Q&A with Alicia D. Williams

  

 

 

 

Alicia D. Williams is the author of the new children's picture book Nani and the Lion. Her other books include Jump at the Sun.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write Nani and the Lion?

 

A: I love folktales! I really do. I love memorizing and retelling them. I love adding my own flavor to the tales as well. This love was introduced to me by Zora Neale Hurston, which led me to write Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston. There, I was able to experiment with the southern folklore voice and add snippets of folktales too.

 

Even so, it was after the pandemic when children were called back to the classroom, the school where I taught asked me to use my Teaching Artist skills for a segment called Wonder Time.

 

For the transitional kindergarten classes, I would use movement, dance, drumming, puppetry, and chanting, without ever reading the text to introduce picture books. By the time I would read the books, students recalled the stories and dialogue!

 

Folktales were always perfect stories for young learners. They enthusiastically connected with these wonderful read alouds as we dramatized them and moved about the classroom.

 

It is the same connection that I felt when I first read Virginia Hamilton’s The People Could Fly. The same when I read Zora Neale Hurston’s folklore retellings too. And after learning the impact of oral storytelling, especially the literacy benefits, I thought, I wonder if I could write my own.

 

Q: What do you think Anna Cunha’s illustrations add to the story?

 

A: Anna captured a sweet stillness within my animated tale. I wrote the text to be lively read aloud, and now with Anna’s softness, it allows for readers to interpret the voice both ways.

 

That’s what is so brilliant about picture books; some people read them for the story and others for the illustrations. There are always two stories being told. Anna’s perfect blend of hues and her particular style lends to the feeling of a classic tale.

 

Q: The Horn Book review of the book says, “Williams’s...text has the cadence of a folktale, with ear-pleasing sound effects and patterns and featuring a satisfying resolution.” What do you think of that assessment?

 

A: Wow, wow, wow! I absolutely love this! I really do.

 

When I was little, my aunts and uncles would tell family stories every holiday. The stories were always the same, yet we would roll with laughter as if we never heard them.

 

As I grew older, I tried to retell those stories, but my presentation would always fall flat. You see, my aunts and uncles did something that came natural: they found the rhythm. Their voices climbed hills of vocal expression and tone and barreled through commas and periods as words bounced to their own cadence.

 

Even though I memorized every single story, mimicked their pauses, facial expressions, and emotions, I couldn’t master their styles. Oh, I yearned to tell stories like them.

 

So, it is extremely “satisfying” to learn that The Horn Book heard my own rhythm and cadence in the text. And that’s what is wonderful about folktales, many times the musicality leaps out of the reader’s mouth or is heard in their head just as the storyteller intended. Thank you, Horn Book!

 

Q: What do you hope kids (and adults) take away from the book?

 

A: Those stories that my family told were connections. As a little girl, in my imagination, I traveled to the South and watched in horror as my aunt and uncle, as little people, drank from the white-only water fountain. I trekked to North Carolina and pet my granny’s horse too.

 

Through Nani and the Lion, I want to do the same. I want my readers to travel across the ocean, to the village, and listen to Nani’s drumming. To walk alongside her through the grasslands and shimmy their shoulders too. I want children to be immersed in the story and fall in love with folktales.

 

For adults, I want us to embrace, once again, the power of storytelling. As we’ve leaned (too far) into technology and now allowing AI to sometimes write our stories, it is important that we don’t lose our own voices.

 

Storytelling, especially oral storytelling, offers language development, listening skills, cultural exchange, creativity and imagination, expression, and community, among a few of its benefits.

 

And with the wonderful layer of folklore, we enlarge our communities with talking animals, clever tricksters, and moral lessons. And in doing so, we not only make stronger bonds, but we also cultivate empathy.

 

I hope that all of my readers will pick up their metaphorical (and literal, if wanted) drums. I want them, like Nani, to find what brings them joy. And know that like the villagers, people might hush them out of fear or well-meaning protection.

 

Even so, I want them to be brave to drum and dance, to do what makes them happy. And when they radiate joy, even the lions can sense it . . . and perhaps dance.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on finding balance. I know that’s not a response regarding another project. But truly, it’s the truth. I am now a nomad, traveling the world and finding joy. In this new journey, I am redefining my writing process, listening, and journaling. I am working on being brave, just as I want for my readers. 

 

And oh, I can offer a tidbit . . . I have in edits for another Nani, Nani and the Monkey, which will also be illustrated by Anna.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Alicia D. Williams. 

