Q&A with Ellen Meister

 

 

 

Ellen Meister is the author of the new novel Joyride. Her other books include the novel Divorce Towers. She lives in New York.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Joyride, and how did you create your characters Joybird and Sid?

 

A: These characters came to me years ago, nearly fully formed as a father and daughter locked in battle over different worldviews.

 

Before I even had a story, I knew it would have to be comedic, and that I would put them together in a hipster environment that would drive the anti-PC father half-crazy. To me, that meant Brooklyn.

 

Everything else—including Joybird’s desire to be a life coach—grew out of my hankering to play out this intergenerational Odd Couple conflict.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamic between them?

 

A: They’re such opposites. Sid is in the waning days of what was a glorious career, feeling bitter and cynical. Deep down, he knows his downfall is his own fault, but he’s too busy blaming everyone else to accept it. Joybird—who sees the world through gloriously rose-colored lenses—is at the beginning of realizing her dreams.

 

He’s pessimistic and sarcastic. She’s optimistic and earnest. The only thing they have in common is their love for one another, and the desire for the connection they never had. They each have a lot to learn—about themselves and each other—and  that’s at the heart of the book’s journey.

 

Q: As you mentioned, you came up with the idea for what became Joyride years ago. What was your writing process like, and how did you know you finally had the story you wanted?

 

A: This was a tough one, Deborah! I knew from the beginning I had the bones of something wonderful, and was driven to make it work. But the first draft failed, because I hadn’t quite nailed the point-of-view.

 

Even though it’s really Joybird’s story, I didn’t think I could write the novel from her perspective, as she has no sarcastic edge. And without that, who am I as a writer?

 

So I first tried writing the whole book from Sid’s point-of-view, but it turned out he had too much edge, and readers were uncomfortable being inside his head for so long.

 

At that point, I put the manuscript aside and wrote another novel, Take My Husband—a dark comedy borne of the pandemic. After that, I went back to tinkering with Joyride, but still couldn’t nail it, so I wrote another book—Divorce Towers. It was the escapist romp I needed at the time.

 

Finally, I was determined to work on Joyride until I nailed it. I tried something experimental, and rewrote the entire book from the point-of-view of someone outside the main action. The result was interesting, but it couldn’t explore the father-daughter dynamic in full complexity.

 

Then, at last, I understood that I had to write the book from two points of view—Sid’s and Joybird’s. But even after I finished that, it took a year of rewrites to get the book to sparkle.

 

Q: What do you see as the role of humor in your writing?

 

A: I’m a writer who’s driven to entertain. In fact, I think it’s my duty to readers. Toward that end, humor is the sharpest tool in my box.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Something very different for me! I got the idea for a dark and twisted thriller, and I’m trying it out to see if I can pull it off. (And yes, it has humor, too!) I do love a challenge.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m very excited and honored that Joyride was chosen by Zibby Owens as one of the most anticipated books of the year!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Ellen Meister.

Q&A with Nancy Thayer

 

Photo by Kit Noble

 

Nancy Thayer is the author of the new novel Summer Light on Nantucket. Her many other books include The Summer We Started Over. She lives on Nantucket.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Summer Light on Nantucket, and how did you create your character Blythe?

 

A: For over 40 years, I’ve watched my children, their friends, my friends’ children, and now so many grandchildren, arrive on Nantucket for the summer. They play in the sun all day and watch the flash of three lighthouses at night. Happiness is in the air. In the light. I wanted to capture that joy, that glow.

 

I’ve also watched many couples marry and divorce and remain friendly with, or at least civil to, their exes, especially when children are involved.

 

I married young, and was so glad to be divorced, and later I met Charley, and we’ve been married for 41 years. I wanted to portray a woman who is happily divorced and is glad her children have their father’s love. Blythe truly likes her husband’s new girlfriend and loves her ex-mother-in-law.

 

The name Blythe just dropped from the sky and I knew it was perfect, partly because “blythe” means “happy, cheerful.” I wanted my main character to be an optimistic person, a mother, a teacher, and a friend---fully immersed in life.

 

Q: Can you say more about the relationship between Blythe and her ex-husband, Bob?

