Q&A with Ilan Stavans

  

 

 

Ilan Stavans is the editor of the new anthology A Nation Wrestles with God: American Prophets, Philosophers, and Firebrands. His many other books include Conversations on Dictionaries. He is the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. 

 

Q: What inspired you to edit A Nation Wrestles with God?

 

A: As a Mexican immigrant who is Jewish, I have been enthralled with the statement, in the United States Declaration of Independence, “Endowed by Their Creator.” What does it mean? The answer is manifold.

 

For starters, it is proof that this country began with an appeal to the divine. The Mayflower Compact bound a fledgling community into covenant “under God,” and the United States Declaration of Independence boldly proclaimed that human equality rests on rights “endowed by their Creator.”

 

It is now 250 years after that declaration. What sort of relationship, as a country made of people from all around the globe, do we have with God? Is there only one God Americans wrestle with depending on their religion, or are there many? Can a liberal democracy survive if one of these gods acquires supremacy over the others?

 

In other words, how did that daring invocation of God shape the American experiment? How have later generations wrestled with the promise and the contradictions at the heart of that founding appeal?

 

Through the voice of writers, politicians, scientists, poets, theologians, comedians, philosophers, religious leaders, and cartoonists as diverse as Thomas Jefferson, Cotton Mather, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Merton, Malcolm X, Albert Einstein, Isaac Bashevis Singer, James Baldwin, Tony Kushner, Anne Lamott, and more, the volume explore the role of the divine in America’s moral language, political ideals, and cultural imagination. 

 

What does it mean for a nation to ground its freedom in a creator? How have ideas of the divine and sacred inspired, challenged, and transformed the United States ever since? 

 

An anthology, as you know, is a portable library in which the authors are in conversation with one another and, mostly, with the reader, who has the final say. The material in this one is organized chronologically by the author’s date of birth.

 

The lesson, I guess, is that the answer to the question “What does ‘Endowed by the Creator’ mean?” is always in the eyes of the beholder.

 

Q: How did you choose the excerpts to include in the book?

 

A: There is a lot I wanted to include. I worked within a limit: 500 pages. In other words, the sum of all pieces needed to fit into a book that would be seen, in its size, as a weapon of self-defense. I excerpted novels, speeches, sermons, poems, and so on. In many ways, the voices included are a statement of the contentious dialogue I carry inside me.

 

Every editor of an anthology must start by imagining the target audience. Mine is made of curious, perplexed individuals for whom the tension between credo and episteme is a source of inspiration.

 

Also, every editor of an anthology imagines themselves as the first reader but surely not the last. I hope this book is read across faiths, across geographies, and across generations.

 

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

 

A: It is no exaggeration to say that I have been researching this book my entire life, keeping notes on an insightful reading, leaving a comment as marginalia in a library borrowing, and, of course, writing, over the decades, all kinds of explorations of the divine, from my autobiography On Borrowed Words (2001), to my play The Oven: An Anti-Lecture (2017) to the poem The Wall (2018). In November, my forthcoming book Fictional Translations: Poems (LSU) continues this search.

 

About to reach 65, I simply sat down and told myself: now is the time. Your experience is part of a larger conversation. Death will erase all that you are. The only items that will survive you are messages you leave behind.

 

What surprised me, you asked? Everything.... Some people are afraid of speaking about faith in public. Others see God as a vengeful being. A few more would prefer for the reals of religion and politics not to intersect.

 

Yes, since the start, Americans do nothing but talk about—and with—God. The epigraph of A Nation Wrestles with God comes from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. He was mesmerized, after talking to hundreds of Americans, at how relevant religion has been in this country, for better or worse.

 

Q: What impact did it have on you to work on this book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

 

A: I am more humble, and perhaps more skeptical, than I was at the beginning. Skeptical about everything: truth, God, democracy. And yet, I don’t think we can do without any of these. All need to be restrained, disabused, authentically examined.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: This year I am in New York City, as a fellow at the New York Public Library on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, finishing a book that is a history of Hispanic antisemitism from 1492 to the present, told through a dozen lives: of victims, of perpetrators, and of bystanders. I hope to complete it in the fall. I am also almost finished with my biography of Isaac Bashevis Singer.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Do I believe in God? Yes, no, and maybe—depending on the day. In short, I wrestle. To me, wrestling with God is what humankind has been doing since the beginning.

 

Look at Socrates, a concoction of Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, Aeschines of Sphettus, Aristippus, and other Greek contemporaries. Look at Abraham, Jacob, Moses, the biblical prophets, and the rabbinical tradition. Look at medieval Muslim thinks like Avicenna and Averroes.

 

Even non-monotheists, atheists, and agnostics wrestle with the divine. It is a two-way dialogue. Abraham Joshua Heschel said that humans search for God as much as God searches for humans.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Ilan Stavans. 

Q&A with Alfredo Cáceres

  

 

 

Alfredo Cáceres is the author and illustrator of the new middle grade graphic novel Through the Black Gate. He lives in Chile. 

 

Q: What inspired you to create Through the Black Gate?

 

A: At first, I was moved by the idea of making something for an older audience. My friend Victoria Maderna (a wonderful illustrator) told me I should make a comic book and it kind of made sense.

 

When confronted with that horrible blank page I drew a scene in which an older woman tells someone that her cat is not a cat but a vessel of her late father’s soul. Then Valdivia, the city where I grew up appeared, and everything started to take shape.

 

Ever since I lost my father 20 years ago, I dream of him visiting and leaving. I tell him a few things, but he always has to go, and it’s a devastating feeling having to say goodbye over and over again.

 

The story changed a lot through the years, but the spirit remained—a walk through the uneasy parts of life getting to know each other’s more vulnerable stories. Solitude is the real enemy in each of the character’s stories.

 

Q: How did you create your characters Irene, Francis, and Moses, and how would you describe their dynamic?

 

A: Irene is sort of based on a lot of people I know. She started as an old woman who confesses something supernatural while having breakfast and then progressed into a girl who is determined to follow Moses just to be sure that what happened is real and not just a bad dream.

 

Francis is based on my brother who plays guitar and in some ways on the character Ralph Macchio plays in a movie called Crossroads. The first thing I thought about his guitar playing is that it should progress from classical music to more modern jazz (a Pat Metheny sort of guitar player). Since I’m no musician, my guitar teacher Diego Farias composed a lovely lullaby that is played all through the story (Sam’s song).

 

Moses represents the unknown, the frustrating truth that we can’t control what happens in our life.

 

The idea was for them to start as antagonists and later become friends after having confronted their own demons together. A very important scene is when Francis loses his guitar in the forest and Irene helps him retrieve it, understanding the sentimental value it holds.

 

Q: How did you create the world in which the novel is set?

 

A: The story started as a Lovecraftian tale of two people (Irene and Francis) interrupting a ritual to bring someone back from the dead.

 

Near Valdivia there’s a town on the coast that is called Niebla, which translates as fog or mist. I took the Spanish forts on the coast and made them part of the Graylands, a place between life and death. I even made a map of the stages one must pass on the way to life’s exit door (Dante and Virgil had an influence on this).

 

Thinking about this, there is a lot that goes unexplained that I could blabber on about for hours. For instance, with what happens to Irene’s parents, you only get a glimpse and make up your own mind if they were playing with something no one should ever play, or they just had bad luck.

 

I also wrote about the mechanics souls use to haunt objects and how the ferryman’s vines worked corrupting the places they were burrowed.

 

But I decided to focus on the point of view of someone who is mourning and just wants to say goodbye to someone they love.

 

Q: Did you work on the text first or the illustrations first--or both simultaneously?

 

A: It was a nightmare of my own creation. I visualized the story, then drew it, then wrote the script which influenced the pictures that then influenced the words—basically a never-ending cycle of doom.

 

But my agent, Jennifer, and her husband, Ben, helped me a lot with the loose ends, and Julia, my editor at Atheneum, had the faith I was missing to see it come to life.

 

I always thought graphic novels were something much cooler folk than me made and there were a lot of times I lost confidence and started comparing with everyone I could think of. Overcoming those feelings and finishing the story is a reward I will treasure for the rest of my life.

 

Now I think I’m ready to tell more stories even if there are complicated parts. In the end everything comes together if you keep rowing in the same direction, which was not an easy thing to do.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My deal with Atheneum is for two graphic novels and I already have the idea for the next one. I have two actually, and I’m having a blast with the world building.

 

One of these stories is set on the town of Lican Ray (South of Chile) and its surrounding areas and the other is based on an old forgotten boardgame we are re vamping with a friend.

 

Maybe not all these ideas are home runs, but there is magic on trying stuff and seeing how far you can go. Through the Black Gate started like this and it’s surreal to see the final product.

 

The second idea could also be an illustrated novel about magic and learning to tell stories in a world full of people telling you how to think and feel about everything.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Well, maybe a sort of thank you to the universe for being an illustrator, in these times. The world seems to be out of control with people seeking power, money and don’t care about others or the environment.

 

When we tell stories, borders seem to fade, people of different origins can talk about it, and share their favorite part or even disliking it together.

 

My goal in telling this story was to open up about grief and how I have tried to overcome it. Many of the things Sam and Ruth say are things I have told myself in dark times.

 

Nobody knows a whole lot about how to live the perfect life, but I feel sharing stories is a fantastic way to go through it instead of wanting to own half of the world.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Lisa Johnston Hancock

  

Photo by Maribel Farina

 

 

Lisa Johnston Hancock is the author and illustrator of the new children's picture book Santiago and Great Bear. She lives in the Los Angeles area.

 

Q: What inspired you to create Santiago and Great Bear?

 

A: I’m fascinated by the Greek and Roman myths behind the constellations in our night sky. I love the idea that each grouping of stars has a story as to how they ended up there.

 

I’ve been a fine artist and art teacher for a long time and when I started seriously thinking about writing and illustrating my own stories, I knew that I needed to do a lot of research.

 

My kids were 3 and younger when I began taking them to our local library each week to pick up new picture books. All of the books that we were finding on constellations and stars were nonfiction. I knew that I wanted to write an educational fictional picture book, with my own version of what the constellations were doing up there.

 

I first had an idea of a girl who drew in her sketchbook. The creatures that she drew came to life and caused trouble and she had to figure out how to stop them. I liked the story but I felt like it was missing the SEL (social emotional learning) themes that I wanted to include.

 

I worked on this story and the illustrations for several years. I even attended the Highlights Foundation Writer’s Retreat in Pennsylvania. A year later, we moved to Long Beach, California, for my husband’s job, and six weeks after that, Covid happened.

 

I felt isolated and longed for new friends, especially since we were in a brand new place with no sense of community (yet). Once the restrictions were lifted, I decided that we all needed to find new interests, in order to make some friends.

 

Camping sounded like a good idea. My kids joined Cub Scouts and we went tent camping about once a month. I saw the Ursa Major constellation for the first time, in its entirety, at the Joshua Tree National Park. This park would later become the inspiration for the imagery in Santiago and Great Bear.

 

I started to develop a story about a boy who moves from the city to the countryside with his mom, and is longing for a friend, so he makes a wish on a star. I signed with my agent shortly after, and she gave me wonderful edits that made the story even stronger. 

 

Q: How would you describe the relationship between the two, and what do you think the book says about friendship?

 

A: It’s an unusual relationship in that Santiago is a boy, and Great Bear is, well, a big bear full of stars. Santiago and Great Bear form an instant bond and Santiago immediately wants to help. He cares about Great Bear and Santiago shows persistence in that he spends a long time (through several phases of the moon) working on ways to get Great Bear back home.

 

Through this journey, Santiago learns a lot about the phases of the moon, constellations and why you can see some stars at night and not others, all from Great Bear.

 

Great Bear helps him to get over his loneliness and form new interests that give him the courage to make a friend closer to home. I think it shows that friendships can come in all forms, even where you least expect it.

 

Q: Did you work on the text first or the illustrations first--or both simultaneously?

 

A: I worked on the text first. I did not study creative writing in school, but I’ve taken several writing classes online and attended in-person workshops. I was encouraged to begin the manuscript before working on illustrations and I find that this process works best for me.

 

I will go through many edits of the text before I start working on thumbnails for the dummy. Sometimes I will draw out the characters because it helps me work through the text when I can visualize what the characters look like. 

 

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

 

A: I hope that kids will get out and explore our beautiful natural world. Notice the things around you and try new things. A big move is not easy, but be open to new opportunities in every change. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on two different stories. I’m re-working a dummy about bird sounds and how we can confuse them with everyday sounds in our community. It’s a humorous, silly book about imaginative play. It went on submission and I got some good feedback that I think will make the story stronger.

 

I’m also working on another picture book dummy about mindful meditation through the form of a nature walk. 

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m in the process of scheduling various book events to promote and share Santiago and Great Bear. I’ll have lots of book swag to share! The event schedule can be found via my website at www.lisajohnstonhancock.com. You can also find me on social media @lisajohnstonhancock on Instagram and The Curious Illustrator on Substack. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

June 30

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

June 30, 1911: Czesław Miłosz born. 

June 29

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
June 29, 1900: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry born.

Q&A with Caitlin Rother

  

 

 

Caitlin Rother is the author of the new novel Staged, a sequel to her novel Hooked. A former investigative reporter, she lives in San Diego. 

 

Q: Staged is your second novel featuring your characters Katrina Chopin and Ken Goode--do you think they've changed at all from one book to the next?

 

A: This is the sequel to Hooked, and it picks up less than a month after Hooked leaves off, so no, they haven't changed in a significant way.

 

That said, Katrina and Goode grow closer emotionally in this book as they continue to investigate who is truly responsible for the deaths of Simon and Victoria Fontaine, who are found dead at the beginning of Hooked as the circle widens and they try to figure out who is in the cabal that their prime suspect mentioned before he was found dead in the opening chapters of Staged.

 

They also work more closely in this book as they investigate the murders of Katrina's parents -- off the books, because it is a conflict for Katrina and Goode is not part of the detective team who is allegedly still working the case, in fact, he's told to stay out of it -- and Goode is there for Katrina as she makes some surprising discoveries about her family and also as a stalker continues to threaten her life.  

 

Q: What inspired the plot of this new novel?

 

A: I have written several true crime books about staged scenes -- homicides staged as accidents, suicide staged as homicide, and a hanging death staged as a suicide or a murder (it's still unclear which), so I used that knowledge to write this book, in which two deaths seem very suspicious to Goode and his sergeant, Rusty Stone.

 

One is an alleged suicide by hanging, which they believe is a homicide, and one appears to be natural death, but they believe it might be a homicide.

 

Another thread in this book is Katrina's discovery about her family through genetic genealogy, i.e. via a DNA test, which was inspired by my research for one of my true crime books, Body Parts, which I recently updated after detectives were finally able to identify the first victim of serial killer Wayne Adam Ford 25 years after he murdered her, thanks to genetic genealogy. 

 

Q: In our previous Q&A, you said you rewrote Hooked many times--was that the case with Staged as well?

 

A: Thankfully, no! After rewriting Hooked and its prequel, Naked Addiction, countless times over 17 and 19 years, respectively, I think I've finally got the hang of it. So, Staged took less than a year to write, as did the next two books in the series and the first in a new series, all of which are under submission but have yet to be published. 

 

Q: As someone who writes both fiction and nonfiction, do you have a preference?

 

A: I really enjoyed writing a dozen true crime books and learned a tremendous amount about homicides and homicide investigations, which has informed my fiction.

 

Now that I'm engrossed in writing psychological suspense and thrillers, I'm going to stick with that for a while, because it's fun and far less stressful. It's a lot more difficult to write true crime books these days for many reasons than it was when I started out.

 

That said, I've always enjoyed the research that comes with writing nonfiction, and was missing that, so I'm deep into the study of sociopaths and psychopaths right now for the next novel I'll be writing. It's fascinating.    

 

Q: Can you say more about what you’re working on now?

 

A: As I said above, I'm doing research for the sequel to a book in a new series I'm writing. The first one, which I believe I described in our last Q&A, is under submission, so I'm plotting the next one while I wait to hear from my publisher.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: If anyone wants to know more about the back story of Detective Ken Goode, they can read Naked Addiction, which is the prequel to the Katrina & Goode series. Goode has been in my head for at least 36 years by now! 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Caitlin Rother. 

Q&A with Nan Bauer-Maglin and Daniel E. Hood

  

Nan Bauer-Maglin

 

 

Nan Bauer-Maglin and Daniel E. Hood are the editors of the new book Loving Arrangements: Stories About Modern Living and Loving. They also edited the book Gray Love. Bauer-Maglin is a professor emerita at the City University of New York, and Hood is a retired professor of sociology. 

 

Q: What inspired you both to create this new anthology?

 

A: We, my coeditor Dan Hood and I, have been asked: “Why this topic; why write about Loving Arrangements?” Well, the idea of Loving Arrangements started with queries we got about some of the pieces in our previous book Gray Love: Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60 (which came out in 2023, coedited by Dan and myself).

 

Gray Love was about people over 60 looking for love, mostly by using online dating. Some found a relationship, some gave up--accommodating themself to being single or not-- and some designed somewhat alternative relationships (mainly what is known as LAT, living apart together). LAT is a familiar term now, but a few years ago it was not well-known; so people wanted to know more about such arrangements.

Daniel E. Hood

 

In addition, two articles in Gray Love sparked a lot of discussion: one by a man who described his relationship with two women, both of whom were uncomfortably aware of each other; a second piece was by a woman who described how she was “dating” a man who had a primary relationship with a different woman, the primary ”squeeze” was unaware of the secondary “squeeze.”

 

So, with this expressed interest in LAT and triangular relationships, Dan and I felt that there was a book here, that the ideas and actualities of love, marriage, and the couple were ripe for exploration.

 

Q: How did you choose the essays to include in the book?

 

A: There are 31 writers and 29 pieces (two of the 29 pieces are jointly authored). The ages of these writers vary from 23 to 81.

 

For more than any other book of ours, there were many who thought they would contribute, but pulled back when they understood how much might be revealed. So, it is notable that these 31 writers did not hesitate to write about their intimate feelings and personal relationships.

 

All the writers responded to calls we posted on the internet (or calls forwarded to them by friends) except for a few that we searched for to make sure we had diversity of writers and diversity of topics.

 

The 29 personal essays in this collection offer a variety of perspectives and experiences with nontraditional relationships and forms of cohabitation. The contributors include married couples who live in separate cities and single people who find companionship through communes and cohousing.

 

These essays also present varied outlooks on the practice and ethics of having multiple partners, with some embracing large polycules while others opt for “monogamish” relationships.

 

There are many different stories to tell, from close friends living together to form a chosen family, to couples navigating the shifting boundaries of their relationship as one partner begins a gender transition.

 

With contributors across generations and representing the full ethnic and cultural diversity of the United States, Loving Arrangements demonstrates the myriad ways that we live and love today.

 

Q: How do you think ideas about love and marriage have changed in recent decades, and what do you see looking forward?

 

A: In Europe and America, there has been a change in marriage over the last 200 years from a political/social/economic bonding within a community to a more personal, exclusive love relationship between a couple in an increasingly individualized culture.

 

Today, besides now answering a person’s emotional and companionate needs, marriage provides a range of legal benefits such as tax advantages, partner’s Social Security, health care coverage, social status and recognition, but rarely is shaped by family business needs.

 

Attitudes towards and commitments to marriage continue to evolve as the Pew Research Center indicates via this statistic comparing 2024 to 1970 marriages: the share of adults who are currently married is now 50 percent, down from 69 percent in 1970 (Pewresearch.org/social-trends/2026/03/25/the-united-states-at-250-how-the-country-has-changed-in-the-past-50-years).

 

There are many factors that can explain why the traditional idea of marriage is coming unraveled at this time.

 

In no particular order, they include the recent COVID-19 pandemic’s confinement of individuals and couples that led to either an eventual breakup or a deeper commitment; online dating, which has opened up a myriad of possible relationships; advances in health care that make longer lives possible and may encourage a redefinition of self at different life stages; the expansion of college and work opportunities for women and minorities that create new possibilities for economic independence for individuals in these groups; and the popularization of reproductive technologies that allow family planning inside and outside of marriage.

 

From a more sociohistorical perspective, these changes are related to a series of social movements, mainly in the United States and Europe. In the 20th century, this began with the American civil rights movement, which then became a model for later movements seeking new individual rights (e.g., the women’s movement and the gay rights movement) and changes in the rights of the disabled and other “new” minorities.

 

One “symptom” of all this is the search for a more meaningful way of “doing” marriage and family, a way—or ways—that “respect(s)” the rights of both/all partners. Many people are experimenting with alternative living and loving arrangements such as cohabitation near or with friends, communal living, polyamory, and living apart together.

 

Laws are beginning to follow these family practices. For example, since 2023, at least five cities have adopted protections for polyamorous families, including Portland, Oregon, Oakland, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. We see these changes perhaps as a sign of things to come,  

 

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

 

A: In The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center (St. Martin’s Press, NY, 2024) Rhaina Cohen argues that there is “a need to dislodge fixed ideas about who (and how many people) we can spend the rest of our lives with.” She says, as does our book, that we need “more models of deep relationships. That’s because our adult lives are not one continuous scene; they’re extended stories with unpredictable turning points.” 

 

Loving Arrangements contributes to this “dislodging,” Many of the stories in this book question those "well-worn cultural scripts," and some may even become drafts for new ones.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Nan is working on two more anthologies, one on infidelity and one on dementia.

 

The first, Stepping Out: Writing about Infidelity, explores one of the oldest and most complex human dramas: what it means to break or feel broken by the mutual bond of fidelity. Stepping Out gives a voice both to those who have “cheated” and those who have been “cheated upon,” revealing not only what happened, but more importantly, the way the writers understand their own motives, actions, and experiences.

 

The second, Caregrievers: Stories from the Frontline of Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease, will be a collection that can help with understanding and managing the emotional impact of the day-to-day life of this disease. The selections are written by people who lived with, cared for, or cared about someone with dementia or Alzheimer’s.

 

Dan has no immediate book plans. He is busy getting to know his new grandson and doing volunteer work for The Innocence Project.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Nan Bauer-Maglin.