As a girl, Laini Taylor wanted to be a writer. She would dream up magical worlds filled with witches and monsters. But once she got into high school and college, she started reading literature — all those serious books about the real world that serious people read. And she stopped writing.

“I had no life experience,” she laughs. “And really nothing to say. I felt a lack of ability to contribute to that body of work.”

Then years later, she read a little book you might’ve heard of. Harry Potter? And her childhood imagination rose up like a phoenix.

“That whole ‘write what you know,’ you don’t have to do that,” she says. “I find it much more fun to imagine what I don’t know and want to figure it out.”

Since then, Taylor has imagined stories to incredible success. Her early collaboration with her husband, the illustrator Jim Di Bartolo, “Lips Touch,” was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her “Daughter of Smoke and Bone” trilogy is an international best seller.

We sat down with Taylor at her Portland home. It’s sunny and bright and filled with wonder: paintings of her characters, small figurines of magical creature, princess dresses for her daughter Clementine Pie, and a library with a grand fireplace and floor-to-ceiling book shelves that seems right out of a fairy tale. Which is fitting: Taylor launched a new series this week about a young librarian who also has big dreams, “Strange the Dreamer.”

Taylor will read from the book and talk with Sara Grundell of the YA website Novel Novice at Powell’s at Cedar Hills Crossing on Apr. 6.