 

A: Blythe and Bob are friendly and cooperative, especially when dealing with their four children and Bob’s mother. They’re both reasonable. They wish each other well, probably because they were never desperately, achingly, passionately in love with each other.

 

I know many people like this, people who believe they married the wrong person to have the right children. Long ago, I was one of them.

Q: What do you think the novel says about family dynamics?

 

A: I hope the novel says that if you have a family, you won’t have a calm, orderly life, and that’s not only just fine, it’s often wonderful. Of course, it’s often troublesome, even heartbreaking, but it’s worth it. Children can hate each other in the morning and be best friends by afternoon.

 

Also, if you’re living in a family of any kind, don’t be surprised if you’re constantly interrupted. That can be annoying, or it can be a gift from the universe.

 

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

 

A: First of all, most of all, I hope the readers enjoy this book. I hope it makes readers laugh and nod their heads in recognition. I hope they close the book knowing that there are all kinds of family bonds and all kinds of love.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m writing a holiday novel titled Nantucket Christmas Stroll which will come out in September 2026. It takes place over one weekend when the Parson parents and their three grown children come together to throw their annual Stroll party. There will be champagne punch and revelations and arguments and kisses under the mistletoe. Everyone will have a surprise—and fun.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I love “meeting” my readers via zoom. I’m going to post a message on Facebook about holding a zoom with readers on Saturday, May 10. If you’re interested, let me know by commenting Yes! I’ll be posting details later.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Nancy Thayer.

Q&A with Elisha Cooper

 

 

 

Elisha Cooper is the author and illustrator of the new children's picture book Here Is a Book. His many other books include Emma Full of Wonders. He lives in New York City.

 

Q: You’ve said that a Zadie Smith essay was an inspiration for Here Is a Book--can you say more about that?

 

A: There’s a lovely line in Zadie Smith’s essay “Something to Do” where she writes, “Here is this banana bread, made with love.” When I read that, well, I laughed. And I thought, what a perfect way to describe creativity! How making something is both simple, and also wonderfully unknown.

 

It instantly made me think about books. Because making children’s books is a physical process — watercolor paints, pencil edits, pages held in our hands — and also has these indescribable moments of creation, where a story takes flight.

 

The story of Here is a Book is pretty simple. Beginning with an artist, out in her garden, where she gets the idea for her book. Then she creates in her studio, brings the art to her publisher, the book is printed, bound, delivered to a school’s library and into the hands of a child. But each physical step requires a little something extra, whether it’s love or structure or curiosity.

 

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

 

A: Together! I love when images and words play against each other. That’s why I think people love children’s books, their combination of visual and verbal storytelling.

 

In the same way, when I’m researching a subject and sketching out in the field (well, it’s usually a city street), I’m thinking of the words at the same time. The sound and the line. How it all will fit together and interact.

 

And even once I’m painting at my desk, I may edit the text in the afternoon in response to what I created in the morning. The relationship between words and art becomes enmeshed, in conversation. It’s a duet.

 

Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book called it “a winningly granular work that shows how components make up a whole...” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Oh, that was very kind. But I had to look up the word “granular.” Also, “winningly.” And why is it that when I read the word “granular” I started to think about “granola?” Did the words have the same Latin root? (doubtful). Or was that because I was hungry?

 

Anyway, I was touched by the reviewer’s line that the “components make up the whole” because that’s exactly what I was going for. That additive quality to making books, that bird-by-bird idea. To make something, start small, add more small things, stick with it.

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

 

A: Hmm, as soon as I read “take away” I thought about food again. Because, in England, that’s the phrase used to describe, for instance, the coffee and muffin we “take away” from a café. I was in London this winter, watching English Premier Soccer games, reading in cafés, and one of the joys of travel is noticing differences in language, which brings us back to children’s books.

 

Did you notice that I’m not answering your question? Maybe that’s because, I think, how readers receive our books is not quite up to us. So while my hope may be that children will be inspired to creativity here, I’m also wondering if something happens when readers make a book their own.

 

I remember being in a bookstore a few years ago — Three Lives & Co. Booksellers, my wonderful local independent — and saw two girls reading Big Cat, Little Cat. They were smiling, pointing at one of the cats, and in that moment it felt like what I had created was passing onward, and no longer belonged to me. Which was humbling, and sort of cool. I’m looking forward to that moment for Here is a Book.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on my second cortado! (and yes, I’m going to keep stirring the food subtext). I just finished painting a children’s book about a cat who thinks he’s a bird. It’s out next year, called The Rare Bird. I’m also playing with some board book ideas.