Q&A with Kate Hosford

  

Photo by Roberto Falck

 

 

 

Kate Hosford is the author of the new children's picture book You and I Are Stars and Night. Her other books include Infinity and Me. She lives in Brooklyn. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write You and I Are Stars and Night?

 

A: This book is a poem written in rhyming couplets. The process of writing in rhyme is always freeing for me; while my logical brain is working on meter and rhyme, my subconscious in coming up with a story.

 

I started with an image in my head of the wind calling out to a mother in the middle of the night. The mother or caretaker then wakes her child, and the two of them run down to the sea. I wrote the first stanza while thinking of this image: The wind is calling, hear it sweep / through our village fast asleep. / Will you sail away with me? / You and I are salt and sea.

 

I then knew that I had launched caretaker and child on an adventure where the caretaker would express her bond with her child in a different way at the end of each stanza, according to the content of the spread: you and I are boat and sail, glow and flame, blue and sky, etc.

 

It was fun deciding what they would do next: they brave a storm, discover an island, swim with mermaids, and explore an enchanted forest. The adventures continue until it’s time to home and finish the bedtime routine. The book ends with the biggest adventure of all, as caretaker and child drift into dreamland on a larger boat.  

 

Q: What do you think Richard Jones’s illustrations add to the story?

 

A: I am over the moon about Richard’s artwork, and in awe of the tremendous amount of thought that went into each of these beautiful illustrations.

 

Richard took the first stanza of the story and set it during a very late bathtime. Once the caretaker asks the child to sail away with her, the floor dissolves into the sea, the bathtub becomes a boat, the child’s towel becomes a sail, and two of the bath toys come to life.

 

This blurring of reality and fantasy happens throughout the book, which makes the story both complex and magical.

 

Richard has done a tremendous amount of world-building here, and his lush and textured illustrations contain all sorts of families and pairs of creatures who underscore the message that none of us goes through life alone. After many readings, I am still finding hidden treasures in his artwork.

 

Q: What do you hope kids (and adults) take away from the book?

 

A: I hope they will appreciate this magical adventure that takes place in the middle of the bedtime routine and will enjoy the love metaphors. I hope that readers will find these metaphors playful, varied and meaningful.

 

Perhaps they will find a page that best expresses the bond they share with someone else, or perhaps they will make up their own love metaphors.

 

But most of all, I hope these metaphors serve as a refrain, repeatedly assuring children that there will always be someone who loves them and wants to go on the journey of life with them; they don’t have to travel alone.

 

I also hope readers like the twist at the end, when caretaker and child drift into dreamland together.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am working on picture books, poetry collections, and a middle grade ballet novel about friendship in a competitive environment.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m happy to say that so far the reviews for this book have been lovely. I was thrilled with this line from The Horn Book review: “Tender without being saccharine and fanciful without any dramatics, this is the epitome of a bedtime book.”

 

I worked hard to avoid falling into the saccharine zone, which is sometimes a challenge when writing about love, so it’s gratifying to be recognized for that.

 

I welcome feedback on the activity kit from readers (contact me here through my website). I also look forward to visiting lots of schools and hearing what children have to say about love and friendship.

 

Thank you for doing this interview with me, Deborah!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Sarah Bruni

  

 

 

Sarah Bruni is the author of the new novel Mass Mothering. She also has written the novel The Night Gwen Stacy Died. She lives in Chicago. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Mass Mothering, and how did you create your character A.?

 

A: When I started this novel, I was thinking a lot about storytelling permeated by different kinds of loss or absence, as well as my own discomfort with my country’s legacy of intervention abroad.

 

I wanted to write a novel that juxtaposed a single character’s private pain with a kind of collective pain in a faraway place, and then move between those two fictional worlds. When I realized that the novel would include the voices of a community of women reeling from political violence, I knew the narrator would need to occupy a space much closer to my own experience.

 

While A.’s story is not biographical, I did work many odd jobs in big cities during a health scare, and I could identify with her sense of transience while living in a kind of perpetual present. 

 

Q: The Library Journal review of the book calls it a “timely yet timeless tale about the power of community and the importance of mothers in the face of grief and systematic oppression...” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I particularly appreciate that the reviewer landed on the idea of the story being “timeless.” It was important to me that the narrative take place without a clearly defined historical moment or setting. I wanted the reader to resist assuming the types of places where certain kinds of tragedies occur, so that the story could potentially unfold anywhere.

 

Of course, we know that forced displacement, disappearance, and separation of families happen in many places, including within our own borders right now. In Chicago this year, we have been witnessing acts of courage by community members—mothers among them—in the face of brutal policies designed to terrorize our immigrant neighbors.

 

I didn’t realize when I started the book about a decade ago that some of these details would hit quite so close to home. 

 

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 didn’t know how the novel would end, or really what shape it would take at all. I never know much about the narrative arc at all when I get started writing something new.

 

For me, the process of writing a novel is about creating the conditions for moments of tension, but I largely feel like I’m following the characters' lead, rather than imposing an idea that came to me ahead of the process.

 

I do remember that I had imagined that the character A. would eventually find her way to the place where Field Notes was written, but each of the discoveries she makes while there were surprises to me.

 

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

 

A: For a long time, I thought that the title of the novel would need to reference the process of ambiguous grief, which I saw as one of the central threads connecting the experiences of A. and the mothers.

 

Thankfully, early readers directed me away from that notion, and I realized that shifting the focus so that the title lands on the act of caretaking, independent of the receipt of the care, was more appropriate. Because the idea of mothering is not predicated on motherhood, a person without children or a person who is separated from a child can participate in the act.

 

I also love the idea of mothering occurring at large, as if it were some kind of natural phenomenon, while at the same time, in this particular case, reflecting the conscious choice to care for one another. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Nothing that I could coherently describe at this point. A lot of fragments above all.

 

I spent the five years around the pandemic teaching in a high school, and the emergencies implied by that environment during that period feel like they have stayed with my body and brain years later, in a way that still makes me curious to write through them.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The journey of writing this book began for me when I started reading more widely outside of the canon of literature I had grown up with in the US. It truly changed what I could imagine was possible from a narrative, and it was such a gift to learn to read in a different way.

 

I also spent time in Uruguay and Colombia during graduate school as I got started writing this book, and while neither of those countries is the setting of the novel, the histories and narratives I encountered in both places deeply informed the story at its heart.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Naeem Murr

  

 

 

 

 

Naeem Murr is the author of the new novel Every Exit Brings You Home. His other books include The Boy. He is a dual US-UK citizen. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Every Exit Brings You Home, and how did you create your character Jack?

 

A: Every Exit Brings You Home was prompted nearly five years ago when I took a walk in my Chicago neighborhood one afternoon and noticed a man and woman sitting in an old Chevy Impala hitched to a U-Haul trailer just outside my condominium building. An infant sat asleep in the back.

 

Though the couple were leaning tenderly against each other, they looked bereft—alone. I couldn’t tell if they’d arrived or were about to leave. It felt like the moment after the Biblical Fall.

 

My paternal family were Palestinian refugees in 1948, and for a while I’d been thinking about what “home” means for a Palestinian. Gaza was also on my mind because it had erupted into the worst violence in years over tensions in East Jerusalem.

 

This prompted the idea for a novel about a Gazan immigrant to Chicago, Jamal (Jack) Shaban, the story catalyzed by a troubled and aggressive single mother moving into an apartment in Jack’s condominium. Her conflicts with others in his building return Jack to his traumatic past in Gaza, including a taboo affair that nearly cost him his life.

 

This book felt as if it had been gestating in me for a long while and was ready to be written. It just needed the trigger of the couple in the Impala. When a book is ready in this way, the characters appear more or less fully formed, emerging and deepening as the story itself progresses.

 

Jack and the story are not separable. Before I began writing the novel, I had no idea what Jack’s history in Gaza had been or why he was forced to escape. I had no idea he’d be a flight attendant, or that he’d lead such a compartmentalized life, lying to everyone.

 

Only after I’d completed the novel and could look at it a little more objectively did I begin to understand why Jack behaves in the way he does, living these separated lives, this man with a past too full of love to cauterize, too full of pain to integrate.

 

When I began the novel, I thought he’d be single, but Dimra, his wife, appeared. She’s a perfect contrast to him, Palestinian to the bone and obsessed with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. For Dimra, being Palestinian and Muslim is her identity, her essence, her being: I am what I am. For Jack, it’s his predicament: I am not what I am.

 

But, again, I didn’t think about any of this beforehand. A novel always fails if a character is not substantial enough early on to challenge the author’s desire to control their fate and story.

 

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

 

A: Home is a complicated concept for any Palestinian, particularly one who grew up in a refugee camp inside the Occupied Territories.

 

Jack is also running from something: from his past, from himself. As a flight attendant, he could potentially fly anywhere he wants to. When he’s working, he’s constantly departing for distant locales, creating the illusion of escape. In the air, a plane is nowhere, a liminal space that suits him.

 

But his final flight always returns him home. Returns him to Dimra, herself an embodiment of Palestine.

 

The essential conflict within him—escape your past, you cannot escape your past; escape who you are, you cannot escape who you are—condemns Jack to be forever flying away from his home, forever returning. Hence the paradox of the title.

 

Q: The writer Jenny Offill called the book a “rich and complex portrait of the immigrant experience that has at its center a heartbreaking and thrillingly suspenseful story about tragic histories and new beginnings.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I would say it’s accurate—I hope so, anyway. I’ve already talked a little about the complexity of tragic histories and new beginnings. And about Jack and Dimra responding in different ways to their immigration: Dimra is an abortive immigrant, ever looking back, while Jack has become no one nowhere. Their new beginning exists in the hope for an American child.

 

Jack was always an immigrant, even in Gaza, his world and culture created by his once-wealthy Egyptian Copt mother, who saturates him in Western literature, so that he lives as substantially in the worlds created by Dickens, Steinbeck, and Tolstoy as in Gaza.

 

The experience of those, like Jack or Dimra, whom we typically think of as immigrants, is simply a more visible iteration of almost everyone’s experience. Many of us don’t feel at home even in our own cultures and countries, and many no longer live where we were born and brought up.

 

Childhood itself is a world from which all of us are exiled. Like an immigrant negotiating a new country, each of us has to translate ourselves into an adult domain and identity.

 

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

 

A: When I began the novel, I knew the inciting incident: the arrival of Marcia and her child in Jack’s condominium building. And I knew where it was going to end: with Jack and Marcia sitting in the Impala hitched to a U-Haul, just like the couple I’d seen. I even knew exactly what the last line was going to be.

 

This was the light leading me through the darkness. A sense of where you’re going is vital for longer narratives. But the “dream” out of which a novel is conceived requires imagination, and imagination requires a free rein. I had to remain open as I wrote, open to the novel’s developing life, respectful of its mystery. I had to avoid the plan.

 

Ted Hughes in his essay, “Myth and Education,” describes the danger of a person without imagination. “They are planners,” he says, “and ruthless slaves to the plan—which substitutes for what they do not possess.”

 

As it turned out, my novel didn’t end with Jack and Marcia in the Impala. Though that scene, which still appears in the book, provided the impetus for the novel, as well as a thematic through-line, the characters found their way to a different ending. The dream of a work of art is a direction, an impulse. It is not an imperative. It is not a plan.  

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I will return to a novel I’ve been working on for several years—based on the lives of two of my Palestinian uncles.

 

The novel, a family saga, covers the entire life of Ibrahim Warda, born in Haifa in 1938, becoming a refugee in Lebanon in 1948, and is built around Ibrahim’s answers to the questions his radicalized daughter has asked him all his life: “Who are you? Who are your people? What land is yours?”

 

He becomes extremely wealthy, living all over the world, and is constantly being drawn into the black hole of the Arab/Israeli conflict: mistaken for an Israeli spy, he’s jailed and tortured in Algeria; unwittingly, he becomes connected to the terrorists responsible for the Munich massacre; he’s in Beirut for the horrors of the Lebanese civil war, risking his life to save his daughter from the Sabra/Shatila massacre.

 

As much as I can tell at this point, the novel is about both the responsibility and tyranny of identity.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I think one of the most difficult aspects of the publishing process is that a writer loses control of their work. A book is like a child in many ways. It’s born out of the writer and their life. The writer nurtures it, often over years, as the book discovers a life and self of its own. Finally, it leaves home, so to speak, and has to live independently in the world.

 

One thing you hope is that a book has gained enough depth and substance to resist the tendency of the world to formulate it, to slot the novel into a category—immigrant book, Palestinian book, American book, and so on.

 

This is a novel about someone, like most of us, burdened by his past, groping his way blindly forward. Though Jack is loving and compassionate, he’s also deeply flawed and painfully aware of the capacity for evil within himself and within us all.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Feb. 3

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Feb. 3, 1874: Gertrude Stein born.

Q&A with Wendy Walker

  

Photo by Bill Miles

 

Wendy Walker is the author of the new novel Blade. Her other books include All Is Not Forgotten. She lives in Connecticut. 

 

Q: In Blade’s Author’s Note, you write that you attended a competitive skating program in Colorado as a teenager--how much was the book based on your own experiences, and how did you create your character Ana?

 

A: Drawing from personal experience when writing fiction is always tricky. It’s great to have authenticity at your fingertips, but it can get complicated to move away from your own story and create a new one within the same world.

 

With Blade, that balance was especially difficult. The novel is set in the world of competitive figure skating, a world I know intimately and one that is both very small and deeply personal. Every skater experiences it differently.

 

My challenge was to create a world that felt real, and was authentic, without making it a factual representation of my own life. It took a few drafts to get there!

 

Creating Ana was, in some ways, easier. From the beginning, I knew I wanted her to have a traumatic past at The Palace that shaped who she is in the present. Blade is a thriller, but it’s also a story about how early experiences shape us long after we believe we’ve escaped them.

 

Making Ana a criminal defense attorney who advocates for children gave her the skills and credibility to return to The Palace to help a young skater accused of murder, and it also tracked for her own psychological profile.

 

Q: Did you need to do any additional research to write the novel, and if so, did you find anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: Well, I skated many more years ago than my character, Ana Robbins! To create the world of figure skating both now and 14 years ago, I had to find sources who have been involved in the sport during both timeframes and could give me the nuts and bolts of competitions and scoring.

 

What was fascinating to me had to do with the progression of the jumps – the triples and now quads everyone who follows the sport has heard about.

 

When I was skating in the 1980s, most men could do triples – just one had landed a quad. For the women, having one or two triples could get you on the podium. Now, at the Olympic level, the men all have some quads and the women can land most – if not all - all of the triples, including the axel. The bottom line, though, is that jumps still rule the day!

 

Q: The writer May Cobb called the book “a timely and timeless portrait of a female subculture complete with power dynamics, toxic friendships, buried secrets that seethe under the surface, and nerve-shredding suspense.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I love it! May is the best – and she knows about toxic subcultures from her novel, and Netflix series, The Hunting Wives.

 

At first glance, it may seem that the center of the story is the murdered assistant coach, Emile Dressiér. He is definitely a catalyst for many of the obstacles that face Ana and her friends training at The Palace.

 

But the real villains are their female coach, Dawn Sumner, some of the mothers who sit in the bleachers watching their kids skate, and their own peers.

 

I didn’t want this story to be about male-female “grooming” or exploitation. We’ve seen that scenario play out in real life and many fictional settings, and as common as it still is – unfortunately – I wanted to expose the dangers that can come from women as well.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamics among the four “Orphans”?

 

A: The “Orphans” – Jolene, Kayla, Indy and Ana - are the four girls who live at the dormitory year round with parents who are far away. When I was training in Colorado, it was this aspect of my experience that played the biggest role in my life and what I wanted to explore in the novel.

 

Like me, the Orphans had no adult to turn to for guidance and support. No adult to stand up for them against other adults who mistreated them. And no adult to provide the kind of parental attachment that all children need while their brains are developing.

 

This makes them particularly vulnerable to Dawn Sumner’s emotional and psychological abuse, and to the same dangers that face almost all teenage girls, wherever they come of age.

 

In an effort to protect themselves, the Orphans create a family system among themselves. Jolene becomes maternal, giving advice and comfort. Kayla tries to be the protector, until she becomes the one in need of protecting. Indy is the defiant “older” child, and Ana is the youngest – the baby.

 

Falling into these roles is a typical psychological reaction when children grow up without adult caregivers, and this is what I thought would make the most sense for the Orphans. And, as with any family unit, when one member is harmed, the wound seeps into each one of them.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I just finished the first draft of my next novel, The Fold, a thriller about forbidden love and murder in wealthy suburbia. The story follows two teenagers from different backgrounds whose brief love story ends abruptly when a local woman is murdered in her home.

 

Like Blade, I use split time frames to create a forward story where we follow the two lovers in their 20s – one leaving prison and one about to get married - and back in time when they first met. I think it will have great Romeo and Juliet vibes!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Yes, in fact! I also write and executive produce novels designed specifically for audio, available at Audible. These pieces are so much fun – stories told with a blend of narration, scene work, sound effects and music.

 

Last year, The Room Next Door was a #1 bestselling audiobook and continues to be one of Audible’s most popular listens. I’ll be writing another piece for them in 2026.

 

With the audio edition of Blade, we had a 12-person cast, including superstar narrator Julia Whelan, and brought some of these audio-first techniques into the production. If anyone out there enjoys audiobooks, Blade offers something to listeners that you can’t get on the page – hearing all of the characters come to life!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Wendy Walker. 

