Q&A with Ruth Spiro

  

Photo by Robin Subar

 

 

Ruth Spiro is the author of the new children's board book Baby Loves Robotics!. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Baby Loves Science board book series, which now includes 26 books. Spiro lives in Chicago. 

 

Q: You’ve said that in coming up with the Baby Loves Science books, you didn't set out to teach science to babies. Can you say more about that?

 

A: Babies and toddlers are natural scientists in that they learn by exploring the world around them to find out how things work. Research shows that even in the first year of life, babies can make and test predictions. As an example, repeatedly dropping a toy to watch it fall.

 

In creating the Baby Loves Science books my goal is to encourage this natural sense of wonder, introduce new and accurate vocabulary, and help parents and caregivers turn everyday experiences into fun learning opportunities.

 

Q: How did you come up with the ideas for Baby Loves Robotics!, the new book in the series?

 

A: As with all of the Baby Loves Science books, I begin with a common childhood experience or observation and then introduce the science behind it. Robotics felt like the most logical topic to cover next because robots are fascinating to both kids and adults and seem to be increasingly present all around us.

 

Q: How do you research the books, and have you learned anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I usually begin my research by reading as much as I can about the topic, both online and in books. Each Baby Loves Science book is reviewed by an expert in the field for accuracy, both the text and the illustrations. I’ll often consult with my chosen expert during the writing and revision process as well, just to make sure I’m on the right path.

 

In Baby Loves Robotics I was surprised to learn that all robots follow the same basic “sense, compute, act” cycle, and also how often we interact with them throughout our day!

 

Q: How would you describe the impact of the series over 10 years?

 

A: When I wrote the first Baby Loves Science books, I never imagined that 10 years later there would be 26 titles in the series. Throughout the years parents have tagged me in social media photos of their children with my books – even on the potty!

 

Amazingly, I’ve kept in touch with some of these parents, watching their children grow and develop through the photos they continue to post. Knowing that my books are being enjoyed in homes worldwide is truly rewarding.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: A few years ago, we began receiving requests from parents and educators for the “next step,” books for readers of Baby Loves Science who had outgrown the board book stage.

 

I worked with my editor at Charlesbridge to develop a picture book series, How to Explain Science to a Grown-Up. These are designed for the early elementary level with additional content, diagrams, and backmatter.

 

As of this writing there are four books in that series: How to Explain Coding to a Grown-Up, How to Explain Robotics to a Grown-Up, How to Explain Climate Science to a Grown-Up, and How to Explain Aerospace Engineering to a Grown-Up. There’s a fifth title in the works and I hope to announce the topic sometime soon.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I have another new picture book that I’m proud of, Growing Together (HarperCollins). It takes place in an urban community garden and is a celebration of community, while introducing readers to the variety of fruits and vegetables that gardeners commonly grow.

 

I’d also like to share the names of the talented artists who illustrate these books: Growing Together is illustrated by Paola Escobar, How to Explain Science to a Grown-Up is illustrated by Teresa Martinez, and the Baby Loves Science series is illustrated by Irene Chan, Kat Uno, and Greg Paprocki.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Ruth Spiro. 

Q&A with Irene Zabytko

  

 

 

Irene Zabytko is the author of the new novel The Days of Miracle and Wonder. Her other books include The Sky Unwashed. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Days of Miracle and Wonder?

 

A: My fiction is always based on Ukrainian themes. I’ve written a novel about the villagers who return to their homes in Chornobyl (Ukrainian transliteration), and a collection of short stories based on my Ukrainian neighborhood in Chicago.

 

For The Days of Miracle and Wonder, I wanted to write about the post-Soviet days when Ukraine became independent and yet still unsure of how to navigate nation-building while dealing with economic and political uncertainties while reclaiming their cultural identity apart from Russia or the Soviet Union.

 

I witnessed much of this when I was in Ukraine in 1992 as a volunteer teaching English to Ukrainians. For most of my students, I was their first live American. It was also the year where I also took a very long bus ride to the Carpathians, which was inspiration for some of the scenes in the book.

 

Q: How would you describe the book’s relationship to The Canterbury Tales?