 

Mostly I’ve been writing essays about the creative process. How we write, how we create. How we all can be kind to ourselves in this messy process.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: We should know how to sew. We should know how to bake bread. We should know how to walk the sidewalks of New York with dispatch, we should know that respecting our American universities is important and patriotic and…. Oh, wait, you’re asking about me!

 

I know, I know. I seem to be answering these questions in a rush, as if I’m highly caffeinated, but that’s because I am. I’m on my third cortado this morning. I haven’t eaten or slept in two days (which is almost true),

 

I took the red-eye in from Seattle last night, I was out West talking with booksellers from the Pacific Northwest, it was exciting to share Here is a Book with them, everything is run-on sentences now, I can’t wait to share my book with the wider world.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Louise Hegarty

 

Photo by Celeste Burdon

 

 

Louise Hegarty is the author of the new novel Fair Play. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Banshee. She lives in Cork, Ireland.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Fair Play, and how did you create your cast of characters? 

 

A: I have always been a fan of murder mysteries and thrillers. I grew up with murder mystery-loving parents and would watch episodes on Poirot and Miss Marple on the television.

 

I started thinking about a Golden Age-style detective novel that grapples with the aftermath of a sudden death on an emotional level. As I started to explore this idea a little more, I realised that the familiar structure of a whodunnit together with the fair play doctrine created the perfect environment to explore the emotions around death and grief.

 

I worked out who I wanted in my closed circle of suspects by thinking about the different types of friends you gather during different stages of your life: the childhood friend, the school friend, friends you meet at college and at work.

 

Q: The writer Colin Walsh said of the novel, “Dazzling, formally subversive, brimming with compassion, Fair Play explodes the conventions of a mystery in order to confront us with the genuinely mysterious.” What do you think of that description? 

 

A: My aim is always to write something that only I could write, and I enjoy exploring structure and form and genre in my writing. So I want my writing to be new and experimental but also just a good read. 

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

 

A: The title of the book comes from the fair play doctrine - one of the defining principles of Golden Age detective fiction: the concept that the reader should have “a sporting chance to solve the mystery.”

 

Life is very simple in a whodunnit. Everything feels safer – even when people are being murdered all around you – because the rules keep you tightly grasped. There is always a solution, a reveal, a simple narrative that helps everything make sense. But of course, real life isn’t merely a puzzle to be solved.

 

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

 

A: Just to enjoy it. 

 

Q: What are you working on now? 

 

A: I am currently working on another novel which will be very different from Fair Play but will still play with form and genre.

 

Q: Anything else we should know? 

 

A: I have a short story collection coming out in 2026 which will be published by Picador.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Nick Berg

 

 

 

 

Nick Berg is the author of the new book Shadows of Tehran. The book is based on his own life story. He was born in Tehran, moved to the United States, and served in Special Operations, later becoming a tech executive.

 

Q: Shadows of Tehran has been described as autofiction--how would you define the book?

 

A: That’s a fair description and one I’ve come to embrace. Shadows of Tehran walks a fine line between autobiography and fiction — it’s rooted in real emotion, real places, and very real memories, but it is shaped through storytelling. I call it an autobiographical novel.

 

The events in the book are drawn from my lived experience — growing up in Tehran during a time of chaos, navigating betrayal, abuse, and eventually escaping to America and joining the Special Operations.

 

However, the character of Ricardo gave me the freedom to step slightly outside myself — to process it all and build a narrative arc that could connect with readers beyond just the facts.

 

Autofiction, to me, means using fiction not to hide the truth but to explore it more deeply. It allowed me to delve into the emotional core of what happened and tell an honest story, even if not always literal.

 

Q: Did you need to do additional research to write the book?

 

A: Yes, I absolutely did. Even though much of Shadows of Tehran is based on my own life, memory can be foggy — especially when you're pulling from childhood trauma or high-stress environments like war zones. So, I had to go back and do the work.

 

I revisited historical records and old news articles and even reached out to people from that time — those who were still around and willing to talk. I needed to ensure the accuracy of the timeline of Iran’s revolution, the details of the Shah’s fall, and the atmosphere in Tehran.

 

The same applies to the military side — I conducted research into operations and protocols from the era when I served to verify the accuracy of the gear and settings I described. Research helped me ground the story in reality so that even when the book leans into novelistic storytelling, it still rings true.

 

Q: What impact did it have on you to write Shadows of Tehran?

 

A: Writing Shadows of Tehran changed me. Honestly, I didn’t expect it to hit as hard as it did. At first, it felt like I was telling a story — putting my past on paper, giving voice to Ricardo. But as the pages piled up, I realized I was finally facing things I’d buried for years.

 

The betrayal by my father, the violence at home, the guilt and grief of war… all of it came back, and writing forced me to sit with it. There were days I had to walk away from the manuscript because it hit too close. And on other days, when I felt lighter, as if I’d just let go of something heavy I’d been carrying for decades.

 

The process was painful, but it was also healing. It gave me clarity. It helped me understand why I made the choices I did — why I ran, why I fought, and why I kept certain aspects of myself hidden.

 

More than anything, it reminded me that survival isn’t the end of the story. Telling it is.

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

 

A: I hope readers walk away from Shadows of Tehran with a deeper understanding of what it means to survive—and to choose who you become after surviving.

 

This isn’t just a war story or a tale of rebellion. It’s about identity, about growing up between two worlds — Iranian and American — and trying to make sense of where you belong when you feel like you belong nowhere.

 

It’s about pain, yes, but also about resilience, about the fight to hold onto your humanity even when the world tries to strip it away.

 

If someone reads this book and feels less alone in their own struggle, if they see that it’s possible to come from darkness and still find a way to serve something greater, then it’s done its job. Ultimately, I hope it reminds people that the past doesn’t define you — how you face it does.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Currently, I’m working on a follow-up — a sequel that picks up where Shadows of Tehran left off, but one that builds upon the original. It digs into Ricardo’s life after the uniform comes off. What happens when the missions stop, but the war inside doesn’t?

 

It’s more introspective, less action-driven, but just as intense in a different way. I’m exploring themes of identity after service, healing from moral injury, and the challenge of building a normal life when you’ve spent years living in extremes.

 

I’m also toying with a few short stories — fictional, but all rooted in truth. Different characters, different places, but all circling the same question: how do you rebuild a self when the world you knew is gone? This time, it’s a slower, more reflective process. But I’m in it.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Yeah, just this: Shadows of Tehran isn’t just my story. It’s a story that belongs to anyone who’s ever lived between two cultures, carried the weight of family secrets, or tried to outrun the past only to find it catching up.

 

There’s a lot in the book about violence, war, and survival, but underneath all that, it’s really about love — the lack of it, the search for it, and what it means to give it to yourself finally.

 

And if there’s one thing I’d tell readers: don’t read this just for the action or the politics. Read it for the why. The heart of it is in the quiet moments — the ones where Ricardo is just a kid trying to make sense of a broken world. So, if you see yourself in those cracks — even a little — then this book was written for you.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Lynne Hugo

 

Photo by Alan deCourcy

 

 

Lynne Hugo is the author of the new novel Mothers of Fate. Her other books include the novel The Language of Kin. She lives in the Midwest.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Mothers of Fate, and how did you create your characters Deana and Monica?

 

A: Thank you so much for having me! I’ll start by saying that all my novels have at their heart some social issue that I think is important and multi-sided. I never aim or presume to offer answers, but rather to give readers a strong, gripping story in which sympathetic characters with understandable backstories, emotions, and motivations are somehow affected by that issue.

 

In Mothers of Fate that issue is adoption. I think many adopted children struggle with their origin stories; this has certainly been true in my own family and I’ve also found it an often emotionally weighted issue among the family members with whom I’ve worked in my other career as a licensed psychotherapist.

 

Birth mothers, adoptive mothers, and teenage/adult adoptees often harbor many unspoken questions and worries about each other, especially in the case of closed adoptions, although of course there can also be issues that arise in the  open adoptions that have become more common now.

 

In Mothers of Fate, I wanted to portray some typical question, fears, and conflicts.

 

Deana, a birth mother, has truly tried to respect what she understands to be the boundaries of closed adoptions—and 30-year-old Daniel’s adoptive parents would be fine with the mediated contact and invitation to meet that she seeks.

 

Monica, the attorney Deana finds to represent her, doesn’t seem to conflate Deana’s notions about closed adoption rules with how she’d feel were her own toddler’s birth mother to seek to meet her in 30 years—and if she did, it might have given her reason to refuse to take the case, but I needed this to really strongly hit home with a realistic fair argument for why, in a closed adoption, only the adoptee can conduct such a search.

 

So it made sense to give Monica’s wife, Angie, a compelling backstory, that of a child who’d been in multiple foster homes, before parental rights were terminated and she’d become an adoptee in a closed adoption, with excellent and devoted parents.

 

This also helped me to raise the stakes because taking the case (against her wife’s passionate insistence that she not) becomes an ethical issue for Monica, insistent on autonomy and control in her work even as it cost her dearly in her personal life.

 

That brings me to a secondary theme in Mothers of Fate: sexual politics and abuse of power in the workplace—especially the aftermath, and how it may affect a woman’s life years down the road.

 

When her wife wants to influence Monica not to take Deana’s case because she believes it’s “wrong,” another ethical conflict is involved for Monica.

 

She has to know that in her workplace, she has total control of decision-making according to her own professional judgment, which is that what Deana is hiring her to do is perfectly legal and aboveboard and has nothing to do with Monica’s own family.

 

She tries to explain to Angie what’s happened in her past to make professional autonomy so critical to her; the result is cataclysmic.  

 

I did quite a bit of research on that topic, and wanted to depict how common it was in the second half of the 20th century, and especially how usual it was for women to be blamed, even to blame themselves because the prevailing notion was that they must have invited it.

 

By citing a specific time frame, I am certainly not suggesting that it’s no longer a problem, only that it does happen that men are more often held accountable.

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

 

A: Mothers of Fate isn’t the original title, but it’s a much better one! The novel started out as “The Sparks from Distant Stars,” which was a reference to the notion that many people believe in: that our destinies are “written in the stars,” or that our fates are somehow determined by a destiny with which we are born.

 

One character lived out that belief and has suffered enormously for it—another character puts her marriage and family on the line, insisting that we are each  the mothers of our fates and that the course our lives take is a result of the choices we make.

 

Q: The writer Randy Susan Meyers said of the book, “Mothers of Fate places self-determination on the stand.” What do you think of that assessment?

 

A: It certainly goes right to a major theme of the novel: is there such a thing as destiny? Or is the course of our lives entirely a result of our own choices? I might have said, “Mothers of Fate puts destiny on the stand.” Both are accurate, in that major characters make very reasoned, and very passionate arguments for both that help explain their behaviors.

 

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

 

A: This is very usual for me—I thought I knew the ending and as I wrote, it changed and then changed again. Usually that’s why my sketched-out plan for any novel only goes to the climax and a couple of scenes immediately after that, now.

 

I am not a happily-ever-after writer, though—I have an aversion to writing a novel with an ending that’s neatly tied up with a red bow as if there’s ever a point in life in which there are no loose ends anywhere, and we know exactly what the future holds for sure.

 

But, on the other hand, I make sure the major crisis is resolved, and I never leave my readers without hope.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My next novel, which is under contract for the fall of 2026, is titled The Corners of the Sky and it concerns opiate addiction.

 

Such a painful topic for so many families—in this novel I especially thought it was important to depict how fentanyl is being hidden in other street drugs and many people have no idea that they’re taking it. The result has been tragic, horrendous sudden deaths.

 

I realize that saying this makes the novel sound like a total downer, but it’s really about two families coping, and coming together to protect the one person who can testify against the dealer who’s responsible.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Just a couple of  things: first, how grateful I am to be with a fine  publisher, to have an excellent publicist, and always, for my readers and those who review my books. And how much I appreciate being invited back to this lovely and smart blog. Thank you so much, Deborah!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Lynne Hugo.

Q&A with Julie Brill

 

 

Julie Brill is the author of the new memoir Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia. Brill, who is also a doula, has written the book Round the Circle: Doulas Share Their Experiences. She lives in the Boston area.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Hidden in Plain Sight, and how much did you know about your father's story as you were growing up?

 

A: My father told me his war stories from the time I was little. His early childhood memories were vivid, like short movie clips, so I could easily see his experiences through his eyes.

 

I could imagine what it was like for him to run through the streets holding his mother’s hand as they heard the terrible whistling of the German bombs overhead. I could see myself perched on an older cousin’s shoulders, making our way along the railroad tracks out of the bombed-out city.

 

As is common in the families of Holocaust survivors, I learned from specific stories first and then tried to plug them into the larger historical narrative.

 

However, because my family was from Yugoslavia, it was hard to learn that larger narrative. We mostly hear stories from survivors, so we know the events in Poland, Germany, and Hungary. So few Jews from Belgrade survived to pass down their memories. So, the story of the Holocaust in Serbia is mostly untold.

 

In Serbia, most Jews were murdered before Hitler’s Final Solution. My grandfather, like most of the Jewish men from Belgrade, was murdered before the U.S. even entered the war.

 

This isn’t a story of cattle cars or gas chambers. My family wasn’t unusual, most of the Jews in Eastern Europe were murdered by bullets close to where they lived. But we don’t hear much about that part. That’s why I wrote Hidden in Plain Sight.

 

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

 

A: Research was challenging because there just isn’t much available on the history of the Holocaust in Serbia.

 

I started by getting family documents from the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade, which was exciting because I could see generations of Brills in the records, starting with my great-great-grandfather, who came with his wife and children from what is now Slovakia.

 

I received all these birth certificates, for example, and the last one was for my father, who was born in 1938, less than three years before the start of the occupation.

 

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum was helpful, and they expedited their research because I was requesting with my father and there’s a special channel for survivors. They called me within a day or two of receiving my request. They provided information only recently made available from the Arolsen Archives in Germany.

 

One surprise was how accurate my father’s memories were because he was so young. His earliest memory is the German bombing of Belgrade and he wasn’t even 3 years old. Everything he’d said fit into the historical record. It was satisfying for both of us to learn the larger stories behind his flashbulb memories.

 

I also learned family history we hadn’t known, that was essentially stolen from us by the Nazis, that I could return to my father.

Q: The writer Menachem Kaiser said of the book, “In quiet, lovely prose, Julie Brill has delivered a powerful reminder of why our stories—personal, familial, historical—are so crucial. A moving excavation of a family story.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I love Menachem’s book Plunder for the way he captured a true-life story of a Holocaust descendant that is engrossing and, in some ways almost unbelievable. He shows how history is never over; each generation continues to interact in different ways with the past.

 

I’m grateful for what he wrote about Hidden in Plain Sight because his words reflect what I was trying to accomplish. I didn’t want to write something that was overacted or overblown.

 

I wanted to show why discovering my family’s story helped me understand my father and myself. I wanted the reader to see how the lives of ordinary people are important. To me, ordinary people, not kings and generals, make historical accounts interesting.

 

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

 

A: Hidden in Plain Sight tells my journey to uncover family secrets and stories. I hope that readers will consider their own family histories, talk to older family members, discover what documents are available to them. Everyone’s ancestors lived through history.

 

I think sometimes we think of history as something static, but the experiences I write about are of discovering more history. I accessed documents that weren’t available even a few years earlier.

 

The information I found and our trips to Serbia helped my father recall memories he couldn’t access before. We found family we hadn’t known existed who had more documents and photographs. I felt I was returning family history to my father and to my whole family that the Nazis had stolen.

 

Also, we are living through history now, so we need to pay attention and act. When we discuss the Holocaust, we say “never again.” What does that mean when genocides continue to happen?

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I started writing this memoir in 2017, before the events in the book conclude, so it gestated for seven years. Now that it’s out in the world, my focus is on promotion. I wrote so the story of the Serbian Jews would be known, not just my ancestors, but also those who have no descendants to remember and retell.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Thank you for interviewing me! I’d be happy to Zoom into your readers’ book clubs. More information on Hidden in Plain Sight and my in-person and virtual event schedule is at www.JulieBrill.com. My book launch is May 7 at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Find me on Instagram @juliesbrill.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb