tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43968759313575066852024-03-13T23:15:33.194-07:00CAROLINELEAVITTVILLENew York Times Bestselling novelist, screenwriter, editor, namer, critic, movie addict and chocoholic. Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.comBlogger1754125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-70547995126886639972022-11-17T13:28:00.007-08:002022-11-17T13:28:44.203-08:00A brave book of love and understanding: A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter by Carolyn Hays<p><i> </i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigvNc9hcew0N4Y9ukWqTZQy1sWTPMEEwvT_9VUaDgwUm3iyAmP3BolqVnZRu-E7m0CIOVj6ZAJOwzWGK52Rv6a1bCPq0Eq5aJZDDFeG--eDSduVcBcA7cDk0MRwssNm7w5n0oZeTQkldRImNmw8ei2xTOjiPEdqj33drjAwrANyq3oKE9JmTLzu5lq/s766/Screenshot%202022-11-17%20at%203.58.28%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="766" data-original-width="494" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigvNc9hcew0N4Y9ukWqTZQy1sWTPMEEwvT_9VUaDgwUm3iyAmP3BolqVnZRu-E7m0CIOVj6ZAJOwzWGK52Rv6a1bCPq0Eq5aJZDDFeG--eDSduVcBcA7cDk0MRwssNm7w5n0oZeTQkldRImNmw8ei2xTOjiPEdqj33drjAwrANyq3oKE9JmTLzu5lq/s320/Screenshot%202022-11-17%20at%203.58.28%20PM.png" width="206" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i><p></p><p><i>Listen up because this gorgeous, luminous, tear-your-heart-out and patch-it-together book is a love letter to the author’s brave transgender daughter. Please buy copies for friends, buy copies for yourself, buy copies for those who might rail against this so that they might read, open their minds and understand.</i></p><p><i>Carolyn Hayes is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, bestselling author who has chosen to publish A Girlhood; Letter to my Transgender Daughter under a pen name to protect the privacy of her family. Her novels have been published by Hachette, Simon and Schuster, and HarperCollins; her books are also widely translated. A Girlhood will have four overseas editions, including those by Picador UK and Flammarion in France. Her past books have been listed as New York Times Notable Books of the Year and Kirkus's Best Fiction of the Year, and she's written for National Public Radio and the Washington Post. www.carolynhays.</i></p><p><br /></p><p><b>So much of this beautiful memoir is about faith—the right kind of faith. Not about whose god is more powerful and why we should fight wars over it. Not about whose laws are more important. Yet, if you boil things down, the true nature of God is love, acceptance, kindness. (We also do not know if God is male or female or something uniquely God.) At several points you actually point this out to Catholic institutions. Why do you think people are so afraid to face their religions and say, maybe I want something differently, something more godly than what I’ve been told? How did your faith change?</b></p><p>If someone of faith truly admires and cherishes God’s creation—the rich beauty and complexity of our humanity—then why would they try to reduce gender to something that can fit in a box marked M and a box marked F. The complexity of our humanity (as well as the mysteries of the divine) have strengthened my faith. I’m awed, as I think we’re called to be. So, as I say in the book, in our house, we don’t snub God. We don’t try to reduce and simplify his work. </p><p>We’ve had great support from the Catholic community and some heartbreaking rejections. </p><p>What I want to say to parents is this: don’t let your faith leaders or politicians try to get in between you and your natural, abundant love for your child. If an organization is trying to make you choose between love and acceptance of your child and them, they aren’t a community of love. We’re made in God’s image. He loves us; we love our children. Full stop. </p><p>The fascinating thing to realize is that your daughter is never stuck. The trauma belongs to you in this narrative—but not because you wish it weren’t so, but because you don’t know the right thing to do all the time. What was it like writing this book, and even more importantly, what was it like finishing it, and what is it like knowing it is going to be out in the world?</p><p>I knew I’d write this book one day but my hope was that it wouldn’t be necessary. That the rights and respect for the trans community would be strong and this memoir would feel antiquated. The opposite happened. The horror of having someone anonymously report you to Children and Protective Services for supporting your transgender child has since been signed into law by Governor Abbott of Texas where it’s being challenged while also terrifying the families who support their trans child. In eighteen states, transgender kids are banned from sports. In Florida, Governor Desantis is working to take away transgender medical care for kids in his state. There are death threats against doctors who serve trans youth; a bomb threat against Boston Children’s Hospital earlier this fall. This country has become completely unhinged around gender identity. Today? A New York Times piece that will be used as a battering ram to take away more trans healthcare, again targeting trans youth. </p><p>But, as it was from the start, out there, the world is a mess. But my daughter? She’s thriving. She’s funny and smart and knows herself. She’s now a teenager and she’s kind and cheeky and brightens every room she walks into. My daughter is so elegantly and wholly herself. So many factions in American culture want to distort who they think she is, but they don’t know her. </p><p><b>You said this astonishing thing: that every child teaches you how to raise them. This goes against every parental advice I’ve ever received (which I never followed) and it is brilliant. Can you tell us a bit about how your daughter taught you? </b></p><p>Yeah, I guess parenting books don’t work when the writer admits each child needs their own unique parenting manual. </p><p>When you’re on a journey with someone who’s had to fight to be their true self—their authentic self, you start to think about your own authenticity, not in gender necessarily, but in all the ways in which we hide who we are, who we could be, from not only strangers but those we love. It’s amazing to be reminded, over and over in simple daily ways, that you can be yourself. </p><p><br /><b>We’ve been taught, my generation, that the liberal thing to do was not to see color, not to see a difference if someone is gay or trans, but I’m learning that that is wrong. We should see those differences AND celebrate them. More books, more images, maybe what we love in the celebrities is their celebrating their differences. But what would you say to the people who say, oh it’s just experimentation, it’s just fashionable, kids cannot really know who they are or celebrity is fake?</b> </p><p>I’ve woken up every morning of my life and known that I’m a girl and then a woman. It’s been such a clear deep down truth that I don’t even acknowledge it. But then again, I don’t have to because every day of my life, the world around me has mirrored back to me that I’m a girl and then a woman. The American Academy of Pediatrics has a chart that shows the stages of development around a child’s understanding of gender—their own and others. My trans daughter followed that chart on the exact appropriate timeline, just not in the way we’d expected. Instead, she followed it as a girl; she was clear. Some kids do experiment with gender; some are non-binary. Some children would like to be out but have to reel it back in because their safety is at risk; this can be seen as a flip-flop but it’s actually a reaction to the flip-flop on supports around them. I’ll say this: it’s very different when a child is persistent, consistent, and acute. </p><p><b>How is your daughter doing now? Are you worrying less for her? How will she approach the publication of your book?</b></p><p>She’s not thinking about the book at all. She’s busy with her life. Her French is really coming along. Math is sometimes tricky. She’s making a Christmas gift list that is, um, very long and detailed. She’s the baby of the family and roundly adored. I worry about all of my children in different ways; it’s something I’ve really honed. </p><p>But yes, I worry about how this country is taking a new and hostile shape around her. I worry about the kids who don’t have the resource she has. I worry about the hatred that Republican politicians and influencers are stirring up against trans people in order to give their base someone to fear. These targeted attacks have real consequences for trans people--in education, employment, housing, self-harm, and death. I worry about the rates of violence against trans people in this country and around the world. And I can’t see a way to make these people in power stop targeting trans people. They’re getting so much out of it, from DeSantis to Chappelle. </p><p><b>But I have hope that the tide will turn. And we’re seeing signs of it in the younger generation who came out strong to vote in the midterms. </b></p><p>I have to have hope. My faith demands it. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-9829800628924332362022-11-17T13:14:00.000-08:002022-11-17T13:14:07.763-08:00Stephen Policoff talks about Dangerous Blues, his "kind of a ghost story," being haunted and disorganized, and so much more.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOzhgCgQe2xOueq0POM7bWvEHoeyNgcgAX-K-XjaMa_MaO1YwB3w4PHsHgrH51IZqOGGRdOjOjyueg0MgXDl-DwcyOc4WfQNaLjBRg7RJREuMoVK5HSR0CPLWAE1YIF1omyTeZW3HDUwuCGhrNnzp-n0F9i_48f-H8p420vuC4uTWoQViJQ_AuE_pF/s1204/Screenshot%202022-11-17%20at%204.07.54%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1204" data-original-width="746" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOzhgCgQe2xOueq0POM7bWvEHoeyNgcgAX-K-XjaMa_MaO1YwB3w4PHsHgrH51IZqOGGRdOjOjyueg0MgXDl-DwcyOc4WfQNaLjBRg7RJREuMoVK5HSR0CPLWAE1YIF1omyTeZW3HDUwuCGhrNnzp-n0F9i_48f-H8p420vuC4uTWoQViJQ_AuE_pF/s320/Screenshot%202022-11-17%20at%204.07.54%20PM.png" width="198" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfRxc9_YVEhR0zG5TxRcJmB1_6jF70OlIqoDYmBx65RdHjvaWbZe4joYfB5jyczEB6Cy9-BqDo6gGCPaaWPUCtjFaRacoJT_NqC6KSxtxsY9zHW1yjo8zVdkxe7MFLSUMSFofJ64WNPZ0RrpUEfyzBFxxVhXaYEzNjmrrzfwQwJ95zAboVbMPMDawg/s1532/Screenshot%202022-11-17%20at%204.08.40%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1532" data-original-width="1194" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfRxc9_YVEhR0zG5TxRcJmB1_6jF70OlIqoDYmBx65RdHjvaWbZe4joYfB5jyczEB6Cy9-BqDo6gGCPaaWPUCtjFaRacoJT_NqC6KSxtxsY9zHW1yjo8zVdkxe7MFLSUMSFofJ64WNPZ0RrpUEfyzBFxxVhXaYEzNjmrrzfwQwJ95zAboVbMPMDawg/s320/Screenshot%202022-11-17%20at%204.08.40%20PM.png" width="249" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /><br />Stephen Policoff's Dangerous Blues has been called "kind of a ghost story." It's about love and death and one man and his twelve-year-old daughter being haunted by the loss of the woman they both loved.<br />Says Susan Choi: "Policoff is a seer of the ineffable, the unbearable. A joy to read."</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: #fcfcfc; color: #222222; font-family: baskerville-urw; letter-spacing: 0.18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><br />Policoff's first novel, BEAUTIFUL SOMEWHERE ELSE, won the James Jones Award and was published by Carroll & Graf in 2004. His second novel, COME AWAY, won the Dzanc Award, and was published by Dzanc Books in 2014. His third and most recent novel, DANGEOUS BLUES, was recently published by Flexible Press. He is Clinical Professor of Writing in Global Liberal Studies at NYU.<br /><br /> <span style="background-color: #fcfcfc; color: #222222; font-family: baskerville-urw; letter-spacing: 0.18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">A portion of the proceeds from Dangerous Blues will benefit the </span><a href="https://nnpdf.org/" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(33, 33, 33, 0.3); color: #212121; font-family: baskerville-urw; letter-spacing: 0.18px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; text-decoration-line: none; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out 0s, color 0.15s ease-out 0s; white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_blank">National Niemann-Pick Disease Foundation</a><span style="background-color: #fcfcfc; color: #222222; font-family: baskerville-urw; letter-spacing: 0.18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a non-profit, patient advocacy and family support organization dedicated to supporting and empowering patients and families affected by Niemann-Pick disease, through education, collaboration and research.
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Thank you so much for being here Stephen!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>So, your other novels also feature Paul Brickner and Nadia and Spring in a chronology of events which I love. Was this always your intent? Did you feel like one novel was speaking to you and urging you to write the next part? And will there be another book after Dangerous Blues?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I had no intention of writing a trilogy, and in truth if someone really cared to comb through the 3 books, the timeline makes very little sense (Nadia is pregnant with Spring in 1991 in Beautiful Somewhere Else, in Come Away, written 10 years later, Spring is barely 5, and in Dangerous Blues she is not-quite-12). Come Away (Dzanc Books 2014) was very much meant to be a follow-up to the first novel, but after that book, I was pretty sure I was done with Paul and his wife Nadia and their little girl Spring. But when my wife Kate died in 2012, I wondered how I might write about this—writing is how I process almost everything really—and it occurred to me that Paul, who has some kind of porousness to the realm of the unconscious, might be the best vehicle for exploring what it feels like to be haunted by the past. Right now, I think I am done with Paul. But I’ve thought that before, so who knows?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Music plays a huge part in this book, and I know your daughter was interested in music, “Music Today” won the Fish Short Memoir Award. What does music mean to your writing?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My daughter Anna, who died in 2015 of the dreadful rare, neurogenetic disorder Niemann-Pick Type C, was indeed a passionate lover of music, and some of the songs she loved (“Little Surfer Girl,” “Box of Rain,” “Love in Vain”) thread through Dangerous Blues. Music is one of the things which gets me through life, certainly, and I often listen to music while I am thinking about whatever I am working on—though rarely when I am actually writing, because I am easily distracted. In college, I had a friend who was a passionate blues aficionado, and I always found those melancholy/humorous songs to be tremendously relatable. When I was formulating Dangerous Blues, I heard some of those songs again for the first time in many years, and the hauntedness of some of the brilliant/desperate people who sang them really seemed to connect to what Paul goes through in the novel, how he relates to the world, how he learns to cope with grief, loss and fear.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>I often say that the things that scare us are what we need to write about. We need to be the canaries in the coal mines everyone faces. Why do we write what we write, and how do you think we can get at that?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was not sure that I wanted to write about losing my beloved wife Kate to cancer, but eventually I knew I would have to, just to understand how I felt about the world. I think it was Flannery O’Connor who said that she needed to see what she had written in order to understand what she thought about things, and I fully embrace that aspect of writing. At the same time, I did not want to write a straightforward book about my loss and grief. I wanted to allow other characters to feel haunted and obsessed by different elements of life and our weird world, and that intuition really helped me create the somewhat intricate realm of Dangerous Blues.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>What kind of writer are you?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>A disorganized one? I think that can be said of many writers. People have often said to me, You must be so disciplined and organized to write these books…which makes me laugh usually, because I am totally undisciplined and thoroughly disorganized. But I am obsessive enough that I usually end up forcing myself to get down to work, and when I do that, I can get a fair amount done. I hate it when I see other authors advising writers on how to do your work, on what makes a real writer. A real writer is one who writes, regardless of the circumstances, success, or rewards.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>You’ve said about your work, Love it. Hate it! Want to kiss the cover! Which I think is part of every novelist’s journey. I personally only love my work when I am writing it, then the terror comes in. Is that your experience too?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I usually think when I am working on something that it is the best thing I have ever written and arguably the best thing ever written by anyone….then when I read it over, it seems lumpy, clotted, and vile. When I was younger I hated revising; now I love it, and feel like that is where you turn the dross into gold (or fool’s gold anyway). When it is published, I usually can’t stand to look at it, even if I know in my heart that I did a fine job. I am quite proud of Dangerous Blues, and reading from it at my various Book Events has gone well, but I can’t imagine actually reading the novel from start to finish again. I need to move on, and hopefully will be able to get down to work on another project in the near future.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>You don’t like to read fiction while you are writing? What work influences you?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I do read fiction while I am writing but I don’t like to read any novels which seem remotely like what I am working on. I read some ghost lore, and some blues history while working on this novel but in my reading for pleasure, I have hugely eclectic taste: Denis Johnson, Kafka, Yiyun Li, Dickens, the Brontes…I dipped into all of those books while I was writing Dangerous Blues. Music, too, influences me hugely. I doubt any writer has influenced me more than Bob Dylan. And Brian Wilson’s exquisite melancholy also finds its way into my writing process. And the beauty and sorrow of every day life. That is what really gets to me every time.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><br /><br /></div><p><br /></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-52411252067837850552022-10-22T12:22:00.005-07:002022-10-22T12:23:16.344-07:00High protein vegan chocolate anyone? Meet my new fave company: Eating Evolved Chocolate + Protein!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p>Adventures in Veganland!</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbg2I2d5nhFMcoknbrRpoiDpdWCD8r3LWudy1raT79j_gJhiisrignuvgrL91WRX0xtBdI11FfI6JKQQb1Cw_0YHyy2CK7SNIfTBuU0b1XakQJdm7EJunRqxRLOrQEa_hikRBm7nhUnHnGjofLwXHORwqzgVcBOko-4BrkQJKniy8RQP8UaugfO0KA/s1898/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-22%20at%203.13.59%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="1898" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbg2I2d5nhFMcoknbrRpoiDpdWCD8r3LWudy1raT79j_gJhiisrignuvgrL91WRX0xtBdI11FfI6JKQQb1Cw_0YHyy2CK7SNIfTBuU0b1XakQJdm7EJunRqxRLOrQEa_hikRBm7nhUnHnGjofLwXHORwqzgVcBOko-4BrkQJKniy8RQP8UaugfO0KA/w690-h285/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-22%20at%203.13.59%20PM.png" width="690" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLeEGMR3LCC_UW5v5K_UlTEO42jJTXnknx748-aNbZtOt2q2r8hqes29xcyE-I7JBrH5Rr72-e67zlFe0-69Wbx7Myptf5_CPAeYx3cQUIKklQ8ha2e6AS-_MueBq4zp4vtdJa80O5CIB6uajRe5ephdlT2LWWzmJajbkseitcqNTaUHer8SLMkhB/s818/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-22%20at%203.17.00%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="818" data-original-width="574" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLeEGMR3LCC_UW5v5K_UlTEO42jJTXnknx748-aNbZtOt2q2r8hqes29xcyE-I7JBrH5Rr72-e67zlFe0-69Wbx7Myptf5_CPAeYx3cQUIKklQ8ha2e6AS-_MueBq4zp4vtdJa80O5CIB6uajRe5ephdlT2LWWzmJajbkseitcqNTaUHer8SLMkhB/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-22%20at%203.17.00%20PM.png" width="225" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p>Yep, yep. I am mostly vegan. I have been a vegetarian since I was in my twenties—and for a simple reason. My first husband was a vegetarian and he did all the cooking, and by the time I was booted out of the marriage and had my first steak in a decade (I’ll show him, I thought), it made me physically ill. Of course, I became more and more interested in diet and food, and now, my second husband and I are more vegan than vegetarian.</p><p>And we LOVE chocolate.</p><p>I became addicted to this chocolate, <a href="https://eatingevolved.com/">Eating Evolved Chocolat</a>e + Protein, and bought a box because, a. I love chocolate, and b. the box had ten grams of protein in just two little bites, and c. it was lo-cal and made with all sorts of delicious organic ingredients. And almost no sodium at all. All are soy-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free and gluten-free, too. Best of all they were delicious.</p><p>Of course, they were quickly out of stock and I couldn’t find them anywhere. So I wrote the company, which immediate sent me out three packages for free! Dark Chocolate and Hazelnut, White Macadamia and Chocolate, and Dark Chocolate and Quinoa.</p><p>BUT there are some issues, my fault for not looking closer. I misread and thought the chocolates were ALL vegan, but only the Dark Chocolate and Quinoa ones are, along with some other products, including the Brownie Batter Bites pictured above, which will be available in November. The others have "grass fed collagen," which is a protein that comes from the bones of cows. But that isn’t a deal-breaker for me as far as the chocolate, because the Dark Chocolate and Quinoa ones are delicious and don't have collagen—and besides that, there are tons of people who won’t mind the collagen.</p><p>I was also a little worried about the saturated fat, but then I did some research. The chocolates have 8 grams of saturated fat per serving. You aren’t supposed to have more than 13 grams to protect your heart, so not a deal-breaker, here, either. </p><p>So I like this company a lot because they are sincerely interested in a better chocolate—and the box of Dark Chocolate and Quinoa is nearly finished! And of course I am going to order the Brownie Batter Bites.</p><p>Next up, I am test driving this extraordinary vegan cheese we had at ColettaNYC, a brilliantly inventive vegan restaurant in Manhattan. Because CHEESE.</p><p></p><p><br /></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-20081068570149359052022-09-29T08:09:00.006-07:002022-09-29T08:09:55.707-07:00Living on a carless island with her poet father. Molested at six. A former stripper. A former prostitute. And one of the most moving and honest memoir writers. Hannah Sward talks about STRIP.<p>Abandoned by her mother, living with her poet father on an island with no cars, and molested at six, <a href="https://www.hannahsward.com/" target="_blank">Hannah Sward </a>grew up to be a stripper and a prostitute with a taste for drugs. How she got from there to here-- being a writer so eloquent, so moving and so brave, that J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize winner, called her memoir STRIP "touchingly honest," is a story in itself. I'm so thrilled and honored to have her here. Thank you Hannah!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4wyu91lNn30Ij-w9WFqX0ahGYKuWXeNDABWgvZmzuMyWl6YTC5PSjEm3_fke3iD45zGj3xB1LeU9fqKnCLifbjSgBbvJDlKdwE564fCJaRqHED9HE94HG0r24ZDHrwXvFgfFdpSZEqZxawXyBAJ9cApi0Fg3wrs_2VXKCQ8odvLaFSU-aelbKqfq4/s1272/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-29%20at%2010.56.20%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1272" data-original-width="924" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4wyu91lNn30Ij-w9WFqX0ahGYKuWXeNDABWgvZmzuMyWl6YTC5PSjEm3_fke3iD45zGj3xB1LeU9fqKnCLifbjSgBbvJDlKdwE564fCJaRqHED9HE94HG0r24ZDHrwXvFgfFdpSZEqZxawXyBAJ9cApi0Fg3wrs_2VXKCQ8odvLaFSU-aelbKqfq4/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-29%20at%2010.56.20%20AM.png" width="232" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr2kwogHi5_lcu6oEQ_cNGt1KpnNBOUOcsmsXQ2RO_Hjf6YBDLX2S4Gj27PEMEPmVri4eCgYv_dX-CSu_9Mf5YZmQB5HomUGSp2_SkR-kBOoCgtZ8jip98jwq2nEhcjoEsvL6K0-NorOWJc8LxmG2Zmq0stw-LvfgnQT8iZqWZnERWUi2Xcgfm5lMS/s2426/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-29%20at%2010.55.15%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2426" data-original-width="2250" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr2kwogHi5_lcu6oEQ_cNGt1KpnNBOUOcsmsXQ2RO_Hjf6YBDLX2S4Gj27PEMEPmVri4eCgYv_dX-CSu_9Mf5YZmQB5HomUGSp2_SkR-kBOoCgtZ8jip98jwq2nEhcjoEsvL6K0-NorOWJc8LxmG2Zmq0stw-LvfgnQT8iZqWZnERWUi2Xcgfm5lMS/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-29%20at%2010.55.15%20AM.png" width="297" /></a></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOKTt3TeFR5X4oFCkWa06ogqRdXnnf9XvUSMfHOuGf5AvdUVRbW_iFof-G6e2B8lJ6XUAhgPMDHHhM9UqX0ZZyzVbcrmb1x35Att0KMJ-iPhMLzGK_pd9F-tTtvJo6KMOkEpBPL57s331XuYtul1E2twroYBmaq_pM0Yz0xoDASKwxHl4GrfE9IMxh/s986/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-29%20at%2010.55.36%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="986" data-original-width="766" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOKTt3TeFR5X4oFCkWa06ogqRdXnnf9XvUSMfHOuGf5AvdUVRbW_iFof-G6e2B8lJ6XUAhgPMDHHhM9UqX0ZZyzVbcrmb1x35Att0KMJ-iPhMLzGK_pd9F-tTtvJo6KMOkEpBPL57s331XuYtul1E2twroYBmaq_pM0Yz0xoDASKwxHl4GrfE9IMxh/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-29%20at%2010.55.36%20AM.png" width="249" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><h1 class="font_0" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: rgb(var(--color_14)); font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.6em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; pointer-events: auto; text-align: right; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></h1><p><b>What I love the most about STRIP is your refusal to be beaten down, and your insistence on turning the broken pieces of your life into the whole beauty of this book. (In the acknowledgements you write: this is the book, I was afraid to tell, which makes me adore you. Tell us how this book came to be, the why now moment when you were ready to tell it?</b></p><p>The now moment came when I could no longer take the angst that gripped me over not writing. It was unbearable. Yet the thought of sitting down to write, pen to paper, just me and that big blank page, that also filled me with terror. It would mean I would need to sit with myself. But the urgency to do so drove me. That was ten years ago beginning with two handwritten pages a day no matter what. </p><p><b>So much of writing is reliving things we’ve gone through, which requires a different sort of bravery. What was that like for you? Did writing about this change you, and if so, how?</b></p><p>It changed me to my core. The process was excruciating. And it was slow. I couldn’t have written it any faster or at any other time because the very process of writing it coincided with my ability to tolerate sitting with myself. </p><p>So many things changed. But one of the things was recognizing how dissociated I was. Like writing about the man in the brown car or the sex scenes with the different men. If I was going to capture what it was like, as you pointed out, I needed to relive it. To do that I really had to work on connecting to myself, getting in my body. That was horrible. I hated it. Yet it was crucial to my growth. </p><p><b>I deeply admire and love the structure of the book, short chapters with whole worlds in them, always surprising, always shocking, and yet everything is so alive and breathing on the page, from how you began stripping to drugs to drinking to your own kind of redemption. But some people never are able to reach that point. If you had to pinpoint one thing within you that insisted you would survive all of this, what was it? </b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOXfLIXaEstWtFWWgoenC49YYzdcadQYArj4OTX0ZwcRdk68RHFK1ypYvVEJ9-ho6GC9jzlzpBC6k2oFUix8MgUhVCHFr4lY98oToyeJdSFA37zruOVmrPHfuYme8A1HL9bX3TgoPs1Re08BQA3AzpD3QROnvJK3j2Beg8bmuB7VApSCf9yVZX6poq/s2136/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-29%20at%2010.56.40%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1456" data-original-width="2136" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOXfLIXaEstWtFWWgoenC49YYzdcadQYArj4OTX0ZwcRdk68RHFK1ypYvVEJ9-ho6GC9jzlzpBC6k2oFUix8MgUhVCHFr4lY98oToyeJdSFA37zruOVmrPHfuYme8A1HL9bX3TgoPs1Re08BQA3AzpD3QROnvJK3j2Beg8bmuB7VApSCf9yVZX6poq/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-29%20at%2010.56.40%20AM.png" width="320" /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></a></b></div><p></p><p>I think there was a sense, or maybe it was more of a hope, that one day everything I was experiencing would be material to create something. Like when I was working at the strip club, trying to hold back the tears as I watched my little sister twirl her beautiful self onto the stage. All those men watching her as they ate the lunchtime pizza special. </p><p>Or when I was locked in the Murphy bed closet, snorting lines on top of The Sun Also Rises. As painful as it all was, I could feel the thread of humanity within it all. The beauty. Does that make sense? </p><p><b>I keep thinking, and I am probably wrong, that there is a kind of metaphor in the word Strip. You are stripping away any pretense of your life in writing about stripping, among other things, but while doing them, did you feel you were actually adding on protective layers?</b></p><p>Not wrong at all. I do, yes. At the time, I think that what I was experiencing internally felt so unbearable that the drugs were my solution. Which is of course ironic considering drugs are what also took me down. But it was an attempt to escape the feelings that felt like they were going to kill me. That may sound dramatic, but I don’t think I’m alone in that. </p><p><b>What’s your life like now? What things from your travels do you carry with you now?</b><br /><br />Gratitude. </p><p>I never ever thought I would be able to not hate myself, to be the kind of woman I always dreamed of being. I used to come out of the bathroom at Rite Aid after locking myself in there for hours high. Across the street was the Hollywood Farmers Market where women were buying Gerber’s and organic basil. Women who wore sandals with painted toenails and women who, when they went to the bathroom, went in and came out in a normal amount of time. </p><p>And now, all these years later I am no longer locked in the bathroom at Goodwill getting high or at Home Depot fixated on all the different kind of doorknobs and nails at 3am. God, I loved Home Depot when I was high. And gardening. If you could call it that. Like I describe in the book, it wasn’t so much gardening as it was wrestling with the poor Bougainvillea for hours on end. </p><p>It sounds so cliché, but I love myself today. Not every day, don’t get me wrong. I have days, moments, hours where I’m completely off center. But I know my way back home. </p><p><b>What’s obsessing you now and why?</b></p><p>Obsession. I’ve had so many. From carrots – when I first got sober I had a carrot addiction, so much so that I turned orange – to hummingbird feeders to working with incarcerated writers, that’s a jump I know, to salted chocolate caramel ice cream. That’s probably no surprise given food is a theme in Strip. </p><p>But these days it’s frozen waffles, watermelon, and anything to do with recovery and writing. </p><p>You know, one of the things my poet father always used to say about writing is, ‘Now what is it you really want to say?’ </p><p>My father was obsessed with words and as a child, I knew that when he was writing a poem, he wouldn't hear or answer me. Beginning when I was about six, sometimes I would sit next to him outside as he wrote in his journal, and I'd write in my journal too.</p><p>I swore I'd never be a writer, the no money, the constant revisions. And yet, in the end, it’s what helped me to heal. </p><p>My father was an inspiration and before the pandemic, I had the joy of reading with him at a public event. But sadly, he passed earlier this year and in his last days at home, we had poetry readings around his bedside every night. The morning he passed we had read “On My Way to the Korean War”. And in that poem, there are a few stanzas that are and will forever be in my heart.</p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>So it was, dear friends, I learned to fly.</i></p><p><i>And so in time must you</i></p><p><i>and so will the warships,</i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhagx5I5Rm4ufxzsq2_v2RuF9_arlyPnqmvzZ3_Pzo-12-z8Qg2L8vhyzBCdKDy3EM3hS8VQHXLCoJbz6vPA_CZ1I_njijyVxCIaIrACtSHS8CZValQoxLFrRWJlCTuaM0EBq_vjRADyO92uyrARy0vtWu9nczq706kDUG_bAyiKMDJZdacqYX6FzCG/s1266/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-29%20at%2010.55.27%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1266" data-original-width="964" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhagx5I5Rm4ufxzsq2_v2RuF9_arlyPnqmvzZ3_Pzo-12-z8Qg2L8vhyzBCdKDy3EM3hS8VQHXLCoJbz6vPA_CZ1I_njijyVxCIaIrACtSHS8CZValQoxLFrRWJlCTuaM0EBq_vjRADyO92uyrARy0vtWu9nczq706kDUG_bAyiKMDJZdacqYX6FzCG/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-29%20at%2010.55.27%20AM.png" width="244" /></a></i></div><i><br /></i><p></p><p><i> and the earth itself,</i></p><p><i>and the sky,</i></p><p><i>for as the prophet says, the day cometh</i></p><p><i>when there will be no earth left to leave.</i></p><p><i>O me, O my,</i></p><p><i>O me, O my,</i></p><p><i>goodbye earth, goodbye sky.</i></p><p><i>Goodbye, goodbye. </i></p><p><b><br />What question didn’t I ask that you had hoped that I would?</b></p><p>I loved all your questions. SO much fun, thank you Caroline. A dream to do a Q&A with you. </p><p>It’s more a question I have for you, you don’t have to answer of course. But I was blown away when you wrote saying that I was your new heroine. What?! Maybe over coffee one day you could tell me why. That will be my new obsession. ‘Caroline Leavitt said I was her new heroine.’ </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p><br /></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-19174182010213048902022-08-24T13:29:00.013-07:002022-08-24T13:32:22.450-07:00Ellen Meister talks about TAKE MY HUSBAND, writing a pilot, why she loves writing why women shouldn't put their needs second, and so much more.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig_lnml7zC2oddI8_1ZQsaz0Z0-unyqPIqQbJpGKurNPNQlb6ZAbRlyCUleTiK3p4D-pFxR-9E9IZckD5qsE36MEQ1XBMCKv7LpZhWjMGuDYQLHIGj7RFAtfugRxn9K04hXpC9OxBZW0Ae65StKkldsZrYwNdwZ5n6U2XcVYEZXweN-0rbf8dKNrCD/s2400/Screen%20Shot%202022-08-24%20at%204.17.05%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="1596" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig_lnml7zC2oddI8_1ZQsaz0Z0-unyqPIqQbJpGKurNPNQlb6ZAbRlyCUleTiK3p4D-pFxR-9E9IZckD5qsE36MEQ1XBMCKv7LpZhWjMGuDYQLHIGj7RFAtfugRxn9K04hXpC9OxBZW0Ae65StKkldsZrYwNdwZ5n6U2XcVYEZXweN-0rbf8dKNrCD/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-08-24%20at%204.17.05%20PM.png" width="213" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPFLRRZ_ubqniVwe-O_n3U_1VvUeYr2TvYwjGb7-5SCN0SEBSgMBsDcwMF8K-KYhEM8WjBrbEbST5qfd8Laalpt-Mv_vs7CWoWOJJ2RK428zPpb-6GkH4Pj7cMb3L0VV1QnvX2WLO-C7pA1QCwdZsufvnM_LDF76efGwV9Az6JpuuyrU7LDVtiWZQU/s812/Screen%20Shot%202022-08-24%20at%204.17.21%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="812" data-original-width="718" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPFLRRZ_ubqniVwe-O_n3U_1VvUeYr2TvYwjGb7-5SCN0SEBSgMBsDcwMF8K-KYhEM8WjBrbEbST5qfd8Laalpt-Mv_vs7CWoWOJJ2RK428zPpb-6GkH4Pj7cMb3L0VV1QnvX2WLO-C7pA1QCwdZsufvnM_LDF76efGwV9Az6JpuuyrU7LDVtiWZQU/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-08-24%20at%204.17.21%20PM.png" width="283" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPNj9ya4gbGhVrBAaVUuZ-TlHaj7qqwD6L97aROJ7IdAgm9Sk_z509lEGt571drpu352xAIOizAAyQ8pBUv5LeS04oDi-SMxpRBJBOvWTfRKrLI1ECxCyXEvBzurMUlTus_noibCSqsOQOaL3-DP1Y80UZDKXxR7is0EacZMW5VM-kPECLqKOX2lnL/s802/Screen%20Shot%202022-08-24%20at%204.18.37%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="778" data-original-width="802" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPNj9ya4gbGhVrBAaVUuZ-TlHaj7qqwD6L97aROJ7IdAgm9Sk_z509lEGt571drpu352xAIOizAAyQ8pBUv5LeS04oDi-SMxpRBJBOvWTfRKrLI1ECxCyXEvBzurMUlTus_noibCSqsOQOaL3-DP1Y80UZDKXxR7is0EacZMW5VM-kPECLqKOX2lnL/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-08-24%20at%204.18.37%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>Ellen Meister is one of the warmest, funniest, most generous writers around. I am so, so lucky to know her. She's the author of The Rooftop Party; Love Sold Separately; Dorothy Parker Drank Here; Farewell Dorothy Parker; The Other Life; The Smart One; and Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA. She teaches creative writing, does editorial and ghostwriting services AND she's the voice of Dorothy Parker on Facebook! I'm so thrilled to have her here. Welcome Ellen!</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>I always think writers are haunted or obsessed into writing their novels. What obsessed or haunted you?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">That is so true! I was actually working on another book when I got the idea for TAKE MY HUSBAND. It was early in the pandemic, and I was close to losing my mind, cooped up in the house with my husband and three twenty-somethings, desperate for alone time that was utterly impossible. So I made a PLEASE KNOCK sign for the door to my little office, and tried to escape into my writing. My husband—who is smart, funny, and adorable but has little sense of boundaries—often ignored the sign and burst in while I was deep in concentration. Adding crankier signs to the door did nothing to help, and I finally snapped, coming up with the idea to write a book about a woman who wants to kill her beloved.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">At first, I did NOT want to write this book! It seemed too… mean. And maybe a little too revealing about the darkest corners of my heart. So I tried ignoring it, but the idea would not leave me alone. And so, I gave chapter one a shot, deciding I would write this book if I could figure out a way in. The rest, as they say, is history.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>The question here: could a wife’s husband’s death be her ticket out—is both hilarious and provocative. How much fun was it to write this?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Caroline, my dirty little secret is that I love to write. I don’t love plotting—that’s the part that makes me weep and moan and rend my garments—but once I know what needs to happen in a scene, I love to put my characters in the situation and listen to what they have to say. So, once I figured out the trajectory of my main character’s arc, and the story that drove it, I absolutely loved getting outrageous!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>I always want to know if writers feel they have learned lessons from their last book that they can use in their new one. (I never was so lucky!) But did you?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I do think I’m always learning and growing as a writer, though I’m not necessarily conscious of the ways my writing is evolving. That all seems to happen under the surface. I will say, though, that my previous book had a young protagonist, and I was so ready to write about a late middle-aged woman. It felt liberating.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>What was the writing like? And how do you write? Do you map things out, find your way in the dark?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I can’t write unless I have an idea of the structure. Because for me, it’s always all about the main character’s arc. So I need to think about where the character starts, where they end up, and how they got there. That’s not to say I come up with a rigid outline. It tends to be a pretty fluid document, because my characters often surprise me and won’t behave how I originally expected them to. To me, staying true to the characters is essential. So, I do a lot of rejiggering of my outline as I go along. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>What’s obsessing you now and why?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Oh! I teamed up with some great folks—Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry—and we are trying to sell TAKE MY HUSBAND as a TV series. David and I wrote a pilot together, and it was as fun as it was fascinating. Stay tuned for developments on this project!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>What do you want readers to come away from the book thinking about?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As women, it’s so easy for us to fall into a pattern of ignoring our own needs for the sake of others. It’s the way we’re socialized from a young age. So I’d like them to think about standing up for themselves in their important relationships, and remembering that their needs and desires are just as important as their partner’s. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-75640603836013719662022-07-01T07:58:00.002-07:002022-07-01T07:58:39.813-07:00Beloved book influencer, author, publisher, podcaster and mother of four, friend to all readers/writers/moms, Zibby Owens talks about her racking-up-the-raves memoir BOOKENDS, Thrive Causmetics mascara, and more!<p> </p><p class="" style="background-color: white; color: #163055; font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.4px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMH7celLgOgBlAS4SCRg8SvB4q69aOBUh53SF349fWG3FBH37TImYdFu2DVBC4NtQduSNmB1Jh_VgoVEC_1iQaSPw_x8tKWine8aUFxY8gwjTpaqD5-jUOVfGnEB3mmKXMPzcAS9U-DyX1vYIiVmWTkPdOGs6ZAaCxiMm9P_Yik2omfm_ltxpMtcEI/s424/Screen%20Shot%202022-07-01%20at%2010.49.04%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="326" data-original-width="424" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMH7celLgOgBlAS4SCRg8SvB4q69aOBUh53SF349fWG3FBH37TImYdFu2DVBC4NtQduSNmB1Jh_VgoVEC_1iQaSPw_x8tKWine8aUFxY8gwjTpaqD5-jUOVfGnEB3mmKXMPzcAS9U-DyX1vYIiVmWTkPdOGs6ZAaCxiMm9P_Yik2omfm_ltxpMtcEI/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-07-01%20at%2010.49.04%20AM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="" style="background-color: white; color: #163055; font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.4px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWqkPTSyHmEIvWA21p6N4tR0yCwTNcOz96gyghWB4JDvu1CcVKZf_uyHeDHAOXVKc3CFTwUXIdy_UXReiMrf1Ab1RPbHpv3SCqbqXu6YRknCRSlXhQvoKb3z5OXWG3AIEjU5-ev4FL4r5_k3jrGfcvM4jFg1UzLqfvj9yZtft7BJm933MJRZQBlgK6/s630/Screen%20Shot%202022-07-01%20at%2010.49.27%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="420" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWqkPTSyHmEIvWA21p6N4tR0yCwTNcOz96gyghWB4JDvu1CcVKZf_uyHeDHAOXVKc3CFTwUXIdy_UXReiMrf1Ab1RPbHpv3SCqbqXu6YRknCRSlXhQvoKb3z5OXWG3AIEjU5-ev4FL4r5_k3jrGfcvM4jFg1UzLqfvj9yZtft7BJm933MJRZQBlgK6/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-07-01%20at%2010.49.27%20AM.png" width="213" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="" style="background-color: white; color: #163055; font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.4px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><br /><br />Who doesn't know of and adore Zibby Owens? She is an author, podcaster, publisher, CEO, and mother of four. And a force of nature. And a great friend and supporter of anyone who writes, and anyone who reads.</i></p><p class="" style="background-color: white; color: #163055; font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.4px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Zibby is the founder of <a href="https://www.zibbyowens.com/" style="background: transparent; color: #38b6ff; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">Zibby Owens Media</a>, a privately-held media company designed to help busy people live their best lives by connecting to books and each other. The three divisions include <a href="https://www.zibbybooks.com/" style="background: transparent; color: #38b6ff; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">Zibby Books</a>, a publishing house for fiction and memoir, <a href="https://www.zcastnetwork.com/" style="background: transparent; color: #38b6ff; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">Zcast</a>, a podcast network powered by Acast including Zibby’s award-winning podcast <a href="https://www.momsdonthavetimetoreadbooks.com/" style="background: transparent; color: #38b6ff; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books</a>, and <a href="https://www.momsdonthavetimeto.com/" style="background: transparent; color: #38b6ff; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">Moms Don’t Have Time To</a>, a new content and community site including Zibby’s Virtual Book Club, events, and the former Moms Don’t Have Time to Write. </i></p><p class="" style="background-color: white; color: #163055; font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.4px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>She is a regular columnist for Good Morning America and a frequent guest on morning news shows recommending books. </i></p><p class="" style="background-color: white; color: #163055; font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.4px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Editor of two anthologies (<span style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">Moms Don’t Have Time to Have Kids</span> and <span style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">Moms Don’t Have Time To: A Quarantine Anthology</span>), a children’s book <span style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">Princess Charming</span>, and now a memoir <span style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature, </span>Zibby loves to write. She regularly pens personal essays, starting with her first one in <span style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">Seventeen</span> magazine in 1992. </i></p><p class="" style="background-color: white; color: #163055; font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.4px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Zibby lives in New York with her husband, Kyle Owens of <a href="https://www.morningmoon.com/" style="background: transparent; color: #38b6ff; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">Morning Moon Productions</a>, and her four children. Follow her on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/zibbyowens" style="background: transparent; color: #38b6ff; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">@zibbyowens.</a> </i></p><p class="" style="background-color: white; color: #163055; font-family: Montserrat; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0.4px; margin-bottom: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>(Did you love Bookends? Email her about the book <a href="mailto:zibby@bookendsmemoir.com" style="background: transparent; color: #38b6ff; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none;">here.</a>)</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>Bookends is her astonishing and moving memoir and it's racking up the raves.</i></p><p><i>Good Day LA made Bookends one of their "best summer reads."</i></p><p><i>Arianna Huffington called Zibby "one of the most be loved book influencers in America."</i></p><p><i>Town & Country named Bookends as one of its Best Summer Reads.</i></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Bookends is so brave, so readable. What I loved the most about it was that I thought I sort of knew you, and I had this idea of you as this totally unflappable, always in control energizer, but you let us all see through the layers to the tender-hearted, grieving, shy (Zibby shy?!!! Zibby mute?!!!)) person who grew into herself, thanks to the help of books, friends, kids and husband. So I want to ask, how scary was it for you to write this book? Did it get less scary as you continued to write? And does it want you to write another memoir? (I hope so!)</b></p><p>It wasn’t scary at ALL. This is how I process everything in my life – and always have! I’ve been writing and rewriting parts of this book since 2003 when I graduated from business school and took a year off to write it. Little did I know how much life I needed to live before my book was complete. I was slightly terrified when the galley started going out, but the reception has been so warm and positive that I’m not worried anymore! (And thanks for the kind words about the book!!)</p><p><b>You write so eloquently about loss that I was weeping. Yet, loss seems to have made you more aware of how important it is to cherish those we love every moment we have them, because loss is always nipping at our heels. Can you talk a little bit about this, please?</b></p><p>Yes, like so many of us, I’ve been through a lot of grief and loss, especially in my twenties. Death isn’t an abstract concept for me. I think about it daily, like the true neurotic New Yorker I am. But I use it to motivate me. I work fast and hard to beat the clock. I view life now as a fight to get as much in as I can before the sands in the hourglass run out. Similarly I value loved ones in my life knowing that our time together may be finite. </p><p><b>You also write so honestly about the privilege you’ve had and your awareness of how it shaped you. But privileged or not, so many of your challenges, motherhood, work, writing, feel so universal. Would you agree?</b></p><p>Yes! I know how lucky I am to have been born into my family. I feel like I won the lottery and like to share the benefits whenever I can. But it doesn’t matter how lucky you are. Emotions and obstacles are the same. When my kids fight or one of them tantrums or gets sick or someone I love dies or a friend is in need or any of it, nothing can help. </p><p><b>Midlife and its discontents run through the book, yet I have the feeling that as you are getting older, you are doing more, risking more, being more. But in a recent essay, you wrote that sometimes this can be a problem, and you are now stopping a bit to recharge. All of this makes me want to ask you, where do you see yourself in your eighties? I cannot imagine you sitting on a rocker with Kyle watching the sea, unless you both are going to write and film a documentary, too!</b></p><p>Ohh, good idea! A documentary with Kyle. (Haha.) If I’m lucky enough to live into my eighties, I hope I’ll be surrounded by my four kids, that they’ll be in happy marriages, that I’ll be visiting my grandkids often, and hopefully spending a lot of time at our home high on a hill in the Pacific Palisades, watching the sun rise drinking coffee with Kyle. But I also hope to always be creating, thinking, writing, and reading. I hope I’ll have a stack of books that I plow through daily, that I’ll have written many books by then, that I’ve seen my community really grow, that I’ve watched authors I love have even more success, and that I’ve started many things that improve people’s lives. One thing I wish? Fewer emails!! </p><p><b>I loved the whole section of how you fell in love with Kyle, a tennis pro, and how while many expected you to be with someone high powered and connected, you realized that Kyle was the one who could unlock happiness for you. And what was most delightful, is both of you found what you were meant to do—he’s a successful film producer now, and you now have a life that not only helps so many, many others, but it helps you, too. How difficult was that transition from the life you’d thought you might have to the life you have now?</b></p><p>As in all transitions and periods of change in my life, it was tough – but it was all worth it.</p><p><b>I also loved how you threaded so many wonderful books throughout the narrative, detailing how they helped you, and in the process, showing how they might help others. Since you read EVERYTHING, I was wondering how hard it was to choose the books, and also do you reread certain books in certain times in your life, and then those books take on new meaning?</b></p><p>I rarely reread books but I have reread a few of my favorites and am shocked by how differently they land given where I am in life. It wasn’t that hard to choose the books but I left so many out and feel terrible about that. </p><p><b>What’s obsessing you now and why?</b></p><p>To be totally superficial, my Thrive Causemetics mascara is obsessing me right now. It comes off in the shower! No make-up remover needed! And it stays on for days and looks like I’ve had my lashes done. And yes, they’re a sponsor of my podcast, Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, but I seriously love it!!!! (Go to thrivecausemtics.com/books for 15% off.) And to be honest, I just leased a Volvo XC90 and am totally obsessed with that car. It took months to figure out what to get but when two of my best girlfriends recommended it, I got one. It’s perfect for our family – four kids! </p><p><b>What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</b></p><p>Maybe what I’m reading now? I just finished the most hysterical book I’ve read in my entire life. I laughed until I cried. Jenny Mollen’s I Like You Just the Way I Am. Hilarious. </p><div><br /></div>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-34433360393873097362022-06-22T12:54:00.000-07:002022-06-22T12:54:13.403-07:00Edie Meidav talks about grief, empathy, love, blindness in human relations, an alphabet to answer questions, and her new novel, ANOTHER LOVE DISCOURSE<p> </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqYomRZx-2KQ5-G5yWCHX_riigReGXR0iTHBwKFLI9jGyyVkLwZFNvpB79qkSmH0y42jEAIGyW1BeRAtdbFBzykObU2yPWNcKZEt8wyz1uJtaUS3Czg_Wz7La2y7VlgkUbr0Lf6wEPshP4Wj0aNJxq3ihIbMCaWe7fV-Rh9itKsmBUmDdTa2_TLSXL/s2416/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-22%20at%203.26.59%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2416" data-original-width="1572" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqYomRZx-2KQ5-G5yWCHX_riigReGXR0iTHBwKFLI9jGyyVkLwZFNvpB79qkSmH0y42jEAIGyW1BeRAtdbFBzykObU2yPWNcKZEt8wyz1uJtaUS3Czg_Wz7La2y7VlgkUbr0Lf6wEPshP4Wj0aNJxq3ihIbMCaWe7fV-Rh9itKsmBUmDdTa2_TLSXL/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-22%20at%203.26.59%20PM.png" width="208" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirZh5JePIrQVWpfH2ZKMgsf1ki93BYqzReiRv7jTKM0LrAIH6AlA5-pk2qogQsdtV1yiyiTdBrzOLv0XzD96IOzyvhmiM3iALNg5Q4b1u20Reu8GY5GyHdpXxO_UGrBBvQA20B1MZKRkUp2xL8Y3TZxRg8qyO-Ry1C8HkQuLrVaN6g4ExQ6Aimagn1/s392/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-22%20at%203.28.08%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="372" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirZh5JePIrQVWpfH2ZKMgsf1ki93BYqzReiRv7jTKM0LrAIH6AlA5-pk2qogQsdtV1yiyiTdBrzOLv0XzD96IOzyvhmiM3iALNg5Q4b1u20Reu8GY5GyHdpXxO_UGrBBvQA20B1MZKRkUp2xL8Y3TZxRg8qyO-Ry1C8HkQuLrVaN6g4ExQ6Aimagn1/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-22%20at%203.28.08%20PM.png" width="304" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>I’m thrilled to host Edie Meidav .com on the blog today for her astonishing new book ANOTHER LOVE DISCOURSE. I’m thrilled to host Edie Meidav on the blog today for her astonishing new work, ANOTHER LOVE DISCOURSE, about love, pandemic and hope. Edie is also the remarkable author of the novels Kingdom of the Young, Lola, California, Crawl Space, The Far Field, and strange attractions. Instead of the usual Q and A, we have something different! Edie has provided “an alphabet of answers to imaginable questions,” and it is so great I am setting it down here! Thank you, Edie</p><p><br /></p><p><b>One Shard </b></p><p><b>An alphabet of answers to imaginable questions:</b></p><p><br /></p><p>A: Toronto.</p><p>B. New York, Cuba, France, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka.</p><p>C. A former director of the MFA program at New College on Valencia Street in San Francisco, writer-in-residence at Bard College, and now at the UMass Amherst MFA program. </p><p>D. Sea monkeys.</p><p>E. Language indeed a virus.</p><p>F. Ms., The Village Voice, Guernica, Artweek, The International Literary Quarterly, The Kenyon Review, Terra Nova, The American Voice, New Letters, Conjunctions and elsewhere. </p><p>G. A Lannan Fellowship, a Howard Fellowship, a Bard Fiction Prize for Writers Under 40, Whiting research award, a Kafka Award for Best Novel by an American Woman, a Fulbright in Sri Lanka, Fulbright in Cyprus, Northern California Book Award shortlist, and other citations.</p><p>H. Books called editorial picks by the New York Times, the L.A. Times, the Electric Review, the Litblog Coop and elsewhere.</p><p>I. Overeducated women with a past; autodidact boys, occasionally scarred, often grown into men. </p><p>J. Ocean.</p><p>K. Children.</p><p>L. Unterzakhn; The Map and the Territory; looking for Tanizaki.</p><p>M. Shange, Angelou, Woolf, Hardy, Faulkner, Morrison, Kundera, Paley, Baldwin, Flaubert, Rushdie, Cavafy, Lorca, Cortazar, Transtromer, Vallejo, Stendhal, Ishiguro, Coetzee, Jackson.</p><p>N. Poetry.</p><p>O. Generosity.</p><p>P. Spanish and French, German and Sinhala, Hebrew, some Catalan, Greek, Portuguese, Italian.</p><p>Q. One obsessive score for each book.</p><p>R. The stress of routine.</p><p>S. Loss of the perceiving mind.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>And I want to let the high praise speak of Edie’s novel!</b></p><p>In Edie Meidav’s mesmerizing new novel, A Lover’s Discourse, we are in a Roland Barthian world, a rich explosive text about a divorce and failed love, the longing for a fully mothered childhood, and the ways that working hard often succumbs one to a hellish isolation and distance from life, the over-riding question being: can we ever be “happy” in such an existential tumble? We are engaged in these abstract questions simply because Edie Meidav is such a gifted writer. Meidav is one of our truest writers, and I feel only deep and profound admiration for the uneasy ways she has chosen to tell a story of the heartbreak of being a mother of three children, left by her husband.</p><p><b> —Leora Skolkin-Smith, author of The Fragile Mistress and Stealing Faith</b></p><p>Edie Meidav’s Another Love Discourse shatters boundaries and expectations: her narrative voice—urgent, lyrical, raw—compels the reader into uncommon and intense intimacy. This powerful book will stay with you.</p><p><b> —Claire Messud, author of A Dream Life</b></p><p>Edie Meidav is one of my favorite contemporary writers, and this is her best book, in a success of very strong books. It's open, wounded, true. </p><p><b>--Rick Moody</b></p><p>Edie Meidav's Another Love Discourse is an uncategorizable triumph, and a gesture of radical intimacy with the reader, one of which Barthes would be proud.</p><p><b>—Jonathan Lethem, author of The Arrest </b></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-62677203119307790302022-06-16T13:23:00.004-07:002022-06-16T13:25:17.103-07:00Poets & Writers contributing editor Michael Bourne talks about his debut BLITHEDALE CANYON, writing fiction vs. being a journalist, California as a character, and so much more<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9ejLXSSDTYje6OUIholnfYiudrUQR-fd0UazU8fVjQ6kZmEh13LIxa8PQfamlhUrpsKl2ncDhA7S8BI4GGcsjjRTYX2LZYvprp3MnbnB-aWzdpnFAcamiJ7EYbd2K3xAMoPBKeVi3XLmGw45K-r22hLOsI9wdqICfdonSZ2u8gN3l_w6m-4DXwtsa/s2468/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-16%20at%204.10.33%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2468" data-original-width="1588" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9ejLXSSDTYje6OUIholnfYiudrUQR-fd0UazU8fVjQ6kZmEh13LIxa8PQfamlhUrpsKl2ncDhA7S8BI4GGcsjjRTYX2LZYvprp3MnbnB-aWzdpnFAcamiJ7EYbd2K3xAMoPBKeVi3XLmGw45K-r22hLOsI9wdqICfdonSZ2u8gN3l_w6m-4DXwtsa/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-16%20at%204.10.33%20PM.png" width="206" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL59DDO_fouD8ZJ4Er8aymFidzfL_dRYTyWJasN3GrIG6jgRkmlx-47TZuqQC0oThCO72Yzy9FhH_q1GlxBAAZZ3yG7I3PgUFYa6zy5WfXMhjlBFCRt0TUpNr8FL7bwQ7Amha1sEmaFobcMlR1m_kgQBs7hJJ-JKb6V9FwzVzUz1RXCksVqg9Kel22/s2180/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-16%20at%204.10.15%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2180" data-original-width="1844" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL59DDO_fouD8ZJ4Er8aymFidzfL_dRYTyWJasN3GrIG6jgRkmlx-47TZuqQC0oThCO72Yzy9FhH_q1GlxBAAZZ3yG7I3PgUFYa6zy5WfXMhjlBFCRt0TUpNr8FL7bwQ7Amha1sEmaFobcMlR1m_kgQBs7hJJ-JKb6V9FwzVzUz1RXCksVqg9Kel22/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-16%20at%204.10.15%20PM.png" width="271" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px;">All writers adore Poets & Writers and The Millions, which means they also love Michael Bourne, a </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">contributing editor at Poets & Writers and a staff writer for the online literary site The Millions</b><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px;">. His fiction and poetry have appeared in The Potomac Review, The Orange Coast Review, River City, Oakland Review, and online at Tin House's Flash Fridays. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. His debut, Blithedale Canyon, set in sun-soaked California is about a guy fresh out of rehab trying to put together the jagged pieces of his life in hopes of reclaiming his self-worth and the woman he loves. <br /><br />Says Edan Lepucki, "A story of love, redemption and hope. I couldn't put it down."<br /><br />Teddy Wayne calls it "an ode to the pleasures and pains of the return to the familiar, to the gravitational pulls of addiction, friends and Springsteen on a car stereo, but mostly of home. A tenderly nostalgic and page-turning portrait of a man who cannot control his impulses, written by an author in full command."</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 16px;">Thank you for being here, Michael!</span></p><p><b>I always want to know what is haunting or obsessing an author into writing a book. What was it for you?</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">You could say that Blithedale Canyon is the story of the life I could have lived and didn’t. Like my narrator Trent, I’m an addict, and like Trent, I spent much of my twenties floundering and lost. But unlike him, I got clean fairly early and sidestepped the consequences so many addicts face – jail, institutions, lost jobs, wrecked relationships, and on and on. From the start, my sense of Trent was that he’s a good guy who does bad things. I did that for a while, then stopped. So while Blithedale Canyon isn’t autobiography and Trent is very different from me, I’ve always been haunted by that counterlife, the life I was lucky enough not to have lived. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>So you are so entrenched in the world of books from writing about them, reviewing, interviewing, the works. What was it like to be writing your debut novel? What surprised you about it? And did you love it more than writing stories? And if so why? (I've always heard that writing short stories is a passionate affair and writing a novel is a great marriage.)</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">One of the nice things about being a journalist is that if you want to know about something you can call up an expert and write a story about it. So when I wanted to learn what author newsletters were all about, I called a bunch of authors who were writing them. When I wanted to learn about contract publicists, I interviewed a bunch of publicists and writers who had worked with them. That’s all great, and I’ve learned a ton about the business of publishing from my work as a reporter, but all that helped me not one bit with the actual writing part. You can take classes and interview your favorite writers, but none of that changes the fact that writing a book is hard.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I guess that would be the thing that surprised me most about writing a debut novel, how hard it is to write a good one. I had two write two bad ones before I wrote a good one – and even then it took years of trial and error to get it right. The upside is that when you spend years of your life thinking you’ll never be able to pull something off, when you do pull it off, the sense of satisfaction is that much sweeter. The pre-pub buzz for Blithedale Canyon has so far been very positive, but at some very basic level I don’t care what the reviews say. I wrote something I’m proud of and that makes me happier than any outside kudos ever could.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As for short stories, I’m glad to put them behind me. I’ve published a bunch of them, but I don’t think it’s my natural form. I’m interested in long, complex story arcs, which stories can’t accommodate well. Writers like Alice Munro and Annie Proulx can write what feels like a whole novel in 25 pages. I’ll never know how they do it. Good story writers are like literary jewelers – they create beauty in the most compact of spaces. I love a great short story, but I’ve read enough of them to know I probably never write one.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Northern California is very much a character in your book. How did the meaning of that state change for you as you wrote about gentrification and love and trying to make ends meet?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I’m glad to hear you say that. I wanted readers to come away from Blithedale Canyon feeling like they know the town of Mill Valley, where the book is set, like a fully rounded character. In the novel, which is set in 2001, the town is undergoing a deep generational change. Trent’s family owned a local shoe store where his granddad worked out of the back repairing shoes. That business got destroyed by nearby malls, and now, as Trent says at one point, “All the old stores are gone. There’s nothing left in town but chain stores and art galleries.”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I very much wanted the town to have a story arc like the other characters in the book, so that at the same time Trent is trying to kick drugs and alcohol, the town is struggling to retain its small-town character where local people own most of the important businesses and people know each other. I think that’s a story that needs to be told. We get so caught up in all the shiny new toys of technological progress and we forget what our smartphones and mega-malls have replaced – towns that operated on a human scale. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The Mill Valley of the novel is a fiction – the basic history and geography is factual, but the people and businesses are invented. But so far as I can tell, in the real Mill Valley, the battle to maintain the small-town character is over. The place remains gobsmackingly beautiful and if you’re in the market for some aromatherapy or a designer coffee, Mill Valley has you covered, but the town feels to me like a theme-park version of its former self, everything shiny and glossy and a little less practically useful than it once was. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>What's obsessing you now and why?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">For a new book I’m writing, I’ve been researching ecoterrorists, and I’ve become mildly obsessed with understanding the logic of ecological terrorism. Unlike political terrorists, environmental activists rarely target people, opting instead to burn down buildings and disable machinery. Even so, people do get hurt. Their goals are often laudable – they’re literally trying to save the planet – but their methods are extreme and often extremely dangerous. I find the whole thing fascinating.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>What question didn't I ask that I should have?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Maybe: “Dude, why? Why did you stick with writing fiction through decades of failure when there are so many other, easier ways to make a life?” This is a question I suspect pretty much everyone in my life has wanted to ask, and a few have flat-out asked it. My answer is always, “Beats me.” I’ve had success as a journalist and as a teacher and part of me wishes I could be satisfied with that, because I do derive a lot of satisfaction from those jobs. But for as long as I can remember, I’ve felt that I was put on this planet to tell stories. It’s not a logical thing. I’m glad I’ve published stories and now a book and I hope to publish more, but I’d keep doing this if I never published a word. I’m a writer, so I write. It’s really as simple as that.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><p><br /></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-61949865249689194652022-04-22T08:10:00.004-07:002022-04-22T08:11:45.962-07:00Robin Black talks about Mrs. Dalloway, the book that mattered to her the most.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEierDFThgwj1Hl0jyW0toBraAQrL9Hl3Mg5CNn3wTQyZZd5-aiuTCN1QDnSLdpYPrjtKRh6DutjA_c5cL4qVJmX9BpaV8ZVjZzX05Rk2DqT2qXriS2xd9eXNmVLrdTKLiPg-40OIk-aVqHCMw-_qZjEFJ2dyZOYkJ2wctye6Z8NfwYwoFBH3sIxdH5C/s676/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-22%20at%2011.03.31%20AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="676" data-original-width="428" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEierDFThgwj1Hl0jyW0toBraAQrL9Hl3Mg5CNn3wTQyZZd5-aiuTCN1QDnSLdpYPrjtKRh6DutjA_c5cL4qVJmX9BpaV8ZVjZzX05Rk2DqT2qXriS2xd9eXNmVLrdTKLiPg-40OIk-aVqHCMw-_qZjEFJ2dyZOYkJ2wctye6Z8NfwYwoFBH3sIxdH5C/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-22%20at%2011.03.31%20AM.png" width="203" /></a></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMhkr_BDpfS05Usfo3kN2K4EtAodsC1gdb0xPkc9bwXezX5tF5ajSwakRoE6yf98BX-T9IZmjskj_YebQKVQqSXUjLU6Ui1Kt__QbQav0fDh38PrZd1XKo9a5KUZaRcCRZJgZGkRVhdfnr9vBUQVjEhI_ySQ8BqwxDSy0xAuIPUE_eEnIlgKPvGvYJ/s494/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-22%20at%2011.02.14%20AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="388" data-original-width="494" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMhkr_BDpfS05Usfo3kN2K4EtAodsC1gdb0xPkc9bwXezX5tF5ajSwakRoE6yf98BX-T9IZmjskj_YebQKVQqSXUjLU6Ui1Kt__QbQav0fDh38PrZd1XKo9a5KUZaRcCRZJgZGkRVhdfnr9vBUQVjEhI_ySQ8BqwxDSy0xAuIPUE_eEnIlgKPvGvYJ/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-22%20at%2011.02.14%20AM.png" width="320" /></a></div> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.9); color: #2d2d2c; font-family: times;">What books matter the most to us, and why do we turn to them time after time? I've long admired <a href="https://www.robinblack.net">Robin Black</a>, both as a person, a literary citizen, and an acclaimed writer, and I was thrilled to learn that she had written a book about why Virginia Woolf's masterpiece, Mrs. Dalloway, meant so much to her. Thank you so much, Robin for being here!</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.9); color: #2d2d2c; font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.9); color: #2d2d2c; font-family: times;">First, the praise!</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">“This astonishing new book, by the brilliant Robin Black is an intimate meditation on reading and writing, aftermath and possibility, the tension between the never-stable, endlessly interpretable depths of a book and the fragility of life, the finality of death. I emerged from this breathtaking work with a transformed understanding of both Woolf’s masterpiece and the stream of consciousness in which we swim, “together and alone.”—Karen Russell</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; margin: -4px 0px 14px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Reading Robin Black’s astute and enlightening meditation on </span><span class="a-text-italic" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic;">Mrs. Dalloway</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> is like eavesdropping on a mesmerizing literary conversation, but one in which the participants are not two readers but a reader and a masterpiece. Black threads the very moving story of her own evolution as a writer through the exquisite fabric of Woolf’s great novel, and the result will fascinate everyone who cares about the craft of fiction.”—Ann Packer </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span face=""Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111;">“I loved reading Robin Black’s take on </span><span class="a-text-italic" face=""Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111; font-style: italic;">Mrs. Dalloway</span><span face=""Amazon Ember", Arial, sans-serif" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1111;">. She generously shares details of her own life that offer an example of how a great book stays with a person, and goes deep into the intricacies of important craft aspects of the text, illuminating its brilliance. It’s a privilege to read alongside her.”—Alice Elliot Dark </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.9); color: #2d2d2c; font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.9); color: #2d2d2c; font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.9); color: #2d2d2c;">Robin Black’s story collection, </span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2d2d2c;">If I loved you, I would tell you this</em><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.9); color: #2d2d2c;">, was a finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Story Prize, and named a Best Book of 2010 by numerous publications, including the Irish Times. Her novel,</span><em style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #2d2d2c;"> Life Drawing</em><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.9); color: #2d2d2c;">, was longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the Impac Dublin Literature Prize, and the Folio Prize. Her fiction has been translated into Italian, French, German, and Dutch.</span></span></div><p style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.9); box-sizing: border-box; color: #2d2d2c; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;">Robin’s most recent book is <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Crash Course: Essays From Where Writing And Life Collide. </em>Robin’s work can be found in such publications as <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">One Story, The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, Southern Review, The Rumpus, O. Magazine</em>, <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Conde Nast Traveler UK</em>,<em style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </em>and numerous anthologies, including <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. I</em> (Norton) and <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review</em>. <br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">I always want to know what was haunting or obsessing a writer into writing their new book. What was it for you?</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">I really had no idea until I worked on this book why I felt so almost magically drawn to Mrs. Dalloway. But now I understand that the topics of mental health struggles, and the satisfactions one does and doesn't get from a life defined by the domestic sphere, plus Woolf's genius use of craft all resonated for me when I first read the book at forty-two. As they still do. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">I love that line, "We swim together and alone." Please can you talk about this?</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">There is a quasi-magical aspect to the way Woolf treats consciousness in this book. Yes, she explores and, in her word, "tunnels" into individual consciousnesses, but she also writes in a way that suggests something like a shared societal consciousness, a fluidity of boundaries between individuals. This comes up especially in her depiction of mental illness. At the beginning of the book, all of London seems to think as one, except poor Septimus Smith whose perceptions are distorted due to mental illness. They all see one thing, a "royal personage" for example, and he sees something entirely different: a reflection of his own "wrongness." I think this is such a gorgeous, insightful, subliminal way of depicting the "out of step" quality of what having a mental illness feels like. That fluidity of consciousness, that understanding that at times people's thoughts converge, that a disruption of that is a lonely place to be, is what I call the "ocean of shared consciousness" - in which we swim together and alone. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">What surprised you in writing this book?<br /><br /></span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">I was shocked and sometimes discouraged by how difficult it was for me to organize and articulate my perceptions and opinions and experiences of reading it. I don't think I have ever had to work with the same kind of concentration and precision on anything. Reading and rereading and rereading opened up such a wealth of responses in me. It was the challenge of my ADD brain's life to keep all that clear and make it comprehensible to anyone else. And I was shocked by what I term the "extreme craft" Woolf employs. I went from knowing it's a work of genius, to seeing how at least some of that genius works, structurally. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">What's obsessing you now and why?</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">Other than the state of the world, the horrors that abound, all of which dominates all our thoughts these days, I am obsessed with writing my new novel - which is somewhat lighter than my earlier work, and my first long fiction project in nearly a decade. I won't say more, for all the reasons you understand, but I am beginning to believe in it - a stage I am sure you also understand. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: times;">What question didn't I ask that I should have?</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">Caroline! You ask all the right questions! But here's another: What's it like to write so personal a book about a novel that people are obsessed with and reverent about? Even worshipful. . . And the answer is, it's terrifying. But also felt important to me, because what I really try to do in this book is take a long hard look at what it means to be a reader, what it means for a reader to become a collaborator with a writer whom they will never meet. And that is a subject that belongs to us all. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;">AND DON'T FORGET TO WATCH ROBIN IN CONVERSATION WITH PAMELA ERENS ON A MIGHTY BLAZE, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27th at Noon ET.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDmFQZ9wcvUnDLRCsM_6nnYtYWCCGlBJgj6YbXZ9i5gKFZ9AlQ5I3b-zlQDQkKhgR7htOQs5C9c_4KfY-prPIh0sK-IP79O8jdbz1LCpP9ckcnnneKmQbDNZ61sAyvfDmw7YW7vj8J8KBC84lCTikDQPDj6YtY12YU2mKd09jSIllmB7jPsBaVnK4K/s3144/April%2027%20noon%20Lit%20Fic%20Robin%20Black%20Pamela%20erens.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1790" data-original-width="3144" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDmFQZ9wcvUnDLRCsM_6nnYtYWCCGlBJgj6YbXZ9i5gKFZ9AlQ5I3b-zlQDQkKhgR7htOQs5C9c_4KfY-prPIh0sK-IP79O8jdbz1LCpP9ckcnnneKmQbDNZ61sAyvfDmw7YW7vj8J8KBC84lCTikDQPDj6YtY12YU2mKd09jSIllmB7jPsBaVnK4K/s320/April%2027%20noon%20Lit%20Fic%20Robin%20Black%20Pamela%20erens.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><p><br /><br /></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-58029764019090527502022-04-04T15:16:00.012-07:002022-04-04T15:18:34.313-07:00OUT TODAY! Gina Sorell's wise and witty novel< THE WISE WOMEN, about real estate, motherhood, family and so much more! To celebrate: a movie and a few silly questions...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyrWwi40UREqGg2PiBZfkjncgptL3tq8B9RAJz1o847RlSRJyQVfDW1sTV6-u6vsmyE1sdqoCsBJnp9Z7sbAw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1CRR813Upqt9_uqNWNzeuy5DUr3A056JL5fwydKQmhilXPUqbqicQPecFh-dyuG0u5nTZo3LcKgwDCMmQNwWXprUNaHS3WDcP8TxAywSvqAWXYv-mAK0_GWC0HQO7mzfZkAADvBPHmzwjkpT0dKyhl8Lnf4CwI0tBRfWN8KrDxMQAEk9f-paDMJNg/s726/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-04%20at%205.48.22%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="726" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1CRR813Upqt9_uqNWNzeuy5DUr3A056JL5fwydKQmhilXPUqbqicQPecFh-dyuG0u5nTZo3LcKgwDCMmQNwWXprUNaHS3WDcP8TxAywSvqAWXYv-mAK0_GWC0HQO7mzfZkAADvBPHmzwjkpT0dKyhl8Lnf4CwI0tBRfWN8KrDxMQAEk9f-paDMJNg/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-04%20at%205.48.22%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSqC9XBQQhuJnyXFxBFqTBvywCu7X8CY0Alchy4Cj67xcsLJf6mEme1v8I7q9OBqpsiEBBmGqwmt6tI95ILaGFjEf9lOg2VgKaoe8zBytI1K8aE-FUh9a_x5oBdJhXexd9J3h0JKIpeAjkC5PJTVM32UlcK2AmRAE0xiHGQFHVzpG5DAbb3a0R0R15/s706/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-04%20at%205.48.06%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSqC9XBQQhuJnyXFxBFqTBvywCu7X8CY0Alchy4Cj67xcsLJf6mEme1v8I7q9OBqpsiEBBmGqwmt6tI95ILaGFjEf9lOg2VgKaoe8zBytI1K8aE-FUh9a_x5oBdJhXexd9J3h0JKIpeAjkC5PJTVM32UlcK2AmRAE0xiHGQFHVzpG5DAbb3a0R0R15/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-04%20at%205.48.06%20PM.png" width="207" /></a></div><br /><div aria-expanded="true" class="h7" role="listitem" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; max-width: 100000px; outline: none; padding-bottom: 0px;" tabindex="-1"><br /></div><div aria-expanded="true" class="h7" role="listitem" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; max-width: 100000px; outline: none; padding-bottom: 0px;" tabindex="-1"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br />30 Books we Can't Wait to read in 2022-- Parade<br /><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Read With Jenna's Most Anticipated books of 2022</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>"A fine job describing neighborhood tensions and the city's scene." - Publishers' Weekly</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>"Warm and quirky!" Kirkus Reviews</b><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span face="avenir-lt-w01_35-light1475496, avenir-lt-w05_35-light, sans-serif" style="color: #606060;">Gina's a friend since forever, partner in crime, screenwriting partner (hey, together we made finalist in the Sundance Screenwriters' Lab) and a cause for celebration because today is her pub day for The Wise Women. She's also the author of </span><span face="avenir-lt-w01_35-light1475496, avenir-lt-w05_35-light, sans-serif" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #606060; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mothers and Other Strangers</span></span><span face="avenir-lt-w01_35-light1475496, avenir-lt-w05_35-light, sans-serif" style="color: #606060;">, a Great Group Reads selection, and a 2017 best book of Refinery 29, Self Magazine.<br /></span><br />To celebrate I'm asking her a few silly questions.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>This is so exciting! And so different from your first launch of your first novel MOTHERS AND OTHER STRANGERS. So what food is it most like now?</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">A strawberry pavlova drizzled with dark chocolate.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i>What are your nerves like today? Hawaii on the beach or stuck in traffic in Mumbai?</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />Stuck in traffic in Mumbai--definitely!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><br />Where would you be the most thrilled seeing people reading your book?</i><br /><br />Outside, relaxing, with their feet up and a coffee or cocktail at the ready!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /><b><br />Go forth and buy this book at your favorite indie! Or mosey over to Bookshop.org and order online.</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> </div><br /><br /></div><br /><br /></div>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-26517041798868489572022-03-17T14:21:00.004-07:002022-03-17T14:22:47.287-07:00Women are rewriting their own story! Come see how in Gina Barreca's hilarious collection of flash fiction from some of the fiercest women around: FAST FIERCE WOMEN<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjXTOrFDyiGrbRVqtYB_M-25UU3aK6o-4vD-L6KWU16AXKKdXPGkInDmAJOMn-62Vmay9c0fqRJu4uYnD3KX1yMjeCcbdTzEdzkBzyqDGsuhKrJeOoIr2UQcCcHhcmE4wSShHCiekBQiZKnmKDxqy15U7EUERLBFJZDlxErNvGlrLBlADcwis-0eznn=s2122" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2122" data-original-width="1790" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjXTOrFDyiGrbRVqtYB_M-25UU3aK6o-4vD-L6KWU16AXKKdXPGkInDmAJOMn-62Vmay9c0fqRJu4uYnD3KX1yMjeCcbdTzEdzkBzyqDGsuhKrJeOoIr2UQcCcHhcmE4wSShHCiekBQiZKnmKDxqy15U7EUERLBFJZDlxErNvGlrLBlADcwis-0eznn=s320" width="270" /></a></div><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><b>No one writes a funnier bio than Gina herself, So here it is: <br /></b><span class="s1" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "sorts mill goudy", serif; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /><br />Gina Barreca has appeared, often as a repeat guest, on <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">20/20</span>, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Today Show</span>, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CNN</span>, the <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">BBC</span>, <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">NPR</span> and, yes, on <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oprah</span> to discuss gender, power, politics, and humor. Her earlier books include the bestselling <a href="https://ginabarreca.com/books/they-used-to-call-me-snow-white-but-i-drifted/" style="color: #502ced; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s;"><span class="s2" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women’s Strategic Use of Humor</span></span></a>, <a href="https://ginabarreca.com/books/its-not-that-im-bitter/" style="color: #502ced; margin-bottom: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s;"><span class="s2" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s Not That I’m Bitter, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Visible Panty Lines and Conquered the World</span></span></a>, </span><span class="s3" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "sorts mill goudy", serif; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse</span></span><span class="s1" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "sorts mill goudy", serif; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, and <a href="https://ginabarreca.com/books/babes-in-boyland/" style="color: #502ced; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s;"><span class="s2" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League</span></span></a>. Of the other six books she’s written or co-written, several have been translated into to other languages–including Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese and German. Called “smart and funny” by <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">People</span> magazine and “Very, very funny. For a woman,” by Dave Barry, Gina was deemed a “feminist humor maven” by <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ms.</span> <span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Magazine</span>. Novelist Wally Lamb said “Barreca’s prose, in equal measures, is hilarious and humane.” Her latest project is a book on loneliness that will be released in 2020!</span></i></div><p class="p1" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "sorts mill goudy", serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0.8em 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span class="s1" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gina’s award-winning weekly columns from <a href="http://www.courant.com/hartnews-gina-barreca-20130507-staff.html" style="background-color: transparent; color: #502ced; margin-bottom: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.5s ease 0s;"><span class="s2" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Hartford Courant</span></span></a> are now distributed internationally by the Tribune Co.; her blog for </span><span class="s4" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Psychology Today</span></span><span class="s1" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> has well over 6 million views. Gina’s work has appeared in most major publications, including <span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The New York Times</span>, <span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Independent of London</span>, <span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Chronicle of Higher Education</span>, <span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Cosmopolitan</span>, and <span style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Harvard Business Review</span>. Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Gina’s also the winner of UConn’s highest award for excellence in teaching. She’s delivered keynotes at events organized by national organizations in the U.S. and abroad, including Women In Federal Law Enforcement, Chautauqua, The Smithsonian, the Women in Science, Dentistry, Osteopathy & Medicine, the American Payroll Association, the National Association of Independent Schools, and the National Speaker’s Association, to name a few.</span></i></p><p class="p1" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: "sorts mill goudy", serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin: 0.8em 0px 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="s1" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i>Her B.A. is from Dartmouth College, where she was the first woman to be named Alumni Scholar and the first alumna to have her personal papers requested by the Rauner Special Collections Library at the College. Her M.A. is from NewHall/Murry Edwards College at Cambridge University, where she was a Reynold’s Fellow. Her Ph.D. is from the City University of New York, where she lived close to a very good delicatessen. A member of the Friars’ Club, holder of a number of honorary degrees, and honored by the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame, Gina can be found in the Library of Congress or in the make-up aisle of Walgreens. She grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island but now lives with her husband in Storrs, CT. Go figure.<br /><br /><b>And what I need to add is that Gina is my adored friend. I'd do anything for her. Well, maybe not eat a mayonnaise sandwich, but you know what I mean.</b></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>You and I have talked so much about how humor saves us. But so does being fierce! Can you define what fierce means to you, and we ALL know it does not mean being a bitch, which is a word used to denigrate rather than empower? And can you tell us how the idea for Fast Fierce Women began?</b></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Every time a woman opens her mouth and anything apart from a cooing noise or a compliment comes out, she’s called a “bitch.” I don’t like the word “bitch” and so I don’t use it--and I ask my students not to use it around me, not even as way of congratulating or praising each other. But “tough"? That’s a good word. Tough broads, tough gals, touch chicks (although “chicks" only worked until around 1982) are all seriously great descriptions. They connote resilience, resistance, and a refusal to stick to the code of benign, simpering femininity. Fierce is the BEST word, though, because it conveys an active desire not to settle for less than we’ve always wanted, which is a good time and a fair fight. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I am absolutely loving all the books you do with flash creative NON fiction. I’ve never actually DONE flash fiction before you asked me, too, and I love the punch it really does pack. How did you come to decide on this format?<br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">All great writing holds a mirror up to life and the short form holds up a compact mirror: you see a miniature, an accurate but scaled down weekly columns for than 20 years and, like you, blog for PSYCHOLOGY TODAY. I enjoy the short form; it’s the right cut for my weird shape (and what woman doesn’t think her shape is weird? That’s something for another collection).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Tell us about some of your fave pieces in the collection? And how hard was it to decide what to pick?! <br /><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Every essay is about strength, focused power, passion, and determined intelligence, often coupled often with instinct, tenacity, persistence, resilience, rage, and inflexibility. These themes or ideas or stories are often coupled with humor, and deal with friendship, loyalty, talent and community—what’s not to like? Some of the emerging writers in the book, young women who have never seen their words in print before, have written impressive pieces: “Black People Don’t Do This” by Ashaleigh Carrington, a former student, is both funny and heartbreaking—talking about going to therapy with her middle-aged shrink’s “white noise” going in the background, but her own wish to make her life better determining her commitment to mental stability; Nicole Catarino writes about a battle with OCD and, again, tells her story with ferocity and without self-diminishment—and also with humor. There are stories about flight attendants who finally got the revenge on the jerk passenger we’d all like to get, and stories about first jobs, old sex, and love—so many stories about love, we discover that fierce love is the most enduring kind of love there is. I’m proud of every piece, as different as they are—or maybe because they are so different from one another.<br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>We’ve also talked about how with women, part of the reason we all go to the ladies’ room together, is to talk, to laugh. Even when we go alone, we start up convos with whoever is there, and soon become fast friends. I have always felt that meeting you was like Friends at First Sight. I just KNEW immediately. And the more we know each other, the stronger our friendship gets. My husband often says that his best friends are women—because they go deeper, they are more honest, more real, and I was wondering why do you think the friendships are different?<br /><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Every woman I know believes her own friendships are endowed with a kind of secret significance. I certainly do—my friends keep me alive. Look, I’m not married to my best friend. I’m married to my husband. He’s a man I adore but he’s not my best friend. For that I am fantastically grateful. One of life’s great gifts is that there’s no taboo against having multiple best friends. You don’t have to go on reality television or into family court to explain or defend yourself. Nobody says “What? You’ve had twenty friends in twenty years? That’s terrible. How could you?” And that’s because friends are people you’re supposed to have in your life—the more the better. Nobody says that about spouses.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">When we’re with our women friends, we believe that we are in extraordinary company; that’s how I felt about meeting you, Caroline, right from the beginning. Making us feel rare and prized, our friends capture our imagination and offer us perspective. They remind us not only who we are, but also why we’re significant. Friendships inspire us. They allow us to express ourselves, even when we can’t stand the self we’re expressing or when we’re so far from our true selves that we turn to our friends to bring us back, as if we’d put our personalities in pawn and gave our friends the receipt for safekeeping—as if they were the ones we trusted, more than we trust ourselves.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>What’s obsessing you now and why?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEji6tA8p6Z2EhhUsNPJeBowGKFIn338tRTRTl5p2b106B6AB1gGcdUt5jwGI6XihRVsOZ7JrSR1JMoJMj5jGmB7t7TIxccLOo9WPH2OYvDezd5l-22iUFKZdCj3zlNdubIRTIXWswzmRX2NRcuqTQ3WWBfm4Fw7UPyFpbrJsWkOSe4RqsSliA7PVTs2=s2970" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2122" data-original-width="2970" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEji6tA8p6Z2EhhUsNPJeBowGKFIn338tRTRTl5p2b106B6AB1gGcdUt5jwGI6XihRVsOZ7JrSR1JMoJMj5jGmB7t7TIxccLOo9WPH2OYvDezd5l-22iUFKZdCj3zlNdubIRTIXWswzmRX2NRcuqTQ3WWBfm4Fw7UPyFpbrJsWkOSe4RqsSliA7PVTs2=s320" width="320" /></a></div></div><br />I wish I had smarter and more wide-ranging answers to this insightful questions. I’m scared by the news, which makes me rock back-and-forth, worrying about whether I should spend money trying to arm Ukrainian soldiers, or install just another generator and hoard more seltzer—I feel useless and ignorant. My greatest fear in life is being useless. I feel at my lowest when I feel as if I am trying my best and getting nowhere. When that feeling comes around, I go all self-torturing. Nothing I have done is enough, nothing I can do will be enough, who I am is absurd—and that’s why the question about friendship is crucial. When I feel this way, I turn to my friends and they help, lending me their own perspective when mine is wobbly. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>What question didn’t I ask that I should have? <br /></b><br />You asked ALL the good questions. You are kind and generous, and I am lucky to know you. THANKS DOLL!!</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh6CYtTG6UpRRVJOMXBkMQfwRhr2Fm77_h3fskf7eqUzFEGMTmEhIkTQdBJi4fcuLFsBAslces7lTvTbHGxLhV6KdxD0Wh1pd3F6eVjv-GFyNy6hxg9EyS7YeQWo3yrWSPcY4KG-O2NxnY_n3lNn0Axtodpsix0ckeM0jeNNN_50ilq1pUThzlOk83r=s1566" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1566" data-original-width="1194" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh6CYtTG6UpRRVJOMXBkMQfwRhr2Fm77_h3fskf7eqUzFEGMTmEhIkTQdBJi4fcuLFsBAslces7lTvTbHGxLhV6KdxD0Wh1pd3F6eVjv-GFyNy6hxg9EyS7YeQWo3yrWSPcY4KG-O2NxnY_n3lNn0Axtodpsix0ckeM0jeNNN_50ilq1pUThzlOk83r=s320" width="244" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div><br /></div></div>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-77766420234795312172022-03-17T14:05:00.003-07:002022-03-17T14:05:42.083-07:00Leslie Kirk Campbell, winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction talks about her astounding new collection, THE MAN WITH EIGHT PAIRS OF LEGS, longings, settings, and so much more<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhgNnQV9j5ONOK4Vi-d2EkeCR0Et5SLqKJ-wC7Q-O1xfP-Z4klCan2Kjbwcz8od7dNTR-eH-mg4JqU8Z4-gcYwu7atZ0cA7wtOevfDYwvdazrUopO4VXbcVlcMpT8AFKPPL1r3vek3TEJ7JV9PknOKeAFdQP-RR_WkKeHY5zn9984oRosdZtxW1wWIx=s1310" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1174" data-original-width="1310" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhgNnQV9j5ONOK4Vi-d2EkeCR0Et5SLqKJ-wC7Q-O1xfP-Z4klCan2Kjbwcz8od7dNTR-eH-mg4JqU8Z4-gcYwu7atZ0cA7wtOevfDYwvdazrUopO4VXbcVlcMpT8AFKPPL1r3vek3TEJ7JV9PknOKeAFdQP-RR_WkKeHY5zn9984oRosdZtxW1wWIx=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmcpZT3-9P_K256GRgP8tAsFrKvWjk_zs0BeEmHQzC_tns0clxo0EaqGWKLnnZstPkxxPqR9SQPpWQgERDHr-5MzWfqXLJ7i2dxJsI_qjwmZrDxLYtpO_cOOm12dt-p9kC4uLJCiYUEvr44uQ6p31PxbQoHPL89PQjKIfPAHQJ7oErnnt81XKeSfFP=s716" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="484" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjmcpZT3-9P_K256GRgP8tAsFrKvWjk_zs0BeEmHQzC_tns0clxo0EaqGWKLnnZstPkxxPqR9SQPpWQgERDHr-5MzWfqXLJ7i2dxJsI_qjwmZrDxLYtpO_cOOm12dt-p9kC4uLJCiYUEvr44uQ6p31PxbQoHPL89PQjKIfPAHQJ7oErnnt81XKeSfFP=s320" width="216" /></a></div><br /><p style="background-color: #f1e9db; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; font-family: Montserrat, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><br /></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>Leslie Kirk Campbell is the author of Journey Into Motherhood: Writing Your Way into Self-discovery. Her latest stunning collection of stories, The Man With Eight Pairs of Legs, has just come out. Visit her and learn more at www.lesliekirkcampbell.com</b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>I always think that writers are haunted into writing their stories, or looking to write their way into an answer for some questions they have. Was it this way for you?</b></p><p>I am a writer richer in ideas than in characters. These ideas often arise from a question that is unexpectedly provoked by an image, a movement, a sound, or a dream. My story “Nightlight,” for example, arose from a vivid dream I had in which a middle-class woman, a wife, is looking out her bay window, surprised to see her husband walking away from her down the street, his arm around a young homeless man, the two almost glowing as the sun rises in front of them. Why did this man leave? I wanted to know. What drove him to make that decision? On another occasion, I heard the sound of someone cutting trees for hours while I worked in the old convent where I often go to write. I walked up the street and saw a woman standing alone at the top of her steep drive. I felt her sadness deep in my gut along with the sadness of the trees lying now in pieces on the ground. What sadness, I wondered, caused this woman to slaughter so many beautiful trees? I wrote “Tasmanians” to try to answer that question. </p><p>Story after story in THE MAN WITH EIGHT PAIRS OF LEGS was driven by my curiosity. What would it be like not to have legs? I wondered after seeing a row of fascinating prosthetics in a TED talk. And then, what makes a human human anyway? (“The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs”) How can a woman still love her philandering husband? (“Thunder in Illinois”). What might drive an abused woman to kill? (“Overture”) Each question, of course, connects with some key aspect of my own emotional landscape. </p><p><b>Your work made me think of that great book The Body Keeps the Score, about how our memories react to our memories, how the truth of what happened might be suppressed in our minds, but it always comes out in our bodies. Can you talk about that for us please?</b></p><p>The body does keep the score, as much as boulders along the sea or in the foothills hold the marks of tides, snow and wind. My own body has been repeatedly objectified, cut into by surgeons, its kidney bruised, an arm fractured, the body broken in half in a car accident. It has been assaulted, embraced, touched, and invaded with the threat of death. The body remembers.</p><p>That same body gave natural birth to two ten-pound babies (without epidurals), ran varsity track, and spent years studying modern dance, seeing itself in a wall of mirrors. I didn’t realize as I was writing these first stories of mine, that the body was so prominent in them. It took someone else to point out what I hadn’t seen. Over and over, as I attempted to write fiction, my body had been talking to me.</p><p>I believe in the emotional intelligence of the body, in the molecules of emotion. I believe we privilege the mind at the expense of listening to our own bodies. My body IS my story and the holder of my stories over time – even, it turns out to a time before I was born.</p><p>My maternal side of the family is Jewish, and immigrated through Ellis Island in the late 1800s. A couple decades ago, I went to the small town in Germany where my husband grew up. One night, on a stroll through his town, he pointed to a row of apartment buildings and said, in a neutral voice, “That’s where Kristallnacht took place.” Suddenly overcome, I sobbed sadness relentlessly in his arms. No one in my family had lived through WWII, but there it was, the grief of my people hidden, until then, inside my body. The body remembers.</p><p>My characters, too, are marked by their pasts and continue to be marked in present time: bruises that never totally disappear, scars, lesions, heroin tracks. In the “The Hermit’s Tattoo,” the main character tries to erase a tattoo with the name of a childhood friend he once loved. He rubs his skin raw with salabrasion for months, but her name is still there. For Mariam, the protagonist in “Tasmanians.” marks from her past are invisible, yet she feels the ancestral pain of genocide burning on her skin, as real as the fires that burned her grandmother’s family. </p><p> “City of Angels” arrived almost in one piece as I unconsciously repeated a particular movement in an improv class. We hold memories along our spines, in our groin, within the softest part of our wrists. I don’t believe that the brain is a closed container; it leaks and spreads, the nervous system reaching everywhere in the body with its rivers and tributaries. </p><p>Writing this first book of fiction, I discovered that to really know my characters I had to get inside their physical bodies. I did not want to simply be an authorial witness to their actions. I wanted to rummage around inside them, feel their heat, their aches, listen to their blood circulating – to feel in my body what it feels like to be them.</p><p><b>There is such a deep sense of longing in the stories, that I was wondering – what makes you long? </b></p><p>Perhaps I am a victim of my own restlessness. I lived in six different cities and went to ten different schools by the time I was 18. I longed to have a home like my friends who had lived in the same house since they were born. I was a song leader in high school cheering on the teams, but would imagine myself a prostitute in some foreign country. I was a ‘good’ girl, but I longed to be bad. I realized in my late 20s how male-identified I was and longed to know, finally, who I was as a woman. </p><p>At one point I was going to call my collection, Exit Stratgies, when I realized all my main characters seemed bent on escaping some form of imprisonment, whether literally, like the abused woman in “Overture,” or figuratively, from something in their past. Llyn and Grady in “Triptych” are refugees from Kentucky and New Orleans; Reiner in “Nightlight” is a refugee from his family farm in a small German town, and now wants to escape the mundanity of a middle-class job and marriage. My characters seem to seek something other than what they have, often taking dangerous risks to live out their passions, or to quell them. </p><p><b>I’m always curious (because I write novels, not short story collections) how writers decide which story goes first. Which one goes last? What was that process like for y</b>ou? </p><p>When I started writing fiction in my late fifties, I simply wrote the stories I needed to write without any thought of a book. I used these first few stories to cut my teeth on fiction. But once I realized I had enough stories for a collection, and discovered a theme that could unify them, I had to come up with an order. I obsessively made lists in columns. Which ones were in first person, which in third? Which had a male protagonist and which a female? Where is the setting? Which ones are long and which short? Which ones ended with despair, which with hope? I didn’t want any two sequential stories to be too similar. </p><p>I had six long short stories and one short short. So I wrote a second one to balance things out. I put one in the first half of the book and one in the second half as a relief from the longer stories. I wanted this collection to be an orchestration, just as I did with each individual story, with variation of movement, texture, and feel. I chose to start with my title story, which I felt would be a great introduction to the collection’s emphasis on the body and longing for something else. I knew I wanted to end the collection on a very strong note. I knew, from attending more of my share of football games, that even after dazzling plays – passes, runs and interceptions – resulting in touchdowns along the way, how dejected I feel if my team ends in defeat. Filing out of the stadium, the exalting moments are forgotten. I needed my last story to be a winner. I chose “Triptych.” I wanted the reader to end their journey with a feeling of love, compassion, and hope.</p><p><b>You’ve been praised so highly for your prose – and rightly so – that I wanted to ask, do you read your word aloud to hear it as well as see it? </b></p><p>Yes, I do. In fact, I record each story and listen back with my eyes closed. I care, perhaps obsessively, about the music of the sentences, each paragraph a movement in a musical composition. I began as a poet. I wrote my first poem to the ocean in Capitola when I was ten, amazed that words could capture my unspeakable feelings of grandeur and awe. In college, I studied poetry from Spain, Britain, France, then traveled through Asia for a year picking up poetry books in every country, got an MA in poetry, studying modern Italian poetry at the Universita di Firenze. As a result, I understand the power of each sound in language, the magic of surprise juxtapositions. I’ve trained students to know what a poet knows about writing as a foundation for their writing in any form for nearly forty years. An image, a metaphor, a phrase or sentence can be thrilling to read, and I want it to be. I want the language to live on the page, it’s music – rhymes and rhythms, its silences, its musical scoring and orchestration. Language is the writer’s medium, just as clay is for the ceramicist, stone for the sculptor, and the body for the dancer. Too often, perhaps, writers take language for granted. But for me it is essential to love language like a poet, to be aware of its natural resources, to feel its exuberance. This is the kind of literature I get excited reading. Rhyme is not just the ‘cat in the hat’. In my stories there are echoes of idea, theme, and image, as well as sounds. I love this kind of layering and relish creating it, although it takes a long time…</p><p><b>What’s obsessing you now and why? </b></p><p>I am currently working on a second collection called Free Radicals. What I am exploring with these stories is the outlaw, the passionate outlier, and the meaning of freedom. I am re-reading Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism and reading Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom. In the long story Lilith that is the ground story for the collection, a Welsh woman wanders freely from place to place, making temporary friends along the way. As poor as she is, she seems not to have a care in the world. But how free is she? What has she lost? What has she gained? What about the love between a Nicaraguan landowner and a Sandinista revolutionary? A lesbian in a homophobic society? Is the lesbian free once she is allowed to get married (a kind of bondage) or was she freer as an outlaw? (I saw Thelma and Louise again recently, which also begs this question.). We are living through a time of angst around this question. What makes one person feel free, may injure someone else. Does anyone really have freewill?</p><p><b>What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</b></p><p>Readers have commented on the richness of my stories’ settings and the way they are often grounded in a particular time in history. </p><p>Everything happens in a place, and that place cannot be separated from the characters, whether it is a city or a small room with mosquito nets over the bed. I am a firm believer in the power of sensory detail: smell, sound, touch. Together these details create a fully dimensional world. The small-town Colorado setting of “The Man with Eight Pairs of Legs” feels critical to the story of Harriet and Callahan with its bounty of churches (the “good”) and prisons (the “bad”) and its dramatically beautiful mountains and gorges. In “The Hermit’s Tattoo,” the wild fires arrive in sheets over the rolling hills. In each story, there is strong interplay between the character and the place they are in. These descriptive details invite the reader to thoroughly inhabit the worlds I have created for them – to smell the eucalyptus tar along with Mariam in “Tasmanains;” reading “City of Angels,” to feel the salt air and sunlight on their skin. </p><p>I am almost organically interested in the reality of history, of social context, of the way a character’s personal triumphs and tribulations do not occur in a vacuum, but within the fabric of a cultural and political era. What is happening beyond the confines of the characters’ individual lives puts pressure on their personal conflicts and choices. In some cases, it is a particular time in history I have lived through like the AIDS epidemic in the 80s, or I will spend hours researching to get the details I need so that the layers of politics, history, and the personal are all there together on the page. </p><div><br /></div>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-4251142875217435222022-03-14T06:55:00.027-07:002022-03-14T07:04:07.378-07:00Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack. Ralph Blumenthal writes about his fascinating new book THE BELIEVER<div class="gE iv gt" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; cursor: pointer; font-family: Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; padding: 20px 0px 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>I'm fascinated by what people believe and why they believe it. A friend of mine told me about renowned former New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal, who had co-authored a series of articles on the secret Pentagon office to investigate</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i> Unidentified Flying Objects, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. He's written an absolutely fascinating new book about John Mack, a brilliant Harvard academic, who believed that space aliens were abducting humans. </i> </span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><br /><span style="width: 905.356px;"><table cellpadding="0" class="cf ix" style="border-collapse: collapse; table-layout: fixed; width: 905.356px;"></table></span></span><table cellpadding="0" class="cf gJ" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border-collapse: collapse; display: block; letter-spacing: 0.2px; margin-top: 0px; width: auto;"></table></div><div id=":nz" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><div class="qQVYZb"></div><div class="utdU2e"></div><div class="lQs8Hd" jsaction="SN3rtf:rcuQ6b" jscontroller="i3Ohde"></div><div class="btm"></div></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Roboto, RobotoDraft, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><div class="aHl" style="margin-left: -38px;"></div><div id=":ps" tabindex="-1"></div><div class="ii gt" id=":pz" jslog="20277; u014N:xr6bB; 4:W251bGwsbnVsbCxbXV0." style="direction: ltr; margin: 8px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="a3s aiL" id=":ny" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: 1.5; overflow: hidden;"><div dir="ltr"><span id="m_8668354396729491384gmail-docs-internal-guid-bcf4c983-7fff-2c0c-5d51-b31ffb8b77e9"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Passion of John Mack: </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Hero’s Journey Into the Heart of Cosmic Darkness</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By Ralph Blumenthal</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 20pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 468px; overflow: hidden; width: 624px;"><img class="CToWUd a6T" height="468" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/gJaXLLpk-ZbjOq-Qx6dtePE-7OOP0npOJkMCO4o_Oo7NDRNFzzdbseaCzdkvL6axg0tEWr-7A17Hp1X9FepM9XiTW9ziSURRfMaEtHrAJSS-oomFymfSRFVy56tjUj_DaDPkW48_" style="cursor: pointer; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline: 0px;" tabindex="0" width="624" /></span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What was I thinking when a used paperback fell into my hands in Texas in 2004? I can’t honestly remember. As the new Houston bureau chief of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The New York Times</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, I was always looking for story ideas. But I sure </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wasn’t</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> thinking that here was a book that would upend my world and send me on a voyage of nearly two decades into the deepest mysteries of creation. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The title was intriguing enough: “Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters.” That’s even before I saw that the author, John E. Mack, was a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Lawrence of Arabia. What, I wondered, was a distinguished Harvard academician doing writing about extraterrestrials? I was more intrigued after finishing the book, an account of Mack’s unlikely investigation of seemingly normal people with stupefying accounts of interactions with unearthly creatures that (who?) abducted them for apocalyptic warnings of planetary destruction, bizarre pseudo-medical tests, and the harvesting of eggs and sperm for the apparent breeding of a hybrid race. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I had spent my then-40-year </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Times </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">career writing about very different -- and decidedly earthly -- subjects like crime, cops, crooked politicians, and Nazi war criminals. But here was a story hard to pass up. I resolved to track down this Professor Mack for an interview. I had little idea how prominent he already was, having aired his research in two best-sellers, countless articles, and TV interviews -- and having survived a secret Harvard inquest, or inquisition, to use a term of one of his tormentors.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But then I picked up </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Times</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a few days later in September 2004 to find Mack dead. He had been in the U.K. for a T.E. Lawrence retrospective and, looking the wrong way down a London street, as Yanks are wont to do, been run down by an inebriated driver. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That was hardly the end of my interest, but rather a new impetus. Now the story had an ending, however grim. I found Mack’s half-sister, Mary Lee, in Massachusetts and requested access to his archives. She and Mack’s wife, Sally, and their three grown sons, Danny, Tony and Kenny, were too understandably grief-stricken to immediately respond. But I stayed in touch with them and eventually they agreed, making available his vast archives, including his private journals, unpublished manuscripts, home movies and family photographs, even taped sessions with his own Indian guru therapist. The only exclusions were privacy-protected interviews with patients and research subjects, although some of these, too, would emerge over time.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And so began my own quest that would consume the next 17-plus years, through publication of my book, “The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack” (High Road Books/University of New Mexico Press). The paperback comes out March 15, 2022, a year to the day since publication of the hard cover.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhs8s1CU7S8IoZvlfu1XieX-DvMADTL-9UWNQOWW-Cup7HaIejUvd-tRO9MiE2FaTlEa38w4g9wsIf02-OQY1KVnF05pJiNdCOF-QjunZB1AOel5ll8Vn7sEHI2i-PGmLtmkXM41Ku56rk-pvden7UO-i-WCR8uA7c833XFi-pX5rC0EvPc1CNc4aAE=s1562" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1562" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhs8s1CU7S8IoZvlfu1XieX-DvMADTL-9UWNQOWW-Cup7HaIejUvd-tRO9MiE2FaTlEa38w4g9wsIf02-OQY1KVnF05pJiNdCOF-QjunZB1AOel5ll8Vn7sEHI2i-PGmLtmkXM41Ku56rk-pvden7UO-i-WCR8uA7c833XFi-pX5rC0EvPc1CNc4aAE=s320" width="210" /></a></div><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So what did I learn? That Mack had stumbled on a colossal mystery, one that seems as intractable today as when he encountered it in 1990 in a serendipitous visit to another unlikely pioneer, Budd Hopkins, an artist whose sighting of a UFO on Cape Cod had come to obsess him, as it would Mack, with an inexplicable conundrum. Before meeting Hopkins, Mack assumed that anyone recounting an abduction by alien beings had to be mentally ill. But then Hopkins sent Mack off with a bundle of letters from people sharing their unfathomable experiences, and Mack was hooked. He never did answer the ultimate question of what lay behind the abduction riddle but he grew convinced of one thing: somehow, in whatever dimension of reality, something undeniably terrifying had indeed happened to these people. </span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mack’s heroic journey into the heart of cosmic darkness (as I came to think of it) was rooted in a maverick stubbornness to follow his own lights, as one of his favorite poets, Antonio Machado, had written: “the path is made by walking.” Mack had grown up with a strong moral compass in a well-to do secular German-Jewish household. His father, Edward, was a professor of English at the City College of New York (at a time when I was an undergrad there -- one of many strange synchronicities I later recognized). Mack’s birth mother, Eleanor Liebman, from a family of transplanted German brewers renowned for their Rheingold beer, had died of appendicitis when Mack was an infant, leaving him with an aching sense of loss that came to haunt his subsequent search for the hidden in the cosmos. Adding to his angst was a new stepmother, Ruth Prince Gimbel, a onetime socialite and strong-willed New Deal economist, the widow of a great-grandson of the founder of the department store chain, who had jumped out of a window during the Great Depression, leaving her with their four-year-old daughter, Mary Lee, who became Mack’s unexpected sibling. (I also later came across some of Ruth’s papers at Baruch College where I was organizing archives -- another synchronicity.) </span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mack attended Oberlin and Harvard Medical School, soon joining the Harvard psychiatric faculty where he established ground-breaking mental health services in long-downtrodden Cambridge. He had fixated on Lawrence of Arabia after seeing the Hollywood blockbuster, prompting him to spend a dozen years on a landmark study of the quixotic British adventurer, “A Prince of Our Disorder,” awarded the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for biography. Suddenly the author was a recognized expert on the war-torn Middle East and soon an avid campaigner for peace and protester against atomic weapons. He experimented with LSD and other hallucinogens and, at a 1987 demonstration of Dr. Stanislav Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork at Esalen on the Pacific, excavated new dimensions of his consciousness. He imagined a previous life as a Russian peasant and his mother’s struggle to bring him to life. And it was at another breathwork seminar that he learned of Budd Hopkins and alien abduction. </span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mack had quickly assembled his own group of experiencers -- his preferred term of neutrality for those who had encountered God-knows-what -- and soon came to some powerful conclusions. These people weren’t crazy. Something truly terrifying had indeed happened to them. But what? There was, of course, no hard evidence. Yet Mack was intrigued by Budd Hopkins’s letters and the congruence of the countless similar accounts he began hearing from so many different and otherwise normal people, teachers, housewives, engineers, doctors, lawyers, police officers and every other profession. They were notoriously publicity shy, so unlikely to be fabricating outlandish stories for fame or profit. Some were little children, too young to be quoting books or movies. One common denominator was the sighting of a U.F.O., although not every experience involved a spaceship. And everyone seemed genuinely terrorized in ways a trained psychiatrist could recognize.</span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mack ended up laying out 13 of his best case studies in a 1994 bestseller, “Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens.” Predictably, it discomfited superiors at Harvard where his unconventional research had been hardly a secret but now, displayed to the world, it was drawing ridicule from influential alumni. A secret committee of inquiry was convened, subjecting Mack to intrusive questions about his beliefs and methods. But in the end, he was exonerated of any wrongdoing and continued his research, foraying into other mystifying byways of the anomalous, from crop circles to survival of consciousness -- life after death. Some said they even encountered Mack’s spirit after he passed. </span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mack, I granted, was at times naive and gullible. His heroic quest for the ineffable in the cosmos may well have been rooted in something as profoundly personal as the childhood loss of his mother, a trauma that left him in long search of missing love, to, ultimately, the sad undoing of his marriage. Mack knew all this, of course, and persisted nonetheless, consumed by an intractable mystery we have yet to fathom. But he at least began the path, by walking. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi_5epsGPhQK8ylB23OQtqoBszIZR9wLF043r4wEauk05Wu8J8j7QGQ2o_AZd_C8auZHXqlgdEBmkOIfrlmAlXbGaqbFoNZPMKkTMJpVRKL26Vy1TReOB9Ev85FyF8tt41wnsyAcGP3bnRfLdfo-YSumTNTsbc9BKdW3p7U1jAbzPiVWlg8OQk05MC2=s1146" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1146" data-original-width="848" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi_5epsGPhQK8ylB23OQtqoBszIZR9wLF043r4wEauk05Wu8J8j7QGQ2o_AZd_C8auZHXqlgdEBmkOIfrlmAlXbGaqbFoNZPMKkTMJpVRKL26Vy1TReOB9Ev85FyF8tt41wnsyAcGP3bnRfLdfo-YSumTNTsbc9BKdW3p7U1jAbzPiVWlg8OQk05MC2=s320" width="237" /></a></div><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><p></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">www.ralphblumenthal.com</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 20pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">---</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p></span></div></div></div></div>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-76389469478703937422022-02-18T09:32:00.017-08:002022-02-18T09:36:33.145-08:00Jonathan Papernick (perfect last name for a writer, right?) talks about I AM MY BELOVEDS, infusing Judiasm in his work, "method-writing." and so much more<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEglh0e0P65tvOLWMsMFtF5ffKZfFZd6bTth_SBDnU2MDHoYIE4Ph4HS0gTBS3iqG_Ev0Nwpq50AACjx3Z9T9Md4xrRcVwhlA-JrYMsZq17NP-0IFqRmEtPe4UOHz5xVjqURhrctAIq7sWZY_jXXiaT6FCIu04hrAqq8o9PsogQgllKOzQJgND09oyXU=s1656" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1656" data-original-width="1136" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEglh0e0P65tvOLWMsMFtF5ffKZfFZd6bTth_SBDnU2MDHoYIE4Ph4HS0gTBS3iqG_Ev0Nwpq50AACjx3Z9T9Md4xrRcVwhlA-JrYMsZq17NP-0IFqRmEtPe4UOHz5xVjqURhrctAIq7sWZY_jXXiaT6FCIu04hrAqq8o9PsogQgllKOzQJgND09oyXU=s320" width="220" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgJOicZhMTb_gUt5Tu2otrlUbcFXDjF6IMsrQQRzlEfHU3lvP8TuGMl-Lnxl40diFBE_PlPpxuHWUiti14eISYL0X6nC3VcBOze4ViLqGnGujny3UrnSkOv5Rg5c3R1kZfTsTLCPnjV4VVjw85_ODyCejTdjp8WusYmeYV2U6b0c3KZowVGxH9g2vdf=s2502" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2502" data-original-width="1806" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgJOicZhMTb_gUt5Tu2otrlUbcFXDjF6IMsrQQRzlEfHU3lvP8TuGMl-Lnxl40diFBE_PlPpxuHWUiti14eISYL0X6nC3VcBOze4ViLqGnGujny3UrnSkOv5Rg5c3R1kZfTsTLCPnjV4VVjw85_ODyCejTdjp8WusYmeYV2U6b0c3KZowVGxH9g2vdf=s320" width="231" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div data-mesh-id="mediaj34fnj9511inlineContent" data-testid="inline-content" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; height: auto; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 2186px;"><div data-mesh-id="mediaj34fnj9511inlineContent-gridContainer" data-testid="mesh-container-content" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: grid; grid-template-columns: 100%; grid-template-rows: repeat(2, min-content) 1fr; height: auto; margin: 0px; min-height: auto; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: static; vertical-align: baseline; width: 2186px;"><div class="_1Q9if" data-testid="richTextElement" id="comp-ifxx1hfd" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; grid-area: 1 / 1 / 2 / 2; height: auto; left: 115px; margin-bottom: 11px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 34px; margin: 34px 0px 11px calc((100% - 980px) * 0.5); min-height: var(--min-height); outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; place-self: start; pointer-events: none; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; width: 750px;"><h2 class="font_2" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: rgb(var(--color_14)); font-size: 30px; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; pointer-events: auto; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></h2></div></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />A modern couple tests the complicated boundaries of their relationship in Jonathan Papernick's astounding new novel, I am My Beloveds. Jonathan is not only a longtime pal, he's also the author of the brilliant novel The Book of Stone, and the short story collections, The Ascent of Eli Israel, and There is No Other. He's the Senior Writer in Residence at Emerson College in Boston, and the founder of Paper & Ink Editorial. "Papernick's fiction takes no prisoners," Says Hadassah magazine. "And the New York Times praises his "muscular certainty." You'll love his work, too.</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /><br />When did you know you were a writer?</b><br /><br />For as long as I remember I have always wanted to be a writer. I grew up right across the street from a shopping mall and the bookstore there was a magical place for me and I would go there when I had nothing to do and browse through the books. I think the first story I recall that made me want to be a writer was when my second grade teacher Mrs. Spooner read us The Hobbit. I think from that point at like six or seven years old I definitely knew I wanted to be a writer and for years I wanted to write that kind of high fantasy stuff and did a lot of Lord of the Rings kind of fan-fiction with trace pictures from the cartoon movie that came out a million years ago. I just didn't think I had the talent through much of my high school years and even had a high school creative writing teacher tell me she thought I wasn't a very strong writer, but I've always wanted to be a writer and now my fifth book is coming out with my sixth on the way later in the year.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>What’s your motivation for infusing Judaism into your work?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />I write about Judaism in my work because I write about what I am interested in, and writing about Judaism explains things to me that I couldn't possibly understand through any other process. I grew up kind of ignoring my Jewish heritage even though I did have a bar mitzvah, but after I went to Israel in my early 20s I realized I was part of a really powerful and beautiful tradition. I still don't enjoy going to synagogue and I don't keep kosher, but I engage with Jewish ideas through my fiction that help explain to me how I relate to Judaism. I see the world through a very Jewish lens, so it would be dishonest for me to write through the eyes of a Catholic priest or a Buddhist monk. This is my tradition and this is how I understand it, through my fiction writing.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Do you believe in method-writing, or experiencing what your characters do?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There is a sort of fallacious idea that we are supposed to write what we know, but I believe that it makes more sense to write about what you want to know. I usually come up with a situation, and a character who desires something and figure out what they do to try and get that. So, everything I write comes through my experience even if I'm writing about an octogenarian Holocaust survivor, or a suicide bomber or somebody in a polyamorous relationship. There are bits and pieces of me in all of my characters, but I don’t need to experience what has happened firsthand to write about it. I just imagine my way into each character through an almost meditative state. When I sit down to write, it's like a smarter part of myself steps out of the darkness of my subconscious and whispers the answers in my ear. Of course experience is always valuable; I could not have written my first book, set in Jerusalem if I hadn't lived in Jerusalem. I could not have written my first novel which was set in Brooklyn if I didn't live in Brooklyn, but all of the characters are fictional for the most part and are made up of bits and pieces of me or potential me’s.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Which of your characters would you want to have dinner with most?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I feel like I have already had dinner with all of my characters because when I am writing they live in my head so strongly it is as if they are present. I've written about more than my fair share of psychopaths, crazies and weirdos, so I would certainly have to pass on dining with any of them irl. I think all of the characters in my new novel I Am My Beloveds are most similar to me since none of them are killers or psychopaths and just ordinary confused people trying to figure out love. Now if you were to ask me which dead person I would like to have dinner with, I would throw a massive dinner party with Anthony Bourdain at the head of the table, and Bruce Lee, and probably Jesus because I really want to know what he has to say about all of the things that have been done in his name; Amy Winehouse would be awesome, Hedy Lamar, though I don't know much about her, but she sounds pretty awesome, Winston Churchill, David Ben Gurion, Albert Camus and Lenny Bruce. My living date would be Lana Del Rey. I'd make sure there would be plenty of alcohol and I would livestream the whole thing.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>What type of the scene do you find most challenging to write?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I don't believe there is a particular kind of scene that I find most difficult. I am equally comfortable writing ultraviolence as I am writing an intimate sex scene. I'm very comfortable with dialogue as well as lengthy description. Heart to hearts and crazy rants are all the same to me. I think it really comes down to how creative I am feeling at the time. Lately it has become more and more difficult for me to get into that writing headspace where I'm able to channel these characters. So when I can't get there I can't really seem to do anything right, but when I do get there, anything goes.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Do you approach each novel project in the same manner? Is there a formula to your methods?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I think I approach each writing project in the same manner. Fear, panic, and doubt. There are some moments of great confidence and that is when I'm able to convince myself it's okay to write, but I do find it challenging to sit down and write, so when I'm on a roll, I try and keep it going as long as I can possibly do so. Some projects take more research. My first collection of stories relied on lots of things I experienced in Jerusalem, but I also did some supplementary research. In fact I had so much material left over in my mind that my novel the Book of Stone just built upon that material to write about a terrorist plot with Jewish extremists in Brooklyn. I Am My Beloveds took some research, but a lot of it came from my own heart, but certainly listening to Dan Savage's Savage Lovecast was a constant voice in the back of my head.</div><div><br /></div></div><p><br /><br /><br /></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-3282152910742994232022-01-27T17:00:00.003-08:002022-01-27T17:00:45.013-08:00In Kimmery Martin's eerily prescient new novel DOCTORS AND FRIENDS, three doctors (all friends) find themselves facing a contagious virus spreading across the globe. Here, Kimmery talks about her gripping new novel, her work in ERs, the politics of medicine, writing, and why sometimes 80% of ER cases are "sex gone wrong."<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjtf9dgnUchPZG63uY-as54DpRbTHv4PFby4DDMm6aICkLjqRMGfAOlu6sJEEcIT97igh0TMuqB7GFyIETAC58j2qZMYopmrA1g76WNvHuzehlquRkmaV__kBDebjWV3GSmcn6gCoFanSJKEE_6rjNPdvXWXoMFkmp-l4ZBalJxsqtgtVgh49d_f-_F=s862" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="862" data-original-width="566" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjtf9dgnUchPZG63uY-as54DpRbTHv4PFby4DDMm6aICkLjqRMGfAOlu6sJEEcIT97igh0TMuqB7GFyIETAC58j2qZMYopmrA1g76WNvHuzehlquRkmaV__kBDebjWV3GSmcn6gCoFanSJKEE_6rjNPdvXWXoMFkmp-l4ZBalJxsqtgtVgh49d_f-_F=s320" width="210" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">When Ron Block, one of the literary world's guardian angels, AND the podcast host for Friends and Fiction AND the chief honcho for the wonderful </span><a class="oajrlxb2 g5ia77u1 qu0x051f esr5mh6w e9989ue4 r7d6kgcz rq0escxv nhd2j8a9 nc684nl6 p7hjln8o kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x jb3vyjys rz4wbd8a qt6c0cv9 a8nywdso i1ao9s8h esuyzwwr f1sip0of lzcic4wl gpro0wi8 oo9gr5id lrazzd5p" href="https://www.facebook.com/CuyahogaLib/" role="link" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-color: white; border-color: initial; border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; cursor: pointer; display: inline; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, "system-ui", ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-weight: 600; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;" tabindex="0"><span class="nc684nl6" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">Cuyahoga County Public Library</span></a> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">tells me that I have to meet an author, that we will love each other--I ALWAYS LISTEN BECAUSE HE IS ALWAYS RIGHT. And yep, yep, he was. </span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif;">Kimmery Martin is an </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif;">emergency medicine doctor-turned novelist</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif;"> whose works of medical fiction have been praised by The Harvard Crimson, Southern Living, The Charlotte Observer and The New York Times. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">Kimmery is hilarious, smart and I also loved her novel DOCTORS AND FRIENDS. So does everyone else, because look at the praise:</span></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">"The lives of three doctors—friends since medical school who meet for an annual get together—are thrown upside down when a contagious virus begins to spread across the world in this eerily prescient and timely novel written before the COVID-19 pandemic. Martin’s complex characters are infused with such raw emotion that they nearly jump off the page.”—</span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;"><strong style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">Newsweek<br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /><br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /></strong></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">“Martin’s riveting latest focuses on a group of doctors during a pandemic…Martin fills the hospital scenes with vivid descriptions and moving moments. This fully realized account of a fictional pandemic manages to convey the deeply personal as well as the bigger picture.”—</span><strong style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">Publishers Weekly </span>(starred review)<span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;"><br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /><br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /></span></strong><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">“With echoes of Richard Preston’s </span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">The Hot Zone</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">, John M. Barry’s </span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">The Great Influenza,</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"> and Anna Hope’s </span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">Expectation</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">, </span><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">Doctors and Friends</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"> is precise in details but sweeping in scope and impact. With an innate understanding of emergency room medicine, the inner workings of government agencies, and the complexities of decades-long friendships, Martin’s novel is compelling to its core.”–</span><strong style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">Booklist </span>(starred review)<br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /></strong><br style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">“There is beauty in Martin’s gem of a story that confirms that friendship is a powerful force.”– </span><strong style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Fort-Book, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;"><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-shadow: none;">Library Journal</span> (starred review)</strong></i><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinUlJ09ZhluT47WvTchvT1X76OrgXUpIlPzE0oagtpDJ377MselnZXe6HWP9JH_5mIag6KkGawEKq3hNALFaeoZlaPpKa6CbjDgiMxncDFQkAb90IVxva-qudjiOvkR0j__fLCjCpp3VfCuBn7QOseha81uKhkUulVhG4Km3KGOO61lE_z8SQnK7mm=s2446" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2446" data-original-width="1818" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinUlJ09ZhluT47WvTchvT1X76OrgXUpIlPzE0oagtpDJ377MselnZXe6HWP9JH_5mIag6KkGawEKq3hNALFaeoZlaPpKa6CbjDgiMxncDFQkAb90IVxva-qudjiOvkR0j__fLCjCpp3VfCuBn7QOseha81uKhkUulVhG4Km3KGOO61lE_z8SQnK7mm=s320" width="238" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6KJXtjSmAbX42OXxVsFezdMiDKJIUPpdgh1sVVK9po-oWRm5bYc4iqdOagjNQXde8A6Ws6ufzSrH7lzXmRwPsD7gfRROzjYMlNHle1x3M0tJr4Ek0iDiIKFJZdQKPMAzkOYISnqctV1mDp7ugvqbN85bvHGZmfNYafheJZh2qRAAiM2CQgzPVnR7Q=s2474" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1844" data-original-width="2474" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6KJXtjSmAbX42OXxVsFezdMiDKJIUPpdgh1sVVK9po-oWRm5bYc4iqdOagjNQXde8A6Ws6ufzSrH7lzXmRwPsD7gfRROzjYMlNHle1x3M0tJr4Ek0iDiIKFJZdQKPMAzkOYISnqctV1mDp7ugvqbN85bvHGZmfNYafheJZh2qRAAiM2CQgzPVnR7Q=s320" width="320" /></a></div><br />Thank you so much, Kimmery for letting me pepper you with questions! And thank you so much for waiting for me to recuperate from my daredevil headlong fall down a flight of stairs.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>I always believe that authors are somehow haunted into writing their books, that they write to answer a question that won’t leave them alone. Is it that way for you?</b> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Yes, to a degree. I’m character oriented: the first thing that occurs to me is the personality of the protagonist. (Which is not a great way to begin a novel, actually, because readers care most about the big central question every novel seeks to answer.) But once I have my main character settled, then figuring out their particular challenge comes next, and I think that does spring from some sort of mental haunting. The head of an author is a truly weird place. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Let’s talk about Doctors and Friends which I loved. And so does everyone else because you have starred reviews from everyone. Reviewers have praised it for being eerily prescient. So I have to ask, when you were writing it, as a doctor yourself, did you always have expectations that a pandemic was waiting to happen?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Sure. We’ve been locked in periodic mortal combat with viral pathogens since the dawn of humankind. It didn’t require a degree in epidemiology to figure it would happen again. I didn’t expect it to happen precisely as I was finishing a novel about it happening, however. The one good thing about the timing, though, was I learned a nifty new word: prescient. It turns out professional book reviewers really like that word. I might get a tattoo of it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Not only do you write about serious subjects, but you are hilarious about them. Even your bio on your website had me laughing. So I have a weird and hopefully fun question. Do you or did you have different personas as a doctor and as a novelist? How do the two intersect?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I’ve got to congratulate you because no one has ever asked me that exact question before. I do think there is some overlap in the fields of medicine and literature, because in both careers you are dealing with a lot of drama. The difference is that as a doctor you are trying to alleviate suffering and as an author you are deliberately inflicting it. (I should probably clarify that last part: as an author you are trying to inflict suffering upon your characters, not upon your readers. Although you would think it was the opposite if you read my Goodreads reviews.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As a physician, I’ve been blessed to work in a field where I can offer an immediate impact on the life of other human beings when they’re injured or ill. Emergency medicine is a career overflowing with people at their most vulnerable. We work alongside them, trying to diagnose their sickness, ease their pain, haul them back as they walk the line between life and death. I can’t imagine practicing emergency medicine without humility and a strong sense of compassion.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But to better answer your question: the voice in my novels is pretty similar to my actual voice (i.e. nerdy and a bit snarky.) I tone down my sense of humor at work because a sense of humor during an emergency is prized by no one. Just as the best writers are those who possess keen insight into others, the best doctors are those with empathy as well as technical competence. I don’t know if those qualities are abundant in my writing, but I tried my hardest as an ER doctor to treat everyone with respect and compassion … and I cared very much about what happened to my patients.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>You might call yourself a lifelong literary nerd, but I am a lifelong medical nerd. I used to be the one reading JAMA in the waiting rooms while everyone else was looking at People. (Hey, I have a subscription to that one.) And I’ve been told by all my doctors that Emergency Medicine is where the most exciting medicine is. Tell us about that, and about how you moved from there to multi-starred author!</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">You are obviously way cool, Caroline. And yes: EM is not dull. It comes in handy at parties: when everyone finds out you are an ER doc, they immediately want to know what the weirdest object is you’ve ever extracted from somebody’s nether regions, if you catch my drift. I’m not kidding: I think laypeople see the ER as 10% heart attacks, 10% broken bones, and 80% sex gone wrong. (And with that statement I’ve probably taken your blog in an entirely uncharted direction.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I became a novelist because I am, first and foremost, a reader. I love words, love stories, love books of all sorts. But I’d never been a writer. When I first had the wild idea to try to write a novel, I was clueless about the process. How to structure scenes, how to craft compelling dialogue, how to maintain suspense—those are all things I learned the hard way, by doing it very, very wrong. Now I teach writing classes on those subjects but the road to basic competency at authoring was long and humbling for me. I attended conferences and read books and received a lot of help from other writers. Which is another thing my two careers have in common: both authors and doctors (especially women) are exceptionally supportive of one another.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>What kind of writer are you? Do you map things out or just let them go with the flow?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I’m all flow, unfortunately. I wish I weren’t: it’s an inefficient way to write. I understand the principles of plotting but so far I haven’t been able to achieve them up front. So I try to apply those techniques to my revision process. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>What’s obsessing you now and why?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Ohhhhh. Ugh. Well, several things: I think a lot about the bizarre turn our country has taken with regard to the politicization of medicine. Deep divisions, where we cannot even agree on the most fundamental aspects of science, or of reality, for that matter. The devaluation of expertise in favor of whatever suits your bias. Demagoguery. Authoritarianism. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But those things are happening more on a macro-level. When you talk with ordinary people, they are often far more likely to listen to one another and less likely to label each other as the enemy. All this division we are experiencing right now is history repeating itself and I believe there are ways out of it. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">On a different note, I am fascinated by the intersection of quantum physics and the biotechnologies of the future—and what the applications and implications might be. I love reading dumbed-down theoretical physics books.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Usually when people realize I wrote a pandemic novel before Covid, some degree of apprehension flits across their face. This always precedes the same question: what am I working on now? So … I’m not going to answer that one because I don’t want to alarm everyone. Let’s just say what I am writing about now is less likely to occur than the events of Doctors and Friends.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-10623409658415169252022-01-08T12:30:00.001-08:002022-01-08T12:30:39.153-08:00Fiona Davis talks about The Magnolia Palace, dual timelines, writing strong female characters, writing during lockdown, and so much more!<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgA9OjfJqrNyhNrvluknbXByGWSm6RIxjpCvwY-t9ksqBTz_R00pD6twYJdOz2ygaIxPXNV4j6mlycQ-xKM5XCFpQ6f7XMDDcjxCk27pBEp0ka1eb5IrqWXJqDrxemexh0Z5rdh313BslefdJ-vMRt_WW9vpQ55Y9QeIsP08FdO5pu-LjiZ60_4UWUy=s2492" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2492" data-original-width="1640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgA9OjfJqrNyhNrvluknbXByGWSm6RIxjpCvwY-t9ksqBTz_R00pD6twYJdOz2ygaIxPXNV4j6mlycQ-xKM5XCFpQ6f7XMDDcjxCk27pBEp0ka1eb5IrqWXJqDrxemexh0Z5rdh313BslefdJ-vMRt_WW9vpQ55Y9QeIsP08FdO5pu-LjiZ60_4UWUy=s320" width="211" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEheM0m6SsCDe91S1Ku1rVCZjqmKSL5hiTH-tKEVBQtLj-MrJ4VI442IMcWti48_kmLmWop7fAkDOfYNbk6pM_kdBPq9KzYJHPf08YANh2QNXBXHcUpPQia8qM4DFXCiwU2JSeDgWpmkmiu6-hn7fWLMM0ZAm37C7KgDDdidhwGz7vfJclGm93dVOFMp=s2476" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2476" data-original-width="1636" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEheM0m6SsCDe91S1Ku1rVCZjqmKSL5hiTH-tKEVBQtLj-MrJ4VI442IMcWti48_kmLmWop7fAkDOfYNbk6pM_kdBPq9KzYJHPf08YANh2QNXBXHcUpPQia8qM4DFXCiwU2JSeDgWpmkmiu6-hn7fWLMM0ZAm37C7KgDDdidhwGz7vfJclGm93dVOFMp=s320" width="211" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiAqiSuc3TqwTdXqLNT2HrrhaGv1SB6IU3zBs7UWQx9q911xTVMpx15n8cfzt_RzTEU1UIDBSjJFwNEkxrGhc2fw7cjhWllADj8Lfarbr8BdOMdIVnuXFWgQc6HMXmtx0GzwgOX-RH7drzRh--VaMMfxZuEou33fQmKJ5KglgVgFnbJlqlU3GyITfgI=s898" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="898" data-original-width="726" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiAqiSuc3TqwTdXqLNT2HrrhaGv1SB6IU3zBs7UWQx9q911xTVMpx15n8cfzt_RzTEU1UIDBSjJFwNEkxrGhc2fw7cjhWllADj8Lfarbr8BdOMdIVnuXFWgQc6HMXmtx0GzwgOX-RH7drzRh--VaMMfxZuEou33fQmKJ5KglgVgFnbJlqlU3GyITfgI=s320" width="259" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: rgba(20, 20, 20, 0.7); font-family: futura-pt; font-size: 20px; letter-spacing: -0.6px; text-align: left; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Note the sublime photo above, of Audrey Munson. the first supermodel who was named "Miss Manhattan." The perfect icon for a blog about Fiona!</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><p class="" style="background-color: white; color: rgba(20, 20, 20, 0.7); font-family: futura-pt; letter-spacing: -0.6px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">I adore Fiona Davis. Not just her books, either. I'm not sure when we met, but I keep happily running into her at books events (or I did, pre-pandemic, and every time I do, I get a glow. She is the <em style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">New York Times</em> bestselling author of six historical fiction novels set in iconic New York City buildings, including <em style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">The Dollhouse, The Address</em>, and <em style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">The Lions of Fifth Avenue</em>, which was a Good Morning America book club pick. Her novels have been chosen as “One Book, One Community” reads and her articles have appeared in publications like <em style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">The Wall Street Journal</em> and <em style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">O the Oprah magazine</em>. She first came to New York City as an actress, but fell in love with writing, and we are all so happy she did.</p><p class="" style="background-color: white; color: rgba(20, 20, 20, 0.7); font-family: futura-pt; letter-spacing: -0.6px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">Her newest masterwork, The Magnolia Palace is about lies, betrayals and even murder in the gilded age mansion. It's got starred raves from Kirkus, Library Journal and from Publisher's weekly, and a slew of raves from the likes of Christina Baker Kline and Lisa Wingate.
Welcome Fiona! I just wish this was in person!</p><p class="" style="background-color: white; color: rgba(20, 20, 20, 0.7); font-family: futura-pt; letter-spacing: -0.6px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: transparent; letter-spacing: -0.6px;"><b>I always believe that writers are somehow obsessed into writing the books they write. What was haunting you that created this wonderful book?</b></span></p><p>I’ve always loved wandering around old buildings and wondering about the people who lived there over the years, so writing about iconic landmarks really fuels my obsession. The Frick Collection was built in 1914 as a residence, and then turned into a museum in the thirties. As a museum, it feels like it’s been frozen in time, with splendid furnishings everywhere and art by masters like Rembrandt, Turner, and Vermeer hanging on every wall. When you walk in, it’s as if the Frick family is out at a dinner party and will be back at any moment. </p><p><b>I love that you set your novels in these fabulous New York Buildings! I always feel that buildings have their own personalities, almost something you can feel when you go inside. Do you walk into these great buildings and just inhale the atmosphere and then ideas perk? And can you tell us what building is next?</b></p><p>The building definitely becomes like another character in the story, with its history and layout impacting the plot. During my behind-the-scenes tour of the Frick, I discovered there’s a circa 1914 bowling alley in the basement – which still works – and of course had to include that as a scene location. As I wandered the rooms I definitely began to imagine ideas for scenes and characters. For example, what was it like for a member of the household staff who lived on the top floor, with that splendid view of Central Park? As for the next book, I have a short story being published this summer that’s set at Carnegie Hall, and then the next novel is set at Radio City Music Hall, from the point of view of a Rockette in the 1950s. There are so many possibilities in New York City!</p><p><b>There’s so much wonderful material in this book, from the Spanish Flu to the Frick Mansion/Museum. (I love the Frick and imagine you went to visit and visit and visit again.) What was your research like? </b></p><p>Because the world went into lockdown a couple of months into my research, I wasn’t able to get back inside after my initial tour – and in fact now it’s closed for renovations (although the works of art are brilliantly exhibited at the Frick Madison nearby). Luckily, at the Frick’s website (frick.org), there’s a floor plan with a 360-degree view of all of the public rooms. So I virtually visited multiple times a day as I was writing the drafts. Research for this book involved going through the Frick archives, which had fun surprises like dinner party menus from 1915, or payroll records of the staff, as well as interviewing experts in the art world. </p><p><b>I loved your female characters, as I always do, Veronica Weber and Lillian Carter. So here is a writerly question. How did you go about developing those women? And what parts of you are in your characters? And what parts of them do you wish you had?</b></p><p>Veronica and Lillian are both models in different time periods – Lillian in the 1910s and Veronica in the 1960s, so it was really fun to figure out how that particular career had changed over time – and also the ways in which it hadn’t. I wish I was more of a free-spirit like Lillian, who is willing to take huge risks and throw herself into life. I’m afraid that’s just not my style. Veronica is probably a little more like me: slightly overwhelmed in a crowd and happy to watch the action from the sidelines. </p><p><b>And another writerly question. Using a dual timeline nearly killed me! Any tips, because you did it beautifully.</b></p><p>Dual timelines can be an absolute beast, no question. I figure out the plot and outline it fairly thoroughly before I sit down to write that first draft. There’s so much to keep track of, especially with an element of mystery and clues that need to be dropped at the exact right time. Once that outline is firm, I tend to write the older timeline first, and then the newer one. I find that’s easier than bouncing back and forth, which will ultimately be the way the reader views it. </p><p><b>What’s obsessing you now and why? What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</b></p><p>These days I’m obsessed with the novel <i>The Ballerinas, </i>by Rachel Kapelke-Dale, which is set in Paris at the ballet, and is beautifully written and a great mystery as well. And I think you covered all the bases! Thank you for this amazing opportunity, and I can’t wait to see you in person one of these days and give you a (gentle) hug. </p><div><br /></div><p><br /></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-81508788961223949382021-11-07T12:15:00.008-08:002021-11-07T12:29:50.187-08:00Clea Simon talks about Rock and Roll, the 1980s, memory, and her raved-about new novel HOLD ME DOWN<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy0WKBv2qfKmBBzEPG-TDZ0wFxUPC6a-5PnnQF9cNh8hjvxIndwhQYiopWOpEby0goAwrKtpfuGqorCaepcc__ru1N-GTVaT-h9FXV5eFh6c_jbnkjtyBubXgKBCzoVkgNuMo-aQ3kGOY/s1270/Screen+Shot+2021-11-07+at+2.51.18+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1270" data-original-width="970" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy0WKBv2qfKmBBzEPG-TDZ0wFxUPC6a-5PnnQF9cNh8hjvxIndwhQYiopWOpEby0goAwrKtpfuGqorCaepcc__ru1N-GTVaT-h9FXV5eFh6c_jbnkjtyBubXgKBCzoVkgNuMo-aQ3kGOY/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-11-07+at+2.51.18+PM.png" width="244" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM486l_QEtfG4E2xlWfs9XMxIWt9t6nQic06WGHXyZvEHUoWPDNsjqZueJQA7pIpOISBWTLzKws9plNSqSVuV0sQrJGwHXPgyFajVHO6gRww7DtPCMNlkT_Eom-7Bw5ksWiXkg9eiwBes/s1232/Screen+Shot+2021-11-07+at+2.51.00+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1232" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM486l_QEtfG4E2xlWfs9XMxIWt9t6nQic06WGHXyZvEHUoWPDNsjqZueJQA7pIpOISBWTLzKws9plNSqSVuV0sQrJGwHXPgyFajVHO6gRww7DtPCMNlkT_Eom-7Bw5ksWiXkg9eiwBes/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-11-07+at+2.51.00+PM.png" width="208" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdj8N_uuyz16GhXxOTnyHI9dS3kGk8xGlQqigYQ7VzBUH6i3Q7mAjH4XZnDQMUhHrPGExoMetx81GYolD5EOPZRwWkhmoiKgxkD4uPHoZgjeBRyvArYcF_PJsZLbfTHGGQi6oQOlHxaZY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2021-11-07+at+2.50.41+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1012" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdj8N_uuyz16GhXxOTnyHI9dS3kGk8xGlQqigYQ7VzBUH6i3Q7mAjH4XZnDQMUhHrPGExoMetx81GYolD5EOPZRwWkhmoiKgxkD4uPHoZgjeBRyvArYcF_PJsZLbfTHGGQi6oQOlHxaZY/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-11-07+at+2.50.41+PM.png" width="202" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>I am so thrilled to Host Clea Simon my blog! Yep, I blurbed her new novel, HOLD ME DOWN, because it is so incendiary, so thrilling, so important, too. And I'm honored to have her here. Thank you, Clea!<br /><br /><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Hello! Thanks so much for hosting me, Caroline, and for helping me to celebrate my new psychological suspense, Hold Me Down.</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Gal Raver was a rock star. But that was 20 years ago and as HOLD ME DOWN opens she is back in Boston playing a big stage for the first time in years. The occasion is a memorial concert for her late drummer and best friend Aimee, who cofounded the band with her. But as she’s playing she sees – or think she sees – a face from the past, which unsettles her. The next day she hears that that person was murdered behind the venue and Amy’s widower Walter arrested. When Walter chooses not to fight the charges, Gal is compelled to get involved – not only to save her friend but to understand why, for a moment there, she thought “it should’ve been me,” an investigation that leads her back into her own wild, rock star days.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Why did you set this book in the rock world?<br /><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">For starters, it’s a world you and I both know well! Like Simon at the start of your wonderful With or Without You, Gal begins her journey living in clubland – as did I, once upon a time. Back when I was in my twenties, I not only worked as a rock critic, I lived for the scene. It was my “third place,” neither home nor work. Where I spent my free time, and where I forged so many relationships.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I guess, in a way, those relationships are key. Because it’s such a self-contained world, the relationships that develop in it are great for fiction: the same characters thrown together constantly, with generous helpings of alcohol and other substances, are bound to interact in interesting ways. For me as a mystery writer, the club world functions like an English village would in a classic Agatha Christie novel – whatever happens, whatever crimes and whatever motives – are going to spring organically from a contained cast of characters.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">It also interested me, that for all that rock is obsessed with youth with the now, it also constantly seeks to memorialize itself. When we meet Gal, for example, she’s playing a benefit – songs that she wrote twenty-odd years before. And, of course, once something is written or recorded it becomes a time capsule – a reflection of what was happening then. With crime fiction that also allows you to plant clues or exposition </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>What research did you do?<br /><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I tried to evoke the physical memories of those days: Listening to a lot of older garage-punk bands. Picking up my electric bass for the first time in ages. I’d forgotten how heavy it is and how you stand when it’s strapped onto your shoulder. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Other than that, I talked to a bunch of people who were on the scene at the time, many of whom were willing to share some very personal memories. These conversations all fed into my memories – and into who Gal was becoming in my mind. For example, when a buddy who used to sing with a band mentioned how far back into a club she could see from onstage, I thought, “I can use that.” And then, when I have Gal noting that, I realized, well, yes, Gal can see all the way to the dark corners of the club. But is she really seeing hijinks back there, or is something else going on?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>So Gal is an unreliable narrator?<br /><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Not in the sense of, say, Gone Girl, where the narrator sets out to deceive you. Hold Me Down is written in close third person: Gal is telling us what she believes she knows. But what that is is unreliable as it is for all of us. Our perception of what is happening is always subjective. Throw in memory, and it becomes even less objective, as nostalgia, denial, and regret all tend to shift our understanding of what is real.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">This uncertainty is really at the center of Hold Me Down. At its core are really two mysteries: Who committed the murder (and why isn’t Gal’s friend Walter defending himself), but also what happened to Gal to bring her to this point?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Hold Me Down flips back and forth in time, why did you decide to do that?<br /><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Really three times. We first meet Gal in the present day, when she’s jaded, sober, but kind of stuck in a holding pattern. In flashbacks, we see Gal at her rock star peak, when she was kind of crazy but unstoppable. But we also get peeks of the young Gal who first started the band with Aimee, nearly paralyzed with stage fright, dying to break though.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I’m realizing that one of my constant themes seems to be memory – not only nostalgia and regret but the way we the past sets us on specific paths</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Not to give too much away, but you also deal with trauma – sexual assault and PTSD<br /><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Yes, Gal’s a survivor, as am I. As many of us are – but even though we survive, we’re shaped by what we’ve experienced. It’s like we’ve been pushed slightly askew by what hit us. Our lenses on the world are maybe a bit warped. So again, Gal sees things that are maybe not quite as they should be.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Gal’s songs reflect a lot of what she went through, don’t they?<br /><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">In a way they serve as touchstones for who she is at any given time. I really enjoyed exploring how she interacts with her own work. For example, when she’s young and anxious, she’s very careful about crafting a bridge to one of her tunes. Later, at her rock star wildest, she dismisses that same bridge as overly fussy and skips over it in concert. What else does she want to skip over?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But these songs exist outside of Gal, too, and the reader gets to see how everyone reacts to them, from the suits from the record label to the fans. And, perhaps most important, Gal’s bandmates, who may hear something different than Gal does – or perhaps than she intended. These songs take on a life of their own, and they serve to reflect back not only who Gal is at any given time, but how she is received in the world.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>How would you describe Gal, as she is when we meet her?<br /><br /></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">She’s fiercely loyal. She can’t leave Walter even though he doesn’t want to defend himself. That’s partly because of her love for Aimee, which she’s transferred to Aimee’s daughter Camille and also to Walter. But she is also coming to terms with the damage she’s done to those she loved.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I love writing about process – what it feels like to channel something and then to craft it, whether that’s a song or a story. But it requires really making yourself vulnerable. You and I have talked about this, how as writers, we have to “go for the heat” and write about whatever feels most immediate or real. You’ve always encouraged me to be brave and do this, and I’m so grateful! I think it’s one of the reasons you’re such a great friend!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>A former journalist, Clea Simon is the Boston Globe-bestselling author of three nonfiction books and 29 mysteries. including the new psychological suspense HOLD ME DOWN. While most of these (like A Cat on the Case) are cat “cozies” or amateur sleuth, she also writes darker crime fiction, like the rock and roll mystery World Enough, named a “must read” by the Massachusetts Book Awards. Her new psychological suspense Hold Me Down (Polis Books) returns to the music world, with themes of PTSD and recovery, as well as love in all its forms. She can be reached at www.cleasimon.com, on Twitter @Clea_Simon and on Instagram @cleasimon_author</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div></div><p><br /></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-36070059199324875462021-10-30T11:54:00.005-07:002021-10-30T11:58:23.019-07:00Larry Baker talks about WYMAN AND THE FLORIDA KNIGHTS, Florida, mortality, writing, the looming presence of Trump, and so much more.<p><b><i>Larry Baker is the author of From a Distance, The Flamingo Rising, The Education of Nancy Adams, Love and Other Delusions, A Good Man, and his latest, most wonderful novel WYMAN AND THE FLORIDA KNIGHTS. He's also become a treasured friend and I am delighted to host him here! Thank you, Larry!</i></b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b><br /></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJxR73m52Xp48HuHCRm6pIPvV_3_rEtI0YuqAneNKtFm4aBxM8b2NNhZykEQZkhSecMzEHh4NohWnKSfbYYK6trfIQaQ3uzdwex2IGzZaZOLq4ys1ViBqGFIGNEHLJJDHS8yjI6DzN21c/s488/Screen+Shot+2021-10-30+at+12.55.49+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="384" data-original-width="488" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJxR73m52Xp48HuHCRm6pIPvV_3_rEtI0YuqAneNKtFm4aBxM8b2NNhZykEQZkhSecMzEHh4NohWnKSfbYYK6trfIQaQ3uzdwex2IGzZaZOLq4ys1ViBqGFIGNEHLJJDHS8yjI6DzN21c/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-10-30+at+12.55.49+PM.png" width="320" /></a></b></div><b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuGcDKkAhLUTn1DnHylt9FHmssklUg52hbiIgywrHISskNd9ds1-BUwe3i-CIDolUaa1YOzoDrSQm-aiWjdfdW7j8X7iAaWjh-ROM7m-I39tyfOeVnbiUUuwRNBfoYUT0D4-6MiZhf9Jo/s798/Screen+Shot+2021-10-30+at+12.54.56+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="528" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuGcDKkAhLUTn1DnHylt9FHmssklUg52hbiIgywrHISskNd9ds1-BUwe3i-CIDolUaa1YOzoDrSQm-aiWjdfdW7j8X7iAaWjh-ROM7m-I39tyfOeVnbiUUuwRNBfoYUT0D4-6MiZhf9Jo/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-10-30+at+12.54.56+PM.png" width="212" /></a></div><br /><br /></b><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><p></p><i>I always believe that writers are haunted into writing books. What was haunting you?</i><div><br /></div><div>Haunted? Oh, other than a compounding fear of death and obscurity. I am 74. I have published seven novels. I think my best one is still trapped inside me, but I have less and less time, less and less energy. Cliched metaphor warning: A lack of sand in the hourglass haunts me.<br /><br />For WYMAN, I wanted to do something I have never done, attempt historical fiction. Not focusing on an individual, but a family over centuries. Having become a grandfather, myself, I am more aware of my own past, and I see my future in my grandsons, my family story continuing with them. I am optimistic about their future, but as I was writing WYMAN, I began to see how a family often has to overcome its past, its origins. In literary terms, the Faulknerian sins of the fathers. I'm a lapsed Baptist, a current Catholic agnostic, but I have never shed my Christian sense of guilt. Go back to Cain and bel, and toss in an artist's Faustian Bargain, and you'll understand what was haunting me.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>What's your usual writing life like, and has it changed during the pandemic?</i><br /><br />Sadly, I write less and less nowadays. That began when I finished the first draft of WYMAN a year ago. Old age, some family health problems, life itself has changed how I write. If the Pandemic had occurred a few years ago, with the enforced isolation, I suspect that I would have written one or two more novels. I no longer have the five hours a day of uninterrupted isolation that made me productive in the past.</div><div><br /><i>WYMAN and the Florida Knights is actually dealing with really contemporary issues. Can you talk about that please?</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The story begins in 1866 with the arrival in Florida of the Northern Evangelical Thomas Knight and it ends on Election Day 2016 before the votes are finalized. Trump is a looming figure in the background in 2016 but this story ends before the polls are closed, so the reader will have to imagine how his election will change the characters' lives. The Knight family came as Northern Republicans but their kind of Republicanism has devolved by 2016 and they are about to be usurped by darker forces. Thus, WYMAN is about how Florida is the avatar of American fragmentation. That sense of political fragmentation has parallel stories of alienation in the private lives of all the characters. Fathers and sons. Husbands and Wives. Artists and art. All unable to connect. But the story has a hopeful side. The old Knights are gone, but a new generation is rising.</div><div><br /></div><div>Throughout my story, the characters are all battling to determine who tells their story. The central character is Sandra Knight, the owner and editor of the small-town newspaper. One of my favorite chapters in the book is when she goes to a T4ump rally in Orlando. Plus, the role of journalism (my first college major a million years ago) has always intrigued me. Sandra has to deal with every economic and social force that is killing newspapers all over America. Of all the characters in WYMAN, she works the hardest to keep her town from vanishing.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I always want to know, do you feel that a new book grows out of an old one, or must you wrestle with something completely new?</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Well, since most of my novels have been under-whelming sellers, I can safely steal from myself and most new readers will never know. So, if I were an objective critic of Larry Baker, I would say that he is perennially writing about a few themes that recur over and over in his work. Emotional obsessions top that list. Misguided love, a quest for the ideal mate, sins and moral lapses done in the pursuit of some idealized "other." My first novel, FLAMINGO RISING, had a character named Alice, inspired by a real person. But, with that character written, that inspiration became irrelevant.</div><div><br /></div><div>My novel, A GOOD MAN, also had an Alice who was hiding from her past. The second Alice was not inspired by the real person who inspired the first. WYMAN also has a character named Alice.<br /><br />Other recurring themes? A quest for faith. And the universal theme of fiction--identity. How well does a writer know his characters, how well do they know themselves? With WYMAN, I made ample use of a trope I first explored in A GOOD MAN, how a character hides themselves in a name. I named a character Harry after a boy named Harry in a Flannery O'Connor story and after a radio DJ in a Harry Chapin song. Their stories, written by other writers, became the background for my own Harry.</div><div><br />Me, I have always hated my own name, Larry Baker. I look into a mirror, I do not see a Larry Baker.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>I love that you write about Florida, especially now with all that's happening there. Talk about that, please.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>I lived in Florida for three years, enough time to accumulate a ton of material for fiction. It's a unique state. In the early 1800s, it was the least American of all the other states. part of that was its Spanish background, but the single most important distinction was its natural environment. Today, science and capitalism have destroyed that original environment. Today, Florida might be the most American state, a hot mess, the worst of what America is becoming. </div><div><i><br />What's obsessing you now and why?</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Did I mention my sense of dwindling mortality? In literary terms, I might have one final project. I self-published a political novel in 2005, ATHENS/AMERICA, but I was never happy with it. It was too autobiographical, and thus too off-putting for most readers. Surprise, surprise, I am not always a sympathetic character. But the core of that story, how do fathers deal with the loss of a child, was still compelling to me. I needed another voice in the story, an observer of the two fathers in my original version. </div><div><br />As I looked at ATHENS again, I imagined a new character, arriving. Adding him let me create a backstory for him. I'm going to self-publish my revised novel in 2022. New title? THREE MEN AND A DEER.</div><div><i><br />What question didn't I ask that I should have?</i></div><div><br /></div><div>I dunno, maybe, "Have you dusted off your mantel and made a space for your future Pulitzer?" Or, "Your wife must be incredible patient and forgiving. Why did she marry you?" But here's a question that I like to ask other writers: "Is it possible to write an honest memoir?" People tell me all the time that I should write a memoir, but I have a simple answer: Never. I've been writing fiction for almost sixty years (not to be confused with publishing fiction.) Any processing of my life has been done through that, turning facts into fiction.<br /><p><br /></p></div>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-57511230757226976942021-08-30T16:35:00.002-07:002021-08-30T16:35:25.842-07:00Cai Emmons talks about Sinking Islands, weather, living with ALS, writing, and so much more<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Xexm18_oVUkpgHNY8oAF8hJ6rRQtQgX_gFjk8sJLRcBYVI5Ay7EDlQDmhVYKpM2NOrjoxG1zPVdYHqlKTaesceZgOJQ0FL0lzDsXFtEwdswllnVmIiw9Q0BcJx-m1Kdaij81oIDQLpk/s404/Screen+Shot+2021-08-30+at+7.30.14+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="404" data-original-width="264" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Xexm18_oVUkpgHNY8oAF8hJ6rRQtQgX_gFjk8sJLRcBYVI5Ay7EDlQDmhVYKpM2NOrjoxG1zPVdYHqlKTaesceZgOJQ0FL0lzDsXFtEwdswllnVmIiw9Q0BcJx-m1Kdaij81oIDQLpk/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-08-30+at+7.30.14+PM.png" width="209" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicPenT_dcLbYzI2dhRWCNa1R68a_C_gTH-pwfCtDuPU8fYFfNid6wib1ve7ytKCPx4EETEz4tDDA9zeg9re-WYS28KQ_178snMHtS2aWsD9XRIElDRVVwb7jUF87Ecf7F5rudQrOoC5_A/s1246/Screen+Shot+2021-08-30+at+7.30.41+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1246" data-original-width="1070" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicPenT_dcLbYzI2dhRWCNa1R68a_C_gTH-pwfCtDuPU8fYFfNid6wib1ve7ytKCPx4EETEz4tDDA9zeg9re-WYS28KQ_178snMHtS2aWsD9XRIElDRVVwb7jUF87Ecf7F5rudQrOoC5_A/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-08-30+at+7.30.41+PM.png" width="275" /></a></div><br /><p>I met and befriended Cai the way I do almost every new friend: a book comes in the mail and I love it so much, I have to know the author! In Cai's case that was Weather Woman, followed by Sinking Islands. I'm thrilled to have Cai here, and I thank her for her patience with me for taking so, so long to get this up.</p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;">Cai Emmons is the author of the novels </span><a href="https://caiemmonsauthor.com/books/his-mothers-son/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #91b46e; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">His Mother’s Son </em></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;">(Harcourt), </span><a href="https://caiemmonsauthor.com/books/his-mothers-son/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; color: #91b46e; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;"><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The Stylist </em></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;">(HarperCollins), and </span><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><a href="https://caiemmonsauthor.com/books/weather-woman/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #91b46e; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;">Weather Woman</a> </em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;">(Red Hen Press). A sequel to </span><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Weather Woman</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;">, is called </span><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><a href="https://caiemmonsauthor.com/books/sinking-islands/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #91b46e; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;">Sinking Islands</a>.</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;"> Her story collection </span><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><a href="https://caiemmonsauthor.com/books/vanishing/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background: transparent; border: 0px; color: #91b46e; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s;">Vanishing</a>, </em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;">winner of the 2018 Leapfrog Fiction Contest came out in March 2020. </span><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">His Mother’s Son </em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;">received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly, was a Booksense and Literary Guild selection, was translated into French and German, was reviewed by </span><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">O Magazine </em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;">and </span><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The Economist, </em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;">and won an Oregon Book Award (the Ken Kesey Award) for fiction. About </span><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">The Stylist, </em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;">one of the earliest novels featuring a transgender character,</span><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"> Booklist </em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;">said: “With family relations as twisted as a French braid and language as vivid as a platinum dye job, Emmons’ potent novel features magnetic characters and complex and compelling secrets.” </span><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">Weather Woman,</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;"> Emmons’s most recent novel, about a meteorologist who discovers she has the power to change the weather, has been featured in such places as </span><em style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;">LitHub, The Rumpus, Book Riot,</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545657; font-family: Domine, serif; font-size: 16px;"> Montana Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio, The CCNY Grad Center, among others (see more coverage under “News”). The novel won a Nautilus Book Award and has been shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize.</span></p><p><b>What was haunting you into writing your latest book?</b></p><p>I love that you speak about this idea of being haunted into writing a book. I’ve never heard anyone speak about writing this way, but that’s exactly how it operates for me. Something begins poking at me such that I can’t stop thinking about it. The thinking becomes a bit obsessive. Questions begin to form and maybe a what-if develops, and pretty soon a novel is taking shape. In terms of Sinking Islands, I was haunted by the idea that people might read Weather Woman and think that I was putting forth the idea that a single person with superpowers might be the solution to our climate crisis. I don’t believe that at all. So I wanted to think about human beings collaborating and teaching each other. Having spent my entire adult life teaching in some form or other, and having benefitted so much from my own teachers, I wanted to write about that. Teaching is such a powerful tool. I think we all have a bit of the teacher in us. Good parenting is really all about teaching. There are so many doom-and-gloom dystopian books out there about our climate crisis; I like to think that I’ve written one of the few climate books that offers a modicum of hope—or at least it doesn’t wallow in despair! </p><p><b>Do you feel like your writing grown with each book?</b></p><p>This is another superb question. I always, just after I’ve finished a book, feel that it is the best thing I’ve ever written, but of course that feeling fades quickly and I begin to ask, “Is this really any good?” It is impossible to answer that myself. My agent says she thinks my most recent novel, Unleashed (out from Dutton in 2022) is the best thing I’ve ever written, and I tend to agree with her. But I also feel as if I can never really be the judge of my own work. I can only weigh in on how the process has changed for me over the years. </p><p>When I step back and think about each book I’ve written I think that I’ve become more ambitious. When I began writing novels I only dared write from one character’s perspective. Then I began incorporating a number of characters’ perspectives in the same novel. Then I began to stretch my imagination to write about things that are not entirely “real” though they are metaphorically and psychologically real. And most recently I wrote a first-person novel which I have never done before. So I think there has been some growth in terms of what I’ve dared to take on. And there is another kind of growth too—I’m sure you’ve experienced this—which is that you trust the process more and even when you’re stuck you know you can find a way through to the end. Along with that comes an ease with sentence-making and knowing what material is superfluous and can be cut. There is greater facility with manipulating what you have written so that seems like a kind of growth. </p><p>I think my biggest fear is that I might begin repeating myself in subsequent novels. In a way I think we’re always writing around the same themes again and again, packaged somewhat differently. But I still feel, despite that fear, amazingly driven to keep writing, to keep exploring what it means to be human. </p><p><b>What’s your writing life like now?</b></p><p>Three years ago I gave up my teaching job in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Oregon. At the time I had two books scheduled for publication, and I didn’t see how I was going to be able to publicize them and keep writing while also teaching. I was a bit frightened to no longer have the cushion of academia, but my husband has a good job that could support us both. I am so glad I decided to prioritize my writing when I did. I had no idea then that I would be diagnosed with ALS (I was diagnosed in February of this year), but something was telling me back then that it was time to go for broke and pay exclusive attention to my own work. I feel a great urgency to write every story that is still in me while I can. So far ALS has stolen my ability to speak, but I am so grateful that I am still able to move around and write and type. The 2020 pandemic year was extremely productive for me, and I now have two books that are scheduled to come out in 2022, and I’m working on a new novel that I hope to complete sometime early next year. Fingers crossed.</p><p>My writing days are still much as they have always been, writing first thing in the morning (longhand, with coffee, propped up in bed), and staying there for several hours until I am called upon to participate in the larger world. My afternoons are occupied with typing up what I’ve written or doing the “business” of being a writer. I guess my biggest challenge of late has been figuring out how to publicize my books without being able to speak. I have a high-tech computer that speaks what I type, which is extremely useful, but it necessitates slowing down, for me and for whoever I’m talking to. In social situations I am trying to adjust to being a listener instead of the talker I’ve always been!</p><p><b>What was it like writing a sequel?</b></p><p>Since I never intended to write a sequel to Weather Woman I was figuring things out as I went along. I knew that in Sinking Islands I had to remain true to what I’d set up in Weather Woman and build on that. I couldn’t change backstory events, or names, or rules I’d set up about how Bronwyn employs her power, etc. I was particularly brought up short when one character in Weather Woman, Earl, who I wanted to include in Sinking Islands was off-limits because he was already dead. I considered, very briefly, bringing him back to life, but that would have been violating the world I’d set up. So I ended up having another character, Patty, talk to Earl as if he was still alive. I also debated with myself about whether it would be okay to have Bronwyn have lost a pinkie to frostbite in Siberia, even though I had not mentioned that in Weather Woman (I decided that would be okay since it could have happened after the book ended). I spent a lot of time searching through the pages of Weather Woman for specific details I’d already laid down. It was kind of like doing continuity for a film—I didn’t want readers to discover inconsistencies. So far, no one has, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility!</p><p><b>What question haven’t I asked that I should have? </b></p><p>I am always intrigued by the question of why people write in the first place, and that question has been more on my mind of late since I know that I will be dead in the next few years. Why do I still want to spend my remaining time writing instead of traveling or doing any of the other things human beings find rewarding? I think part of the answer to that is that when I am writing I am in some kind of flow state and at my happiest. Also, since talking has become so hard there is a great deal I don’t say aloud, so writing has become an even more essential vehicle for expression. And over the years writing has become a habit that isn’t easily broken—it is my way of processing the world around me. But there is that other ineffable thing that keeps me—and other writers—writing. Some pressing desire to document what it feels like to be a particular human being, living in a particular place at a particular time in history. I don’t feel as if my experience is particularly important on its own, but I feel as if I’m part of a chorus of writers all saying, this, and this, and this, and it adds up to an amazing cantata of voices, all of which are neces</p><div><br /></div>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-14154294221030545502021-07-28T12:52:00.003-07:002021-07-28T12:54:08.007-07:00Portrait of a prolific seventeen-year-old author! Max Rudin talks about writing sci-fi, physics, what inspires him and more!<p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">What's more
exciting than discovering new writing talent? Especially when it is from
a teenager? I've hosted young people here before (We have a
ten-year-old in our family who already has written a novel, and our son
Max wrote a novel "Movies of Doom" when he was eight. We gave him the
full author treatment, getting blurbs from writer friends, writing a
book club set of questions , getting an author photo, too.) So when
writer/producer/comedienne /friend Bari Alyse Rudin told me about her
talented 17-year-old son, who had already written many books available
for purchase, I asked to see a few pages. To my astonishment, they were
truly great! Professional! Sophisticated, too. So I wanted to host him
on my blog to support him.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />Thank you so much, Bari, and huge thanks to Max!<br /></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYEhU9MSeHe-hQq9COijJVyczS9yo4vsGwsp5n1cQUvF03pw7YgMRYzra2VzZQW189L8LQGgmMh2Mv1cbdci3jAUKyP3bfbiypH3XSEQmohD6SYyXJHMMJ6WI1UqyQambdMyNaRPQcHYQ/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-07-28+at+3.21.38+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1792" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYEhU9MSeHe-hQq9COijJVyczS9yo4vsGwsp5n1cQUvF03pw7YgMRYzra2VzZQW189L8LQGgmMh2Mv1cbdci3jAUKyP3bfbiypH3XSEQmohD6SYyXJHMMJ6WI1UqyQambdMyNaRPQcHYQ/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-07-28+at+3.21.38+PM.png" width="320" /></a></b></div><b><br /></b>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I'm astonished that you are so good a writer at such a young
age. When did you first start writing?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Besides assignments for school, I first started writing when
I was in fifth grade. In fifth and sixth grade, my friend Sebastian and I came
up with many ideas for books that we wanted to write. Over the phone, we’d work
together on the start of different stories, never ending up finishing them.
However, working on those stories was incredibly fun, and I realized that I
loved storytelling. Also, I’ve always had a tendency to daydream and think
through different scenarios in my head. Combined with my interest in astronomy,
physics, and other sciences, this led to questions about how humans might live
in space in the future. By the time I was a high school freshman, I was
determined to start and finish a book on my own. That book ended up as my
first, A Truly Dead Rock.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where do you find
inspiration? What else do you love besides writing? What books inspire you?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The inspiration for my books started with natural wonders,
the different landscapes that exist in space and how they might look. How does
a sunset look on the Moon or Venus? Then, I began to think about manmade
wonders. How would the sky of a domed city or a large space station look? From
these images of beauty, I wrote about the people that would get to see them in
the distant future and what sorts of conflicts they might face in their lives.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Besides writing, I
enjoy making educational YouTube videos and podcasts. In doing so, I research
topics that interest me in science or history and explain them in an intuitive
way. This is very fun for me, because I get to teach and because I get to
learn. Whenever there’s something I wonder about, I want to research it so that
I can teach others about it through my videos or through my writing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">My favorite sci-fi books are Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue
Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, which were a great inspiration for me. These
books outline a detailed history of an inhabited Mars for hundreds of years in
the future. They are very long books and include vivid descriptions of the
different landscapes at different times in Martian history. These beautiful
scenes inspired me to bring other uninhabited parts of the universe to life. I
also very much enjoyed Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crichton. I
watched the Jurassic Park movies when I was ten and couldn’t stop watching them
over and over. They drew me into sci-fi, and when I found out that there were
books behind them, I immediately decided to read them. Crichton’s explanations
of complex topics in science and math always made sense, and I enjoyed the
logical flow. Understanding the science behind the science fiction enhanced the
experience of reading.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are incredibly
prolific! I want to know your secret!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s no secret! I start with the beautiful things that exist
out in the universe then describe them like I have seen them myself. Beyond
that, I use my experiences with my family, my friends, and the world to craft a
sensible story. The different places humans might live in the future could be
incredibly distinct from Earth, but the human mind would remain the same, and
for the most part, so would our social experiences. Also, practice is important
to improve one’s craft. Description used to be much easier for me than
dialogue, and it still comes more naturally to me today. However, with my
second and third books, I made sure to include more dialogue in the
storytelling so that I could get better at it, and I think my work has paid
off! When you start your writing with something that truly inspires you, you
are bound to get good results, and in the areas that are lacking, the more you
practice, the better you’ll be. By straying outside of your comfort zone, you
will develop a wide array of talents.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Where do you see your career in five years? What would you
most love to happen?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In five years, I see myself having published five more
books. I have many more story ideas that share continuity with the first three
I’ve written, and I also have ideas that stray far from them. I’d like to amass
a larger readership, because I love hearing that the ideas in my books have
inspired other people’s imaginations. Furthermore, I’ll be graduating high
school this year and going to college next year. I want to get a degree in
physics and become a physicist. The concepts I’ll learn will help me in writing
more scientifically accurate stories and give me plenty more “what if”
questions to think about. Ultimately, I’d love to see my books made into movies
one day, because science-fiction movies have inspired me just as much as sci-fi
books have (especially when I was younger). In the future, it would be amazing
if I could make a living off of writing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What's obsessing you
now and why?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Right now, I’ve been thinking a lot about evolution and the
power of natural selection. I’ve been reading a web project called “Serina: A
Natural History of the World of Birds,” which is about a planet populated
solely by canaries (as well as plants, fish, and insects). The project
chronicles the evolution of different species in a collection of articles from
different time periods after the introduction of the canaries up to a few
hundred million years. The way that the pressures of ecological niches can
transform these birds into distinctly un-bird-like forms is astonishing to me
(such as a species resembling whales and another with nearly human
intelligence). Since I usually focus more on physics than biology, this thought
experiment has been new and interesting to me, and I’ve been thinking more
about the effects that genetic modification could have in my book series.
Harkening back to my old favorite Jurassic Park, I’ve been thinking about
genetically modifying ravens to become more similar to their velociraptor
ancestors.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What question didn't I ask that I should have?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“What are your books about? What are you planning to write
next?”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So far, my books have been about people living in a
space-faring society, one hundred years in the future. My first trilogy, The
Solar System Century, has detailed the progression of the 22nd century and all
of the interesting technological and political events that might occur in that
time period. It follows the story of the Possaic family, generation by
generation. Next up, I’m reeling in the timespan and writing a book that takes
place in the near future, twenty years from now. What’s fun about writing a
book that takes place in the near future is that the world that the characters
live in is much more familiar to me, and I have greatly enjoyed thinking about
how the next few decades of history might play out. From personal computing to
genetics, the world of the near future is more advanced than our own, but the
culture and society is much more familiar. I’m excited to try something new and
think about the backstory to my first few novels.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order of
publication, my books are A Truly Dead Rock, A Bottled Up Flame, and A Somewhat
Odd Start. You can easily find the links on my website, gravitymaxmedia.com,
under the “My Books” tab to order them in paperback or as ebooks. If you want
to read the first few pages of my books to get a preview, they are also
available under that same tab on my website. Furthermore, if you are interested
in watching my YouTube videos or my podcast, you can find them on my YouTube
channel, Gravity Max. The link to my channel is on my website under the
“YouTube Channels” tab. Thank you very much to Caroline Leavitt for putting me
on her blog! I feel honored that she took an interest in my writing.</p>
<style>@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:swiss;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-11492909383503401822021-06-06T15:12:00.005-07:002021-06-06T15:12:51.884-07:00Suzanne Koven talks about imposter syndrome, women in the medical profession, sexism, racism, writing and her extraordinary memoir: Letter to a Young Female Physician.<p> </p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGx-RZM5mV02P0pFOvk32-n3lF9_-sORxSG79lwC0uf-lplWWXMcCc6h_BwuFmMUyq5lX8rPw3dbiePAL7PHmzfSGt5FmrD3H2wGT7JaMYIkzGwkz3Mggx-ukomqY1aUuAsDJMyhBwFeQ/s1756/Screen+Shot+2021-06-06+at+6.06.26+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1756" data-original-width="1162" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGx-RZM5mV02P0pFOvk32-n3lF9_-sORxSG79lwC0uf-lplWWXMcCc6h_BwuFmMUyq5lX8rPw3dbiePAL7PHmzfSGt5FmrD3H2wGT7JaMYIkzGwkz3Mggx-ukomqY1aUuAsDJMyhBwFeQ/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-06-06+at+6.06.26+PM.png" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivSNm6MrQkKSCZlWe-wAQ9ga16v4LAXzSyei_OAPRoj5UhZOK-xQoSwzcSC2TWDm9STD50vTRnHwIDvoKAO9bvUsBqEbnLjc55v9w0p1_WQkcScIowT5W9sCqtJu8OlHcAsSmtU06vr9g/s1422/Screen+Shot+2021-05-17+at+1.39.00+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1422" data-original-width="712" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivSNm6MrQkKSCZlWe-wAQ9ga16v4LAXzSyei_OAPRoj5UhZOK-xQoSwzcSC2TWDm9STD50vTRnHwIDvoKAO9bvUsBqEbnLjc55v9w0p1_WQkcScIowT5W9sCqtJu8OlHcAsSmtU06vr9g/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-05-17+at+1.39.00+PM.png" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD-xlEQPDHAPxyUOHAY7ypMe0-xQOdLGrKJUyw9XXE8opqeKqC4Xm01OPdXGvUsKF8YIXZwXZ4MVamrIuqKaa8BVYxRqzc6XSH8tMDiADgp-VSf0Kp0JNkQ5nPC1Jkb-i2UQFMQayNwKw/s1380/Koven+Head+Shot+2021-03-15+at+10.56.17+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1380" data-original-width="932" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD-xlEQPDHAPxyUOHAY7ypMe0-xQOdLGrKJUyw9XXE8opqeKqC4Xm01OPdXGvUsKF8YIXZwXZ4MVamrIuqKaa8BVYxRqzc6XSH8tMDiADgp-VSf0Kp0JNkQ5nPC1Jkb-i2UQFMQayNwKw/s320/Koven+Head+Shot+2021-03-15+at+10.56.17+AM.png" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p> It's no secret how much I love nurses and female doctors, both of whom saved my life when I was sick. So, of course, when Suzanne Koven's book LETTER TO A YOUNG FEMALE PHYSICIAN bumped into my house, I snapped it up and was immediately engrossed. And I quickly tracked her down and asked if I could talk to her and promote the book.</p><p>Suzanne Koven joined the
faculty of Harvard Medical School and has practiced primary care
internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for over
25 years. In 2019 she was named inaugural Writer in Residence at Mass
General. Her essays, articles, blogs, and reviews have appeared in <i>The
Boston Globe, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, The New
Yorker.com, Psychology Today, The L.A. Review of Books, The Virginia
Quarterly, STAT</i>, and other publications. Her monthly column “In
Practice” appeared in the Boston Globe and won the Will Solimene Award
for Excellence in Medical Writing from the American Medical Writers
Association in 2012. Her interview column, “The Big Idea,” appears at
The Rumpus. Suzanne conducts workshops, moderates panel discussions, and
speaks to a variety of audiences about literature and medicine,
narrative and storytelling in medicine, women’s health, mental
healthcare, and primary care. <br /><br />Thank you so much, Suzanne for being here, and for this wise, must-read memoir.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b>I want to first talk about your astonishing essay about
imposter syndrome which was read nearly 300,000 times globally. You’ve
written that that was terrifying to publish, so how scary was it to expand that
essay into this remarkable book? What was the why now moment when you decided
to go ahead and do it and what did that feel like? I’d also like to ask how you
felt writing this book, if you had any sensation that maybe you were not an
imposter after all?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It <i>was </i>scary to write a memoir, but not because of
the self-revelation involved. One thing that publishing the original “Letter” essay
and other personal essays taught me is that when you confront your most
shameful thoughts on the page readers see themselves, not you. I felt pretty
confident I wouldn’t be judged harshly for my faults and foibles. I felt much
less confident about whether I could actually complete such a large project and
yes, my imposter syndrome flared. I’d finally gotten over feeling like a doctor
masquerading as an essayist and now I felt like an essayist masquerading as a
memoirist! But my wonderful family, agent, editor, and writing buddy all
cheered me on and, if I learned nothing else in my medical training, I am
capable of persevering when I want to quit. This came in very handy.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>What I so loved about your memoir was that so many of us
tend to see doctors as gods, yet you show the tender parts—the insecurities,
the fears, especially as women. One female doctor told me she was on a plane
when a patient had a heart attack. She flew into action only to be told that “they
needed a real doctor.” Why has this attitude persisted and do you see it
getting better?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And these kinds of horrifying incidents happen even much
more often to female physicians of color. I did want to show that doctors—male and
female—are just people. But, as you say, I also wanted to explore how being a
doctor is different for women. And the fact is that sexism in the form of pay
inequity, harassment, gaps in promotion and research funding and in incidents
like the one you mention do persist. I think they persist for the same reason
that sexism persists in other professions and industries: because for all our
progress we still live in a very sexist society. And medicine is, perhaps, more
traditionally hierarchical—and patriarchic—than most.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br />
<b>I also loved how reading has enhanced your practice with Lit med. There is a
narrative of illness. Patients are stories. But doctors are stories, too and I
wish they knew how much patients appreciate knowing that of them—much like how
readers appreciate your honest book. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is
it necessary <i>not </i>to be friends in order to have a good doctor/patient
relationship, and if so, why?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The boundaries between doctors and patients interest me so
much and I wrote about them a lot in the book—also the boundaries between my own
roles as doctor/mother/daughter/friend. A doctor can be a friend—my doctor is
my friend (and colleague!)—but to be effective she can’t be<i> only</i> a
friend. I often feel, though, that I do some of my best doctoring when I am
straddling the border between doctor and friend.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>You write a lot about dieting in your book but what I was
wondering about is the relationship between doctors and nutrition. People do
use food to manage stress and anxiety, but I've never heard information about this from any of my doctors. Why?</b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><br /></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Doctors received little education in nutrition when I was
in training and I don’t think they get much more now. And if you go to the
average doctors’ conference—particularly those involving residents—don’t expect
to see much healthy food. That’s a bit of a different issue than dieting.
Though in recent years the medical community has started to see obesity as a
medical condition, nutrition is still largely outsourced to commercial enterprises
and, as I write about at length, female doctors are not at all immune to the
pressure to be thin that this culture places on women.</p><b>
</b><p class="MsoNormal"><b> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>What’s haunting you now and why?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I love that young women in medicine (and other readers!)
are responding so deeply to my book. But I am haunted by the fact that my tales
of sexism in medicine 30 years ago ring so true to young doctors today. I mean,
shouldn’t we have made more progress in three decades?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br />
<br />
<b>What question didn’t I ask that I should have?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You did great. Thanks so much for reading my book so
generously!</p>
<p><style>@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:swiss;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;}.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;}div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-89546266966482756982021-05-12T12:47:00.000-07:002021-05-12T12:47:07.786-07:00How to live gracefully with the end in mind? Barbara Becker talks about her gorgeous book, Heartwood, making the most of every minute, writing about what matters, grappling with cancer and finding joy.<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhehqeZOBuLHJ_eXrhLXJ-qju5wSZHX2fk4o_tOEgOcoDhdiTopBQaqEqDu70eQDMKM55wOVOerMcYEk8-5N2DtY_qjtrSXOffhxTLqAoZBbSbFzgOrlX6hAs9lKupCS8A7nK6Lv_IFR4c/s1676/Screen+Shot+2021-05-12+at+3.39.22+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1676" data-original-width="1146" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhehqeZOBuLHJ_eXrhLXJ-qju5wSZHX2fk4o_tOEgOcoDhdiTopBQaqEqDu70eQDMKM55wOVOerMcYEk8-5N2DtY_qjtrSXOffhxTLqAoZBbSbFzgOrlX6hAs9lKupCS8A7nK6Lv_IFR4c/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-05-12+at+3.39.22+PM.png" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpeLl7b4vf0RHznQEBIES80DvgOicaVjjIGofZmTxztDIdhbzzXYe5m-zbmaxbg2KvVmhHZ1615a8t9D8jspF5mSIVxD0RVwhZsQGcXQamb526IyKwKR6GIBsszFxDkqiVcKeO_2nm6cY/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-05-12+at+3.41.27+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1508" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpeLl7b4vf0RHznQEBIES80DvgOicaVjjIGofZmTxztDIdhbzzXYe5m-zbmaxbg2KvVmhHZ1615a8t9D8jspF5mSIVxD0RVwhZsQGcXQamb526IyKwKR6GIBsszFxDkqiVcKeO_2nm6cY/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-05-12+at+3.41.27+PM.png" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPEyUL63vhyphenhyphenQazP1hYzYJzevXAZ9pvCWNHUf1Zh3ZHv_qqKpQnmKC-txNlJ9L5_ayjv4urKGGyofslc8kSQ_EW4IGw6AQSSg6_KVq_v-dMVeClNQGZH3y3cmRULnibf309zB5ZqfmlGvc/s2048/Screen+Shot+2021-05-12+at+3.41.20+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1538" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPEyUL63vhyphenhyphenQazP1hYzYJzevXAZ9pvCWNHUf1Zh3ZHv_qqKpQnmKC-txNlJ9L5_ayjv4urKGGyofslc8kSQ_EW4IGw6AQSSg6_KVq_v-dMVeClNQGZH3y3cmRULnibf309zB5ZqfmlGvc/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-05-12+at+3.41.20+PM.png" /></a></div><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /><br />I had written a piece for Psychology Today on how grief is not what you think it is, that the "rules" people dole out are not helpful at all and we should all grieve in our own way. Almost instantly, I started getting emails that said, "You have to read Barbara Becker!" And so I did, and her book Heartwood meant so much to me that I sought her out to interview.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Barbara Becker is a writer and
ordained interfaith minister who has dedicated more than twenty-five
years to partnering with human-rights advocates around the world in
pursuit of peace and interreligious understanding. She has worked with
the United Nations, Human Rights First, the Ms. Foundation for Women,
and the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, and has participated in a delegation
of Zen Peacemakers and Lakota elders in the sacred Black Hills of South
Dakota. She has sat with hundreds of people at the end of their lives
and views each as a teacher. Barbara </span><a href="http://barbarabecker.com/events/">speaks</a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> on
a wide range of topics, including deepening our sense of meaning &
spirituality and mid-career pivots. She lives in New York City with her
interfaith family. <br /><br />First the raves for her book!<br /></span></p><h3>REVIEWS</h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“</span><i><span class="large">Becker
debuts with a stirring chronicle of the events, moments, and stories
that led to her reconciliation with mortality…Becker’s eloquence is a
salve </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">for confronting a
difficult topic…This will be a comfort for anyone contemplating their
own mortality, or those in search of advice for others.”</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—</span><b>Publishers Weekly Starred Review</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“</span><i><span class="large">A graceful meditation on divine deliverance.</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">
Once firmly entrenched in our “death-shy” contemporary culture, the
author is now a reassuring advocate for peace and interreligious
understanding, and she views dying as an opportunity to seek
enlightenment and give thanks, regardless of one’s preferred spiritual
path.”</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br />
</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—</span><b>Kirkus</b></p>
<p>“This insightful, quietly moving book is not just for the grieving or those who comfort them.”<br />
—<b>Booklist</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Life is an adventure of following our curiosity—that is, the voice of our true self—into the unknown world around us. In </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Heartwood</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">,
Barbara Becker inspires us to follow our curiosity into a world of love
and loss that is both universal and a source of our uniqueness. And </span><i><span class="large">what could be better than that?</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">”<br />
—</span><b>Gloria Steinem</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, bestselling author and activist</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“The global human family is
interconnected, and a loss in one place affects us all. Barbara Becker’s
words beautifully and compassionately reflect this truth. </span><i><span class="large">Heartwood is a gem.</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">”<br />
—</span><b>Dr. Denis Mukwege</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, author of forthcoming <em>The Power of Women: Learning from Resilience to Heal Our World</em></span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;"></span></p><p> </p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I always want to know
what was the why now moment that you decided to write this book? I love your
description of grief as an invitation and the message that we don’t get over
things, and in a way, we shouldn’t have to, because grief is really a message
about how well we have loved and been loved. Can you talk about this please?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">When <span style="background: white;">my
earliest childhood friend Marisa was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I went on a
journey to explore the meaning of loss and love. </span>While she was living
out the last year of her life, I became completely absorbed by the
question <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Can we live our lives
more fully knowing some day we will die?</span></i></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="background: white; color: black;"> </span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Marisa made the absolute most of her remaining
time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was an incredible lover of
life! She got married to her college sweetheart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She travelled to Italy with her family. She
spent deep, quality time with friends.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">But I couldn’t help wonder about what happens
to those of us who are still here, who are going about our day-to-day lives?
Can we too live with a more heightened sense of what matters most by taking on
death as a teacher?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I discovered that wise people throughout time
have advised us to live with the end in mind, from the Dalai Lama to the
Prophet Muhammed. So I tested </span>whether this wisdom that they pointed to
could would uphold within the context of a modern life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Ultimately, <i>Heartwood</i> is a book about
resilience and hope.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a book about
truly living, fully acknowledging that we will die. When I stepped back and
looked at what I had done, I saw that I had written a love letter to life. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="background: white; color: black;"> </span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I love the metaphor
of trees and I would love you to talk about it.</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p align="left" class="MsoSubtitle" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sure! Heartwood is a metaphor found in nature and a central theme of
the book. Imagine walking through an old growth forest. Inside every tree is a
central pillar that is most prized by woodworkers, that gives the tree strength
and stability. That core is called heartwood, and what most people don’t know
is that it’s no longer living… it no longer transports water and
nutrients.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The living growth rings of
the tree expand out from this central core.</span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoSubtitle" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It turns out we’re a lot like the trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those we’ve loved who have died form our
heartwood, our enduring strength.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> </span></p>
<p align="left" class="MsoSubtitle" style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-weight: normal;">There is both pain and beauty on this journey. We
make meaning through narrative and metaphor</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">. With both of my parents now gone, I think of them as my heartwood. </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">We don’t ‘get over’ our loved ones when they
die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, we find an ongoing
connection with them, even as we go about living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also helps me to recognize that someday,
I’ll be someone’s heartwood too.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black;"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I was really
fascinated with the whole idea of being courageous about writing about or
talking about death, because I wanted to know why? (As you wanted to know.)
Isn’t it more authentic and more important to show our feelings, our questions,
our everything?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">Yes! The
<span style="color: black;">story I hesitated to tell in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Heartwood</i> but then pushed myself to include was about my two
miscarriages. In the land of taboo infertility and miscarriage are among the
most hidden losses. This silence is so prevalent in our society that it was
only in dealing my own losses that I learned that my own mother had lost a
pregnancy, as had both of my grandmothers, including a child who died a couple
of days after birth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And my great-grandmother
died in childbirth when my grandmother was small. I</span>f this was the
history of my family alone over just four generations, including me, how many
countless millions shared in the world’s unwritten epic of hidden sorrow? If we
are going to talk about interconnection through loss, it’s right there. <span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a goal of mine
to help change this and to acknowledge women <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">and</i> men who have been through pregnancy loss and the loss of a
child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today I have two healthy sons,
but I will never forget their siblings who were never born.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What was it like
writing this book, revisiting grief and rethinking life?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At a certain point, I realized that the only way to write
authentically about loved ones I have lost was to make the writing itself a
sacred act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whenever I sat down at my
desk, I would light a beautiful little candle and spend a moment remembering
the person I was writing about that day. It helped me draw them near to my
heart, and it made all the difference in the world in helping me feel like I
was honoring them rather than “doing my work” for the day.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<span style="color: black;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What question didn’t I ask that I should
have?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The elephant in the room for me right now is that just as my
book on life and loss<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is about to be
launched, I have been unexpectedly diagnosed with breast cancer. What a ‘where
the rubber meets the road’ moment this has been!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have been reminded again and again in these
past couple of weeks that the <i>Heartwood</i> story is about learning to face
things as they are, not as we would like them to be. The Taoists say this
is a world of 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows, and both of these realities are
true. Can I stay present to <i>all</i> of it? </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Having cancer is a radical lesson in surrender. I’m
learning to walk step-by-step, not writing chapter 21 when I’m only on chapter
4, so to speak. First it is surgery, then the first week of treatment,
the second, the third and so on. It’s not possible sometimes to think
beyond one day at time. That has its benefit too—there’s a simple grace that
unfolds when we slow down in the midst of a culture that can move at warp
speed. All of the people in <i>Heartwood </i>who I was fortunate to learn
from, and all of the wisdom I gleaned from their beliefs and traditions are
such a source of strength to me now. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Any final words on
what is obsessing you now and why?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Juxtaposed to my own health crisis, I am paying attention to
a more joyful ending at the moment – my youngest son’s graduation from high
school! In a year marked by the losses as well as the disappointments of Covid,
this feels like a transition worth celebrating! <span style="color: black;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p><style>@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:swiss;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;}p.MsoSubtitle, li.MsoSubtitle, div.MsoSubtitle
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-link:"Subtitle Char";
margin:0in;
text-align:center;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-weight:bold;
mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;}span.SubtitleChar
{mso-style-name:"Subtitle Char";
mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-locked:yes;
mso-style-link:Subtitle;
font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-hansi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
font-weight:bold;
mso-bidi-font-weight:normal;}.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style> <br /></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-80828899113201173942021-05-07T12:24:00.009-07:002021-05-07T12:27:25.326-07:00Maryanne O'Hara talks about her astounding memoir about love and loss and finding the light again, LITTLE MATCHES, mystical understanding from raw grief, our life stories, and so much more.<p>
</p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhEtM9fc6acspo-djPaNx1TjiI3cTamYTrjd0NdOWNCz5bkLNpZe5M7C_xgTAkGzFRAV6g54VxdXLdBF0xIFw7YNOCSCaoiE559V5JN_Hp-VAPrq8OQTpEcJGWbC1-8lra4Az0yTXM7g0/s1120/LM+final+cover.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1120" data-original-width="724" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhEtM9fc6acspo-djPaNx1TjiI3cTamYTrjd0NdOWNCz5bkLNpZe5M7C_xgTAkGzFRAV6g54VxdXLdBF0xIFw7YNOCSCaoiE559V5JN_Hp-VAPrq8OQTpEcJGWbC1-8lra4Az0yTXM7g0/s320/LM+final+cover.png" /></a></div><span style="color: red;"> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: red;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="630" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKzHw0S2gYpnq1HUvxiFyBmhd6Cx8SLrgIPgl0oncNBCWdG2HyPj_acPBLAPT-IKTUy8ysYm-Il4NIvWjXr9JWtE_IyKfv1N4UWmApi5j6gk0u4IbrbdTy40hDgiv_EtTPlqpEWygVZcE/s320/m+and+c+fay.png" width="320" /></div><span style="color: red;"> </span><p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: red;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: red;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: red;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqU9BKnMNgomy1BWoV_ARhGyPSTXIO5qXHCJjbe14JKfyVkRAxNvD-EzmuFDE8y-wcJjsiH8vU61r3mBapcsfxz_6ekBP62nfzBsbl2xxw9zJ2Rk5v_L_f4wmnGLH7RjrcbdRgfeZfM_M/s2048/USE.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1502" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqU9BKnMNgomy1BWoV_ARhGyPSTXIO5qXHCJjbe14JKfyVkRAxNvD-EzmuFDE8y-wcJjsiH8vU61r3mBapcsfxz_6ekBP62nfzBsbl2xxw9zJ2Rk5v_L_f4wmnGLH7RjrcbdRgfeZfM_M/s320/USE.png" width="320" /></a></div><p><span style="color: red;"> First the praise:</span></p><p class="critical-review"><span style="color: red;"> </span><em>"Little Matches</em> is gripping and true in all ways, and I am so
glad to have spent time in the company of Maryanne and Caitlin. This is a
fine, affecting memoir that will stay with me for a very long time." -
<strong>Meg Wolitzer, author of <em>The Female Persuasion</em> and <em>The Interestings</em></strong><br /></p>
<p class="critical-review">
“This luminous, harrowing memoir is a tale of a mother’s devotion and grief, yes, but when I closed <em>Little Matches,</em>
tears standing still in my eyes, I was left with a sense that I had met
not one but two remarkable spirits, my world enlarged.” - <strong>Dani Shapiro, author of <em>Inheritance </em>and </strong><em><strong>Hourglass</strong></em></p>
<p class="critical-review">
“Here is love in ink, and you will feel it: a book about life, including
death. O’Hara’s great achievement is showing us that inside of human
connection, everything has a home—despair, hope, fear, beauty, decay. It
turns out that death poses no threat to love.” - <strong>B. J. Miller, author of <em>A Beginner’s Guide to the End</em></strong></p>
<p class="critical-review">
<em>"</em>The bravest and most generous of memoirs, <em>Little Matches</em>
is the diary of your dearest friend, intimate and universal, an
exquisitely written poem of deepest love, grief, and devotion. This is a
journey of the soul. I feel haunted by these pages and profoundly
blessed to have read them.” - <strong>Lisa Genova, author of <em>Still Alice </em>and </strong><em><strong>Every Note Played</strong></em></p>
<p class="critical-review">
"Maryanne O’Hara has written an extraordinary book, beautiful,
heartbreaking, and so full of life on every page that I was reminded
that loving deeply is full of risk and the only way to live. This is
the most meaningful book I’ve read in a very long time." - <strong>Jane Bernstein, author of </strong><em><strong>The Face Tells the Secret </strong></em><strong>and </strong><em><strong>Rachel in the World</strong></em></p>
<p class="critical-review">
“A raw yet comforting journal of grief, pain, and sparks of hope.”<br /> - <strong><em>Kirkus</em></strong><br /></p>
<p class="critical-review">
“In this vividly written memoir novelist O’Hara shares a painful but
ultimately beautiful account of her daughter Caitlin’s life with cystic
fibrosis. . . . Her compelling story will resonate with anyone seeking a
light in the darkest depths of grief.” - <em><strong>Library Journal</strong></em></p>
<p class="critical-review">
“Bracingly honest and deeply comforting.” - <strong>A PEOPLE magazine Book of the Week<br /><br /><br /></strong></p><p></p><p><span style="color: red;"> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Maryanne O'Hara is the author of the astonishing novel, CASCADE, </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">about an artist who is trying to figure out
what’s important in life, and it takes place in the 1930s in a town
slated to be destroyed for a reservoir, and in the art world of pre-war
New York City. It was the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Boston Globe</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Book Club’s inaugural pick, a </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">People</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> magazine pick of the week, and a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award. Currently, it is the Massachusetts pick for the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">East Coast Centers for the Book</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://www.massbook.org/route-1-reads-1"> “Route 1 Reads” program</a>. We could all love Maryanne for that alone.<br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">But soon
after CASCADE’s paperback released, her daughter Caitlin's (radiantly pictured above) respiratory health rapidly worsened.
She needed oxygen 24/7 and a lung transplant. For three years, the family lived
in twilit limbo as she waited — far too long — for the call that seemed
like it would never come. </span><a href="http://www.9livesnotes.com/"><span style="font-weight: 400;"></span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">Caitlin
got her transplant, finally, but it was too late. She’d had to wait too
long. She died in December of 2016. She was 33.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: 400;"> LITTLE MATCHES is about life during overwhelming grief, about finding meaning in what seems meaningless. Written in the same gorgeous prose O'Hara is known for, it is remarkable. I'm so honored to have Maryanne here Thank you, thank you, Maryanne.<br /></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="background-color: black;"></span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">I always want to know about the Why Now Moment. What made you want to, need to write this astonishing memoir?</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">I was rudderless in my grief. For months, all I could do
was flop from one surface to another and cry. I cried so much that I had to see
an eye doctor because my eyes kept forming raw blisters from all the salt. The
only thing that made me feel barely alive was writing on my blog where I could
grieve out loud and feel connected, for as long as it took to craft and publish
a post, to my readers and to Caitlin herself. Early on, readers suggested I
write a book, an impossible idea. But nine months after Caitlin’s passing, my
husband and I were walking around Walden Pond. It was our wedding anniversary,
and the fact of “nine months” felt significant. I made my decision there, on one
of Thoreau’s woodland paths. I needed purpose in my life, and if writing our
story was going to inspire and help people, I wanted to do it. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">As soon as I made the decision, I knew it would be
important to start right away, to write from inside real-time grief. Doing so
allowed me to document the personal transformation that happened, also in real
time, as I gave hard thought to who I was and what I believed in.</span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: red;">Little Matches is the perfect
title for this book because it represents all those little lights in the
darkness. What is more devastating than losing your child—and yet, you wrote
about it with such brave grace. Can you talk about this please?</span><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ohhhh… thank you. You know, Caitlin <i>lived</i> with such brave grace. She set an example, and the least I
could do was follow it. Also—since childhood I’ve been obsessed with the
passage of time, with knowing that our human lifetimes are just a blink. A part
of me might have always known what was coming for me, known I would have to
write about it. The author self inside always stands apart, observing and
preparing the words, doesn’t she? </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: red;">The structure of the novel,
emails, texts, drawings, is so intimate. Did you always know this would be the
structure?</span></span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">I initially pictured the project as a multi-media mosaic
of images and words, many of them Caitlin’s. When I began to write inside the limitations
of a physical book, I wanted to bring some of that mosaic feel into it. Little
Matches is in many ways co-written. Caitlin’s voice, in the form of emails and
texts, brought her into the narrative in a seamless, organic way. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: red;">What I loved so much about this
fierce, moving memoir is that out of great, raw pain, comes a kind of almost
mystical understanding. Now that this amazing memoir is out in the world,
what has changed for you?</span><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
</p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Yes... I think that’s what I love, too. All of the
questions that had idly preoccupied me in life, and in the fiction I had
published, became critical. It wasn’t enough to ruminate anymore. I needed answers
to the big life questions. It was the only way I could think of to continue to
exist. What changed for me was that I came to discover what it is I believe in,
and to know that my path forward has a lot to do with those beliefs. The
feedback I am getting from readers is incredibly heartening. The fact that this
book could make a woman quit her dead-end job and fly out west to visit an old
friend to “take time for what’s important?” That it could reconcile a mother
and daughter? What’s better than that?<span> </span></span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: red;">What’s obsessing you now and why?</span>
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">Hah. I’m really working at <i>not</i> obsessing about anything, especially <i>Little Matches</i>. This book is so important to me, and I want the
world to know about it and yet, so much of publishing is out of our control in
this noisy world, as you know. So I’m working at not making myself anxious over
what I cannot control. I’ve been focusing on <i>what do I truly want now? How do I want to live the rest of my life</i>?<span> </span>I do know one thing: that my focus word
moving forward after writing this book has been <i>tranquility</i>. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span> </span></span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: red;">What question didn’t I ask that I
should have?</span></span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;">I would love to encourage everyone to think about their
own life stories and how they might be told. I will be doing some legacy
workshops, listed on my website, where I offer tips on conducting a life
interview with a loved one or with oneself. Self-reflection, thinking about
purpose and what gives your life meaning––it’s all so important. Giving ruminative
thought to the overall arc of one’s life, acknowledging that it <i>will </i>one day end, is a valuable way to
figure out whether you’re on the life path that your inner self knows is right.</span></span></p>
<p><style>@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:swiss;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}@font-face
{font-family:"Avenir Book";
panose-1:2 0 5 3 2 0 0 2 0 3;
mso-font-alt:Avenir;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-2147483473 1342185546 0 0 155 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Avenir Book";
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}p.MsoNoSpacing, li.MsoNoSpacing, div.MsoNoSpacing
{mso-style-priority:1;
mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Avenir Book";
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-family:"Avenir Book";
mso-ascii-font-family:"Avenir Book";
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:"Avenir Book";}div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-91839402386475991052021-04-29T12:20:00.002-07:002021-04-29T12:20:52.096-07:00I recommend the FALLING WOMAN, coming in paperback! It's got airplanes! A crash! A mystery! A stunning debut from Richard Farrell<p><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">“<span style="background: white;">A </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWiml9EGR6l4Qznz9qcN7x825P8qIC1ZobhcS40eINQ1HwV_ScJ2GnvN7gB6vq0fjG5Qxov4whb7yf3_tr2Pw8Dg9AtBpr9IRcZNo3HWPcNLm1truPQnNK-rFfu9z4g9Uv1mN92K99CpI/s1080/The+Falling+woman+instagram.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWiml9EGR6l4Qznz9qcN7x825P8qIC1ZobhcS40eINQ1HwV_ScJ2GnvN7gB6vq0fjG5Qxov4whb7yf3_tr2Pw8Dg9AtBpr9IRcZNo3HWPcNLm1truPQnNK-rFfu9z4g9Uv1mN92K99CpI/s320/The+Falling+woman+instagram.png" /></a></div><br />" A skillfully written story of hope, love, and
regret” (<i>Library Journal)<br /></i><p></p><p><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><span style="background: white;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
</p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">“[A]
mind-rattling debut mystery… Page after page, Farrell builds confusion and
frustration into an incendiary debate between belief in the miraculous and the
basic laws of physics… When he finally discovers the truth, what Charlie does
with it will make for an explosive discussion long after the final chapter.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">— Shelf Awareness</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;">If you're like me, airplanes terrifying you. You have talismans and you do a whole lot of magic thinking. But if you're also like me, you feel the need to habituate yourself to the fear and turn it into exhilaration. That's the way I felt reading Richard Farrell's astonishing debut, THE FALLING WOMAN, which I think you should pre-order right away. It's coming in paperback from Algonquin Books in May! And that is SOON!</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br />What if you were the sole survivor of a terrible plane crash? And what if you became a media sensation and then you vanished? Only one man knows the truth of your story--and how it could destroy you.</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br />Come on, you know you are dying to read this, right?<br /><br /><br />Warmly,<br />Caroline<br /></span></b></p>
<p><style>@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;}div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4396875931357506685.post-20653228478140989712021-04-28T11:54:00.003-07:002021-04-28T11:54:13.547-07:00How do we get over abuse? Jeannine Ouelette talks about THE PART THAT BURNS (great title, right?), listening to your body, writing and so much more.<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkPmF9grP-lwG-r_EYIiCDNPzV_U_6AwKeWZsZ3vckLTHny0fDofFcIMa3TWZHTK3QBxvWEza9_wVerAt7Ct3yeAYTD8BXm5aMcwMNKI5MzGN3uYH0OCf8WxQsCmAqqDjlc16hA7MUMRA/s1172/Screen+Shot+2021-04-28+at+2.50.14+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1172" data-original-width="1150" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkPmF9grP-lwG-r_EYIiCDNPzV_U_6AwKeWZsZ3vckLTHny0fDofFcIMa3TWZHTK3QBxvWEza9_wVerAt7Ct3yeAYTD8BXm5aMcwMNKI5MzGN3uYH0OCf8WxQsCmAqqDjlc16hA7MUMRA/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-04-28+at+2.50.14+PM.png" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-L9S1lpQB2HfOpQqmLwKX7ir7SMMoEYDrl5rx6Y7L92T37I7ziAQZGzI1h8Tk3omzTfiYYgkepQYkRIXlvGOf1CfPKZKIYRps1GpHDTNwRULT68KHWhSIXRj_zslW2UM7pVebe0CrXag/s1804/Screen+Shot+2021-04-28+at+2.50.57+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1804" data-original-width="1186" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-L9S1lpQB2HfOpQqmLwKX7ir7SMMoEYDrl5rx6Y7L92T37I7ziAQZGzI1h8Tk3omzTfiYYgkepQYkRIXlvGOf1CfPKZKIYRps1GpHDTNwRULT68KHWhSIXRj_zslW2UM7pVebe0CrXag/s320/Screen+Shot+2021-04-28+at+2.50.57+PM.png" /></a></div><i><br /></i><p></p><p><i> First take a look at these knockout blurbs! <br /></i></p><p class="sqsrte-large" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><strong><em>Simply beautiful … precisely imagined, poetically structured, compelling, and vivid</em>. —Joyce Carol Oates </strong></i></p><p class="sqsrte-large" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><strong><em>I love this book and am grateful it is in the world.</em>—Dorothy Allison</strong></i></p><p class="" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><em><strong> </strong><strong></strong>Jeannine Ouellette is the author of the memoir <a href="https://www.splitlippress.com/the-part-that-burns"><em>The Part That Burns</em> (Split/Lip Press, 2021)</a>, the children’s book Mama Moon, and several educational titles. Her stories and essays have appeared widely, and her work has been supported with fellowships from Millay Colony for the Arts and Brush Creek Foundation. She is the recipient of a Margarita Donnelly Prize, Curt Johnson Fiction Award, Proximity Essay Award, Masters Review Emerging Writer's Award, two recent Pushcart nominations, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Medill School of Journalism. She's working on her first novel--and we cannot wait! Thank you for being here Jeannine!</em></p><p class="" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><em> </em></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I always want to know
what was haunting a writer into writing a particular book right now. </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> haunted—and I
love that idea of being haunted by a book, because haunting is powerful
concept, one I believe in on multiple levels—but, yes, I was haunted into
writing this book. I was haunted by memories of sagebrush and tumbleweeds,
hours alone in the shadow of the foothills of Casper Mountain. Haunted, too, by
the hours I spent by myself in the almost two dozen houses and apartments I grew
up in, including foster homes. I was haunted by my past selves, the little girl
with the greasy hair hiding under the lilac bush and waiting for its branches
to open up into some new version of Narnia, just for me. Haunted by the
basements I slept in, and the friends I lied to. Haunted by choices I made
because I didn’t know there were other choices. Haunted, maybe most of all, by
the person I was when I first became a mother at age 22, which indeed was like
stumbling into some new Narnia, one just as magical but also as dangerous as
the one C.S. Lewis imagined so vividly all those years ago. <br />
<br />
This book has haunted me since I was a teenager—and I am 53 now. By age twenty,
I was writing about this book in my journal, saying, “I don't feel like I am
saying what I am trying to say. How can that be? I don't know. I do think I am
about ready to write my book, but I can't find the right place to begin.” That
makes sense now, of course, that I couldn’t find the right place to begin—how
could I have? It’s too awful, really, to think about a grown man, one placed in
a position of trust—I’m referring to my stepfather, Mafia—molesting me as a
four-year-old child, then continuing that molestation for years. When I was a
new adult, finally free—or, so I thought—what I wanted was to convey the
enormity of this terrible injustice, this primal wound. But I had neither the
life experience nor the skills to convey it effectively. <br />
<br />
In my twenties and thirties, I was still very much in the middle of it, even
though my stepfather had disappeared from the picture years ago by then, having
left when I was ten. But the things he did to me (and his abuse of my mother,
too, and her subsequent breakdowns) cast a long shadow. I couldn’t write this
book until I had made sense of my own story, and that didn’t happen until
enough of it was behind me. I had to have some perspective in order to
synthesize real meaning from the things I experienced, and the person I became
as a result of those experiences. That process of synthesis, that window into
meaning, started opening for me in my early forties, after I’d been safely in
my second marriage for a decade. From there, it took yet another decade to see
the book into print. And what a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">relief</i>
that has been. It’s not that my stepfather’s abuse was a secret—I have not hidden
his pedophilia for a very long time. <br />
<br />
That’s a shame I have long refused to carry for him. But, confiding in people
close to me is not the same as sending a whole book out into the wide world for
anyone to see. A book represents real exposure, extreme vulnerability. I was caught
off guard by tsunami of fear that hit me during the weeks right before and
after my pub date. I was a wreck. But, I was also ready on some level to simply
sit with that fear, let the waves pass over me at their own speed, while going
about my business and doing what needed to be done, not only in service of the
book, but also in service of my life. I expected to come up for air eventually,
and I have.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">I absolutely love the
structure of this book, where brilliant fragments make up a whole. How and why
did you decide on this structure and what were the surprises of writing like
this?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br />
I tried so many different structures! And I was told by a few agents that I
needed a more traditional narrative arc. Which I eventually tried and failed to
execute—it just didn’t work for this book. But I’m fascinated by structure, and
ultimately have some qualms with the idea that the traditional narrative arc is
the only effective structure for storytelling. The traditional arc is very
Western, and very masculine. I love the book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative</i>, by Jane
Allison. She does a fantastic job of unpacking and challenging some mythology
around narrative form. After explaining how the “…arc really is the perfect expression
of tragedy as Aristotle saw it,” she reminds us that not all fiction (or, I
would add here, creative nonfiction) is tragedy, and she asks why we should
therefore insist on the same arc for all stories. Finally, and hilariously, she
acknowledges the “irksome sexual aspect” by quoting critic Robert Scholes, who
said, “The archetype for all fiction is the sexual act….For what connects all
fiction—and music—is the fundamental orgiastic rhythm and tumescence and
detumescence, of tension and resolution, of intensification to the point of
climax and consummation. In the sophisticated forms of fiction, as in the
sophisticated practice of sex, much of the art consists of delaying climax
within the framework of desire in order to prolong the pleasurable act itself.”
Allison writes, then: “Well. Is this how I experience sex? It is not.” Which
made me laugh out loud. <br />
<br />
The point being, though, not all stories are best served by the traditional
narrative arc. I tried stuffing mine into one—or, more accurately, stretching
it out it into one, because the traditionally linear version was fictionalized
and almost twice as long—but, as I said, it really didn’t work. The arc diluted
its power in a number of important ways. Whereas working with fragments seemed
to have an amplifying effect. The fragments reflect and refract off one
another. Fragments allowed me to tell and retell the central conflict in ways
that mirrored the narrator’s shifting understanding of her own experience in different
eras of her life. She is in fact constantly revising her relationship to her
past as she becomes both clearer about what was done to her, and more embodied.
Embodiment, for her, is a double-edged sword. She wants the right to live in
her body, a right that was violated by her stepfather. But in order to live in
her body, she has to feel a lot of painful old wounds that have long hummed
quietly under a very numbed exterior. It’s a conundrum, and the fragmented form
allows that conundrum to unfold organically and elliptically, as it did in real
life. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Our society puts so
much that is really fable onto motherhood and family. You imagined being a
mother might heal the trauma of your past, but instead, it created something
very different. Can you talk about this please?</b> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What a fantastic question. I address this tangentially in
the second chapter, “Tumbleweeds,” under the last heading, “Mother (Mater)”
because this dichotomy of maternal expectation versus reality, which eventually
evolved for me into a paradox, was so stark. It was simply crucial for me to
reckon with that paradox in order to become a whole human being. And it was
paradoxical, because, first and foremost, I loved being a mom of little kids, I
loved being home with them, it suited my needs and desires and temperament. I
did find it genuinely healing in fundamental ways. This remains true with my
grandchildren—being with them, they are three, two, one, and 9 months now—and caring
for them and showering them with love has been a balm like none other during
this pandemic in terms of heart-healing powers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But being a very young mother to three
children ages five and under was also quite hard, as anyone can imagine it
would be. Not only because the processes of pregnancy, natural childbirth, and
breastfeeding catapulted me back into my body in ways I could never have
foreseen, bringing up all kinds of very painful cellular memories I’d
repressed. It was like, once I was in my body again, I couldn’t turn off
sensation at will as I’d always been able to do. Suddenly, I had no defense
mechanisms for all the sensations I didn’t want—especially sex that didn’t feel
good. <br />
<br />
Prior to motherhood, I had accepted whatever kind of sex my partner wanted and
that was fine, whether I liked it or not. After motherhood, no more. I
couldn’t, once I was embodied again, say yes to sex when my body was saying no,
no, I don’t like the feeling of this. Suddenly, my own sexual needs,
preferences, and desires had to matter, and that was a foreign and frightening
new terrain. Also, like all moms, I’d find myself sleep deprived and impatient.
I’d find myself crying. In the worst cases, I’d find myself throwing a book or
toy, which was how I dealt with overwhelm instead of turning that anger on
three little kids. I can count those times on one hand, but, still, they count.
To discover that I was not and could never be perfect as a mother was
grotesquely painful. Being imperfect as a child or a human was one thing, but being
imperfect as a mother felt akin to being a monster. I think that’s reinforced,
too, in our patriarchal, misogynist culture, where everything is the mother’s
fault. Even some readers of my memoir get angry that the narrator forgives her own
mother. I understand that reaction—my mother did some extreme things. Making me
sleep in the basement, kicking me out of the family repeatedly. She had a
terrible temper and often directed it toward me. But she was a product, too, of
systemic inequalities and injustices as well as personal traumas that
absolutely contributed to her challenges. I don’t think there’s really been a
time when I’ve not wanted to be in a state of forgiveness for my mom—who, by
the way, has been quite supportive of this book. But, for my younger self,
mourning the futile notion of perfect motherhood was utterly grueling. I bought
wholesale into the patriarchal myth of motherhood. One hundred percent. <br />
<br />
I had a fairy tale notion about motherhood and family and wanted to believe I
could protect my children from all threats—environmental threats, social
threats, and, of course, my own imperfections. None of this proved possible. I
soon learned that there are microparticles of plastic in our waters, endocrine
disrupting chemicals that enter your body through your skin. Even a whole-house
water purifier can’t adequately protect us from those chemicals, but that never
mattered anyway because we could not have afforded one of those! Besides, there
would still be air and food—neither of which are pure. And of course, there was
still myself, my grossly imperfect self to contend with. It took a long time to
believe that I was good enough. It took even longer to believe—not just know,
but truly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">believe</i>—that being
imperfect is not the same as being abusive. Once I started believing and
accepting that, I was able to start healing my own trauma, starting with the
childhood trauma of sexual abuse. That’s where the paradox comes in. That is, I
found it was only though the challenge of accepting and appreciating myself as
a mother despite my imperfection that I could begin to also accept and
appreciate the other imperfect parts of myself that were broken in childhood.
The paradox of motherhood, in that way, really was my doorway to healing—just
not the way I had wanted and expected it to be. I thought being a perfect mom
would be the healing, when in fact it was the opposite: accepting my inevitable
imperfection was the elixir I needed all along, and motherhood catalyzed and
supercharged that process—demanded it, in fact.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oh, and about the
cover and the title, both of which I love, love, love. Did you have input in
the cover? It's spectacular. </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I did! The art came from Kelly Popoff, a painter I was in
residence with at Millay Colony during the summer of 2018. Her work is
phenomenal. As we became friends during our time together at Millay, we got to
know each other’s back stories and the questions and passions we were each
exploring—her on the canvas, and me on the page. We found so much resonance in our
work in terms of motherhood, family, early wounds, and the long path of
becoming. She was the first person I thought of when it came time to talk about
covers, and Split/Lip was totally on board with me bringing Kelly in as the
artist. She came up with so many sketches and prototypes for cover art! It was
an incredible process because for one thing, Kelly is an artist, not an
illustrator, so it was very organic and not under my direction, or Split/Lip’s
direction. I gave Kelly the manuscript and told her about themes, including the
house explosion my mom lived through, among other things, but the images she
came up with were so diverse and incredible. I loved so many of them that the
process of choosing just one was outrageously difficult. But this really was
the one. It captures something in its simplicity. It’s childlike, but also
complex. The tape was my idea. I saw a book cover I loved, it was an art book,
that used tape in a way somewhat similar to this, but not as messy. The messy
version is right for my book, though, in the way it captures, as does the askew
house, something essential in this fragmented story. David Wojciechowski, he’s
the cover designer, did an incredible job. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">And I know titles
tend to be marketing decisions, but I saw yours and thought: damn, I wish I had
thought of that title!</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thank you! I’m so glad you like it. And the thing is, Split/Lip
is quite small, and things work a little differently there as compared to big
publishers. In my case, I submitted the manuscript as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Part That Burns</i> after giving an obsessive amount of thought to
the title, and they never asked me to consider changing it. Of course, being
obsessive, I did consider changing it, anyway. Of course I did. But in the end,
I felt it was the right title, because of the way it hits the heart-center of
the book, which is to say, the things that hurt us most are also, sometimes,
the things that make us the best parts of who we are. I know that in my case I
have an extraordinary amount of empathy and compassion grounded in trauma. I
don’t think people should have to experience trauma to become exceptionally empathic
and compassionate, but trauma can have that effect. For me, it did. I feel,
too, that my love of language, my imagination, and my little bit of
clairvoyance (which is sometimes quite a lot of clairvoyance) is grounded in
those early life experiences that drove me out of my body. I am glad, oh so
very glad, to be back in my body now, but had I never left it, I may not have
developed these other capacities. I can’t know all of those things, or any of
them, with certainty. But I know that when I was working on this project and
writing the birth scene about my middle child, my son, and those lines spilled
out—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I am the part that burns</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the part that burns is the part that glows</i>—something
just clicked. This is the scene where the narrator is whirling through the
painful but hypnotic trance of labor, that tunnel of darkness, realizing that
her body is slipping back into her body just as a brand-new human’s body is
slipping out of her, and there’s an integration that happens in that moment.
That integration is, for me, deeply connected to the heart and soul of this
book. Thus, the title! </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br />
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What’s obsessing you now and why?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I am obsessing hard on my next book, which is fiction, and
so fun to be engaged with! It’s completely, wildly, crazily different from my
memoir. It takes place in a kind of near future, pre-apocalyptic world in which
the population has decreased dramatically and the boundaries between cities and
natural areas have degraded significantly, leading humans and animals to have
closer and more frequent encounters with one another. In this context, I want
to explore questions about love, fear, and even tribalism. I want to explore
the thin line between humans and animals in terms of our behavior around both
devotion and survival. What I want, in a sense, is to explore the whole idea of
our animal natures—humans are animals, of course—and the fragility of our human
control, while also looking at the complex interior lives of animals. In other
words, where, really, do the boundaries begin and end? I have a loose plot
going, but can’t really say more about it, except that there are coyotes, and
coyotes and their pack structures are amazing. The smallest amount of research
is already blowing my mind. <br />
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What question didn’t I ask that I should
have?</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Oh boy, you asked such great questions! So, I would mainly say
thank you, thank you, thank you for giving time, space, and attention to my
book. It’s a tough, tough road to launch a book during a pandemic. You’ve done
so much to help so many writers. The statistics around pandemic books are
abysmal, according to a recent write-up in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
New York Times</i>. In 2020, a full 98% of books published sold fewer than 5000
copies. And that doesn’t even account for the impact on tiny presses like
Split/Lip, where 5000 would be actually be a damn good run. So, you work your
whole life on a book, and then have to cast it out to sea in this kind of
storm, where it’s just going to get tossed around on the waves for about three
and a half minutes before sinking forever. That’s the sad story for small and
tiny presses along with independent bookstores, all of which suffered
especially hard last year, to the point where most indie bookstores simply lost
money. A lot of people are worried about the future of independent publishing
and what will happen to the diversity of voices and stories that indie presses
and bookstores support. In the end, it’s huge—it’s immeasurably valuable—that
literary champions like you make space for smaller books from smaller presses
in this dismal publishing landscape. I personally have a lot of catching up to
do in terms of how to be an incredible literary citizen who boosts other
writers and their books, and people like you light the way. You have no idea
how much it means. </p>
<p><style>@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:roman;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:swiss;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073732485 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-unhide:no;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;}.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
mso-default-props:yes;
font-size:10.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;
mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;}div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Carolinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02724359857107668407noreply@blogger.com0