 

A: The structure is similar in that the travelers in my book are on a pilgrimage to witness the site of a miracle in the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine, although not everyone on the bus ride is religious. My characters are identified by their professions, again similar to Chaucer’s. 

 

I always admired how he structured his Tales by exhibiting a group of people collectively thrown together to share stories along with their comments about the stories (and of each other) in between the storytelling. I thought that was genius when I first read The Canterbury Tales.

 

But my stories take place at a different historical time period and in a different country and so the concerns and issues of my characters don’t resemble Chaucer’s. And also unlike Chaucer, I didn’t write in verse. That was beyond my writing skills.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: It’s a line taken from the Paul Simon song “The Boy in the Bubble.” I always thought it was both hopeful and cynical especially if you listen closely to his song lyrics. And I thought it was appropriate in regard to the stories my characters share. They’ve lived through so much history which they view in both those ways.

 

Q: The author Helen Fremont said of you and the book, “Through her characters’ stories, she reveals in striking detail the harsh reality of life in Ukraine over the past half century...” What do you think of that assessment?

 

A: It’s accurate. Look at what’s happening in Ukraine now with Russia’s brutal, unnecessary war. Russians are killing and displacing Ukrainians, stealing their children, torturing civilians and POWs and terrorizing cities and villages with thousands of missiles and drones that are attacking Ukraine.

 

If you go further back in Ukraine’s history, and not the usual Russo-centric versions, you can understand what Ukraine has been through: the Holodomor (Famine of 1932-33), the nuclear disaster at Chornobyl, the murders of The Heavenly Hundred who were the protesting martyrs during the Revolution of Dignity, the Soviet Dissidents who were mostly writers and other intellectuals sent to gulags and psychiatric prisons.

 

This is Russia’s persistent genocide even during tsarist times that has been inflicted deliberately on Ukraine long before the current war in trying to annihilate the Ukrainian people and their culture, history, and autonomy.

 

But it’s also what makes Ukrainians stronger and more determined to be Ukrainian on their own terms.

 

Again, let’s look at this war that started on February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine—actually another invasion because they criminally claimed parts of the Donbas and annexed Crimea in 2014 and Ukraine was fighting them since that time.

 

But when the “full scale operation” as Russia called it, occurred in 2022, everyone, even President Biden, thought that Russia would walk in and take over Kyiv and all of Ukraine in three days.

 

The war is now going on for five long years, and Russia barely captured a few kilometers while bombing and destroying hospitals, orphanages, schools, cafes, apartments, and other civilian targets—which the Ukrainian Armed Forces will not do in retaliation on Russian civilians.

 

Because of the war, the brilliant brave Ukrainians had to adapt to new warfare methods, and now Ukraine is the number one innovator of drone warfare and robotics for frontline combat.

 

Ukrainians are not going to go away or give up especially to Russian brutality, and they will fight for their country. And their resilience and bravery are also what I wanted to emphasize in this book.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m writing a ghost story, and it takes place in many parts of the world. A big section will occur in current wartime Ukraine. Lots of ghosts there still, unfortunately.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The Days of Miracle and Wonder is about Ukrainians in Ukraine, but it’s also a universal book about humans making sense of an illogical, bewildering government system they were forced under while trying to maintain their humanity, sanity, dignity, and yes, humor too. The themes are universal and I believe very relevant for our times.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with S.L. Jacobs

  

 

 

S.L. Jacobs is the author of the new novel Public Comment. She is a retired lawyer and also is a writer, director, and performer in community theater.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write Public Comment, and how did you create your character Debra Wolfson?

 

A: As with most kinds of satire, Public Comment was “inspired” by my outrage and grief at the direction our nation is heading and, at the same time, by the tender and sincere intimacy of small-town governance.

 

The reader knows from the first line (which won a First Line Contest at Write By Night in NYC) that Wendell is a murderer, and it isn’t long before the reader also knows that he will do anything to keep the bodies well-buried on the golf course where he is a grounds guy.

 

But the only way he can keep his murderous secrets hidden “in perpetuity” is to run for first selectman (mayor) of the little town which owns the golf course property. How does a chaotic, narcissistic, and fraudulent leader “govern” in a small town unused to life-and-death controversy over what to do with a bankrupt golf course?

 

Enter Debra Wolfson. Like Debra, I have a decades-long history as a lawyer, mediator, civic volunteer, elected and appointed official, and political partisan, so Debra and I know each other very well. But, assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, I am not Debra.

 

Ironically, early drafts cast Debra as a minor character. She appeared only toward the end of the book and had little role to play. I was encouraged to bring her forward and expand her role, her character and, most importantly, her interaction with Wendell.

 

She drove the story in ways that I hadn’t even imagined when I first started writing. Specifically, I embraced the contrast of the satiric treatment of Wendell with the gentle tongue-in-cheek treatment of Debra, the small-town dramas, and the cozy genre itself.

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The title was never in doubt, and I am delighted that not a single beta reader, editor, press, publisher, or relative has ever suggested that I change it. 

 

At its most elemental level, “public comment’ is a legally required agenda item at nearly every kind of public municipal meeting. As an active civic participant in my community, I have sat through hundreds of hours of “public comment.” Any member of the public is permitted to speak on any topic, subject to rarely enforced time limits.

 

At its most elevated level, it is an essential component of democracy and, for my purposes, is a metaphor for every vulnerable and fragile institution in our nation which can all too easily be hijacked for political and destructive purposes. 

 

In the real world, it is often inadvertently hilarious, occasionally tearful, sometimes angry, sometimes even praiseworthy, rarely brief, and very tender.

 

Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I knew the ending, just as I knew the beginning, but that pesky middle can become a muddle. I have to say, though, that I loved playing with the possibilities, adding dialogue, changing up a plot line, honing the humor and satiric elements with nutty thoughts that came up in the middle of the night.

 

But, no surprise, over the course of writing Public Comment, the story took winding twists and turns along plots lines and secondary characters. Early versions were from Wendell’s point of view, then rewritten in first person to accommodate Debra’s point of view, then landing, ultimately, in third person, but third person close, so the narrative voice is perched on Debra’s shoulder. 

 

I did, however, manage to maintain two structural imperatives. First, there had to be 18 chapters, because a golf course has 18 holes. That might sound silly, but it gave me structure. Second, I placed the story in the late 1980s, allowing me to incorporate incipient technology, as needed, into Wendell and Debra’s worlds, while also avoiding the dominance of screens in daily life.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: There is little question that Public Comment is a genre cocktail, mixing a politically satiric base with elements of a cozy mystery, all with a bit of salt on the rim. 

 

That creates a bundle of expectations, but I hope readers will find parallels with our daily news cycle and will discover something a little more mysterious and foreboding than just murder in a small town.

 

I hope that readers also take away a renewed faith in the capacity of democracy to work. 

 

Those lofty aspirations are accompanied by my hope that readers laugh!

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Debra Wolfson is still going! She is caught up in hilarious criminal mischief committed while her synagogue’s Community Theater wing is workshopping a play. This involves blackmail complications at the costume shop, cult-driven coercion, and a possible murder at a nearby church, involving a scarecrow and moose antlers. The sequel is in progress and is tentatively entitled One Part at a Time. 

 

There will likely be a third installment, as well, where Debra gets caught up in chicanery and bean sprouts at her local CSA farm.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: As a first-time author (and a very senior citizen), I am particularly proud of the fact that my debut novel found a publisher and that Public Comment is, itself, public comment, written in dissent and protest!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Michael S.A. Graziano

  

 

 

Michael S.A. Graziano is the author of the new novel Love. His many other books include The Divine Farce. He is also a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Princeton University, and he lives in Princeton, New Jersey. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Love?

 

A: It can be hard to figure out what inspired a story. Sometimes, I start five or six stories as experiments, and only one of them catches fire and makes me want to finish it.

 

In this case, though, the inspiration is much more straightforward. I did a little experiment on myself, trying to learn how to draw portrait using pencil and paper. For three years I practiced every day, and was surprised by how much progress I made.

 

That experience, obsessing over drawing, even dreaming at night about putting graphite to paper and capturing facial expressions, turned into the story Love.

 

I realized that to draw a face, you have to love it. You have to wonder who the person is, what's going on inside his or her mind. Drawing is an act of love — but at the same time, it distances you from the person you're drawing. That was the core of the story. I wanted to write about that experience, and the rest emerged from that initial feeling.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between your two characters?

 

A: The two characters in the story, the man and the woman, are definitely different aspects of myself. And as opposite as they are, they're also kind of the same person. I like that tension between their similarity and their contrast. The starving artist and the business mogul.

 

To make the point, imagine a sad, bored, middle-class person, with no adventure and no autonomy and no purpose in life and no hope anymore. That, you might say, is the third character in the story.

 

Now imagine that person fantasizes about being someone else. What might those fantasy roles look like? A romanticized starving artist? A powerful business leader? They both represent escape. They both represent self-determination. I think that's why those two characters work so well together. They understand each other at some level.

 

But the artist, being an artist, turns his girlfriend into an art project. And the business leader, being a business woman, turns her boyfriend into a financial project. That's probably not healthy for either of them.

 

Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: My stories are typically so rewritten and so rethought that there is no easy answer to how it evolved. When I first started writing down notes, I didn't know where it would go.

 

But once I understood the larger picture, I could write the whole thing. Certainly, when the opening sentences were written, the ending was already in mind. The story, at a deeper level, is all about the question: who is the artist and who is the art? The very beginning is obsessed with that question as is the end.

 

But art is love. It isn't some intellectual or elitist thing. It's falling in love. All esthetic joy in the world comes from falling in love. So the title is apt: the story is literally about love. And I knew that from the very beginning of the story.

 

Q: You write fiction and also neuroscience books--do you see any overlap between the two?

 

A: Writing any kind of book requires a narrative structure, so a lot of the problem-solving is the same, regardless of the topic. And maybe my work in psychology has influenced the way I understand people, and therefore the way I write characters.

 

But I don't think there's a direct connection between my science and my fiction. Sometimes I'm more inspired by the science, sometimes more by the fiction. These days, I find more of a connection to the fiction.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I always have a very large number of projects going on at the same time, and then survival of the fittest kicks in.

 

 Right now, I've got a book of short stories that I'm very excited about. In an age when AI is taking over writing, and fewer and fewer people understand what it means for an actual human to practice and develop the skill of putting words together, I'd like to publish a book showing how my stories evolved from the age of 11 to adulthood. I think that's valuable. 

 

I also have some science books in various stages of development. But we'll see what comes out. 

 

You know how sharks are supposed to die when they stop moving? (Probably a myth.) I think writers die when they stop writing. So I'm always writing, and most of my books never get published. At least half of my books have never been read by anyone other than myself. That's probably how it should be!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

April 17

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
April 17, 1897: Thornton Wilder born.

Q&A with Luke Goebel

  

 

Luke Goebel is the author of the new novel Kill Dick. He also has written the novel Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours, and is a screenwriter, producer, and publisher. He lives in Los Angeles. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Kill Dick, and how did you create your characters Susie and Peter?

 

A: Kill Dick grew out of grief, anger, and a fascination with how power moves through American life—especially in a place like Los Angeles where luxury and devastation sit right next to each other.

 

My only brother died of an OxyContin overdose. Long before that I had my own relationship with drugs. I broke my femur when I was 12 and was given morphine, and in some ways that was the beginning of a long struggle with addiction. For years I was an addict and an alcoholic. I’m sober now.

 

Those experiences—loss, survival, the strange mythology around opioids in America—are part of the emotional engine behind the book.

 

Susie and Peter came out of that world. Susie understands reality with a kind of ruthless clarity. She sees through power and through people who believe their own myths. Peter is someone who lives inside those myths.

 

I was interested in what happens when those two forces collide—when someone who believes in their story meets someone who refuses to play along.

 

Q: Kimberly King Parsons said of the book, “In bleak, beautiful prose, Luke Goebel weaves together a narrative that exposes the savage heart of privilege and power, raising questions about truth, memory, and the nature of storytelling itself.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I was incredibly honored by that. Kimberly is a writer I admire a lot, and she understands the emotional and moral terrain the book is exploring.

 

The novel is very interested in how stories are shaped by power—who gets believed, who gets erased, and how memory can become a weapon.

 

I also think of the book as being about obsession: obsession with status, with revenge, with art, and with the idea that telling the right story might redeem you. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it destroys you.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I knew the emotional destination but not the exact road to get there. I tend to write by discovery. I’ll follow characters into situations and see what they do. Over time the architecture of the book begins to reveal itself.

 

But the ending of Kill Dick changed many times. I printed the manuscript again and again, cutting sections, rearranging chapters, rewriting entire passages. Eventually the ending that remained was the one that felt both inevitable and unsettling—which is what I wanted the whole book to feel like.

 

Q: As a novelist and screenwriter, do you have a preference between the two?

 

A: They offer very different pleasures.

 

Writing a novel is solitary and almost mystical—you’re alone with the language and the characters for years, trying to build a world out of sentences.

 

Filmmaking is the opposite. It’s collaborative. One of the great privileges of working in film is getting to work with extraordinary actors, directors, producers, cinematographers, costume designers, hair and makeup artists—so many talented people who bring their own intelligence and craft to the project.

 

There’s something magical about seeing a story become an object in the world—something people can choose to watch on an airplane, on a cruise ship, at home on Netflix, or in a movie theater while eating popcorn. That transformation from script to shared experience is one of the most exciting things about the medium.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m developing several film and television projects while also working on another novel.

 

Lately I’ve been interested in stories that move between the literary world, Hollywood, and the strange economies of fame and influence that exist between them. Those spaces are full of ambition, illusion, and sometimes real danger, which makes them fertile ground for storytelling.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Only that I hope readers approach the book with curiosity. At its core Kill Dick is a story about storytelling itself—about who gets to shape reality, who gets believed, and what happens when someone refuses the narrative they’ve been handed.

 

I also hope it will spread a revolution of love and direct engagement with change and radical art.

 

I see films like One Battle After Another, and I see films like The Apprentice by Ali Abbasi, and I read the rare occasional work of fiction that actually takes aim at social change and a new awareness of the causes of the suffering of the disempowered rather than the singular story without examination of the larger forces and how to combat them, and I see the unveiling of what’s been hidden so long, and I pray to God we wake up.

 

Because this world isn’t just hurting because of Trump—which it is—or the rest of the worst offenders and the pedophiles and the mass murderers and destroyers at the top of the worst offending corporations—it’s also how we are all losing our humanity and kindness and love of life. Look for the real ones. And be one.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Gigi Berardi

  

 

 

Gigi Berardi is the author of the new novel Bianca's Cure. Her other books include FoodWISE. She teaches food and writing classes at Western Washington University. 

 

Q: Why did you decide to write a novel based on the life of Renaissance noblewoman Bianca Capello?

 

A: The story of Bianca Capello and the Medici family that she married into is full of secrecy, mystery, and alchemy—her story was intriguing to me. And that she came from a long line of Venetian women alchemists and herbalists.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you? 

 

A: I researched the book using professional journals (for example, The American Journal of Medicine, Mediterranean Historical Review, Disegno, The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, etc.), original manuscripts such as maps, and archived letters of Bianca Capello. I referenced my own experience of alchemy at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland.

 

What especially surprised me was that I had to throw away the first 100,000 words, written from the standpoint of Francesco, because the story read flat—it came alive when I became Bianca.

 

Q: What did you see as the right balance between fiction and history as you wrote the book?

 

A: That everything I wrote—from the standpoint of geography, historical facts, medicine, science, philosophy, mathematics, royal protocols, Renaissance norms, could be true, i.e., could have happened. Many editors for the book helped me maintain this sense of realism—and adventure.

 

Q: How would you describe the relationship between Bianca and Francesco de Medici?

 

A: Bianca remained devoted to Francesco, first, as his mistress for 15 years, then as his wife for another seven—sharing their love for each other, and of their alchemy. Bianca could be strategic in how she obtained Medici resources, but her love for Francesco was unshakable.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am researching monasteries in medieval and Renaissance times as physical and emotional structures/safe havens in which women could work.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Just that the book was selected as one of 31 titles for Women’s History month this March, in a curated list by Janis Daly.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb