schools the chance to make their own video, audio or text-based news at school and to broadcast it for real across the 大象传媒.

Desborough School gets behind the mic

While the project is devised for this age group, students aged 11 to 14 may also take part.

Nick Hornby's first book Fever Pitch was published in 1992, his third novel proved to be his most successful, published in 1998, About a Boy was later turned into a film with Hugh Grant and Nicholas Hoult.

In 1999 Hornby received the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Hornby's newest book, entitled Slam, was released on October 16, 2007, Hornby is currently writing a screenplay.

Read on below for the full extracts of the pupils interview with Nick Hornby.

Who inspired you to read when you were a child?

"I'm not sure there were any particular people, I read a lot of comics, they were the main drive to get me to read. I learnt to read very quickly."

Nick chats to Desborough School Pupils

Which of your books did you enjoy writing the most?

"Well, I think the first book (Fever Pitch) was probably the easiest. It was certainly the quickest. I think because I didn't know for sure that it was going to be published that made me less self-conscious, the others have been a lot harder work since then."

I've seen a few of your films. Which one do you think was the best?

"I think they all turned out pretty well to be honest. I wrote the first one, Fever Pitch, myself so obviously I feel a bit prejudiced towards that one but obviously I feel the other two were good as well."

Are there any real life characters in your latest book Slam?

"That isn't really how I tend to work but I had seen a very young dad pushing a buggy in a local park and I started to think about him, so he was the original inspiration but I didn't know anything about his story I was just imagining for my own purposes."

Desborough School Pupil in full swing

What advice would you give to any young people who want to be authors?

"I think there are only two things to say. One is you've got to read and the other is you've got to write. I think it's very easy to think of yourself as an author without doing any actual writing and you need to read to get an idea of how other people do it and what kind of author you want to be."

What would you say to encourage boys to read more?

"I think boys do read a lot, just maybe not books. I think they read a lot of stuff online, they read a lot of magazines and they read a lot of things connected to their interest. I suspect that what would get more boys to read more would be if more books reflected what they were interested in."

Finally, what is your next project?

"Well I've been working on a screenplay of somebody else's work for a year or so and that film is just about to be made, so I'm doing last minute rewrites on that."

Catch the 大象传媒 School Report on Thursday 13 March 2008 on 大象传媒 Radio Berkshire and on 大象传媒 Berkshire Online.