Q&A with Anthony Ceballos

  

 

Anthony Ceballos is the author of the new poetry collection Glassful of Prayer. His work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Yellow Medicine Review, and he lives in Minneapolis. 

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the poems in your new collection?

 

A: The oldest poem in the book at this point is just over 10 years old. So in one sense, it began quite a long time ago. With that said, most of the poems in this collection were written over the last few years, but some have been by my side for the long haul.

 

Q: The poet Sun Yung Shin said of the book, “Glassful of Prayer is a book made equally of fiery longing and cool defiance.” What do you think of that assessment?

 

A: Sun Yung Shin is a wonderful poet whose guidance and wisdom were an integral part of the manuscript’s formation. She was my mentor in the Loft Literary Center’s Mentor Series program, and was someone who very early on offered great insight into sifting through all my pages and assembling a larger collection.

 

When I think of this assessment, I think of how in our deepest longings we often encounter our greatest fires, whether it be the kind of passion that makes the world around us seem fully engulfed, or the heat that drives us to action.

 

And in defiance, I imagine the ways we call upon the fiercest of winds to lift us up and guide us into the possibilities of every tomorrow.

 

Her words speak to some of the strongest life-forces present in the collection, and to Sun Yung Shin I am eternally grateful.

 

Q: How did you decide on the order in which the poems would appear in the book?

 

A: With my editor Kris Bigalk’s profound skill! Without, I was swimming in endless pages stuffed into every corner of my existence.

 

My dramatic flair aside, she truly was able to help me see the strongest through lines in the pages I sent her. From there, we started to order them in a way that would offer a narrative arc of life from youth to now, as contained in the selected pieces.

 

Needless to say, with her superb counsel, the process was an absolute thrill!

 

Q: How was the book's title (also the title of one of the poems) chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: If ever I had heard about the anguish a writer can go through coming up with a book title, I now know it for myself, haha. I couldn’t even tell you the exhaustive list of potential titles, there were so many.

 

Then one day when Kris and I were meeting, exhausting ourselves over my exhaustive lists, she says, “What about Glassful of Prayer as the title of the whole book?” And it was this great moment of clarity, as if a dusty window had been cleaned and the view outside suddenly rendered in glorious technicolor.

 

I always knew when the book title was ready to make itself apparent it would do so without question. This was that moment.

 

The actual words of the title came to me one day when I was sitting in a coffee shop (my favored writing environment) and I was staring at the proverbial blank page quite literally, and next to that page was my glass of cold-pressed coffee at its halfway point.

 

Like a poet, I started to drift toward that age-old question: is the glass half full, or half empty? And in that moment I knew undeniably I was seeing it as half empty.

 

One of the prominent themes in the book is addiction, and how we navigate through addiction for better and/or for worse.

 

As I have come to understand it, through my own personal experience, and through witnessing the struggles of people around me, be they family, friends, or strangers, in addiction there is a deep urgency to fill a void, perhaps many voids, left too long to fester.

 

In alcoholism, we are constantly filling and refilling the glass in hope to fill that seemingly infinite void. Here I offer full transparency; I am a recovering alcoholic myself, and have been for many years.

 

Looking back at the days when I willingly tossed myself into the arms of excess libation, I can see myself desperately attempting to fill a void, and confusing and using intoxication as a substitute for spiritual connection. 

 

Though I can only speak for myself, I imagine I was not alone in that way of thinking. And I thought about family, my childhood, the heaviness I witnessed, and again, imagined I wasn’t alone in how I felt.

 

In the context of this title, “prayer” is synonymous with anything I felt would connect me to, as they say in AA, a power larger than myself. Where once I sought that connection through drink, I can say I have now, to some greatly meaningful extent, found it through the creative arts, be it writing, painting, the performance of a poem, whatever the creative realm offers me.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: In the Immediate Now? The answers to these lovely questions!

 

In the Larger Now? Various preparations for this first book’s publication! Something for which my gratitude is boundless and immortal.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I learned how to read a clock and tell time by my love for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Back in the great ‘90s, the show used to air in reruns every weeknight at 9 p.m., and if nothing else, I knew what 9 p.m. looked like on our old digital radio clock.

 

I also knew it looked like the lines of some kind of partially drawn square on an analog clock when the hands were of course facing the 9 and the 12. From there, as they say, the rest is history. 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb