Q&A with Daria Sommers

  

 

 

Daria Sommers is the author of the new novel Sawadika American Girl. She is also a filmmaker and is the managing editor of VBC Magazine. She lives in New York. 

 

Q: How much was your new novel inspired by your own experiences growing up in Bangkok?

 

A: Sawadika American Girl is a work of historical fiction. However, the narrative elements that drive the story and the characters in it are drawn from the world I grew up in.

 

For example, the main character, Piper, studies piano with a Thai prince who was a student of the great Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau. That character is loosely based on a Thai prince who was my piano teacher and who studied with Arrau.

 

Piper has a high school friend who lives with her brother in a Bangkok hotel so they can both attend Bangkok’s college-accredited International High School while their parents work for the American embassy in Vientiane, Laos. That setup sounds wild but it happened.

 

What I want readers to know is that the events in the novel occurred in some form or another to me, or someone I knew, or they were part of the lore that you lived with as an American in Bangkok during the Vietnam War years.

 

Q: Did you need to do much additional research to write the book, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I was fortunate to inherit my father’s journals, letters, and program reports that detailed his USAID work in both Thailand and Vietnam. They were a great resource for the specifics of what he was up to, what USAID was doing and what the mood was for the Americans working over there at the time.

 

Equally important was what I got from my mother. Throughout the ‘60s and early ‘70s, she worked as a writer and art director for SAWADDI Magazine, a bimonthly publication of the American Women’s Club of Bangkok dedicated to stories on Thai art and culture. She kept more than a decades’ worth of copies.

 

Sometime in the 2000s, I saw them piled next to the trash bin at my parent’s house and swooped in to save them. I knew I was going to write this book and that they were research gold.

 

While I recalled a lot, the magazines served as a critical check on my memory. They were a great resource for street names, identifying what stores were where, and the location of old markets that no longer exist today.

 

A lot of the names and spellings I use in the book were taken from the magazine. That is important because my novel is told through the lens of the Americans who lived there. Getting that frame of reference right was important to me.

 

The Siam Society in Bangkok was also immensely helpful and responded to my crazy email requests with documents and important links to material I couldn’t access anywhere else.

 

About halfway through the book, I had an epiphany of sorts. I realized that this private, nagging sense I’ve carried with me that I’d grown up in an aberrant world, as wonderful as it was troublesome, was true.

 

In a way, writing the novel confirmed my own history for me and relieved me of that private burden. That was personally liberating. Telling stories really does matter.

 

Q: How did you create your character Piper?

 

A: My intent from the start was to make this a coming-of-age story with a 17-year-old female protagonist. That struck me as an unexpected yet powerful way to shed light on this hidden history. Even though I am younger than Piper, her voice represents my own. Why would I change that?

 

Growing up in Thailand during this period was, at times, great but it also came with enormous burdens and a lingering bewilderment at the world. An enduring dislocation. The war was always present. My character Piper is deeply aware of that. So was I.

 

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

 

A: I knew all the plot points in advance. However, I didn’t know how I was getting from point A to point B or point B to point C. I just dove in and started writing and the way forward always appeared. That was the fun part. Writers say it all the time because it is true. At one point, the characters take over. I followed their lead.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My next book takes place in during the summer of 2021. All I’ll say for now is that it is an uplifting, spirited story with some unexpected female protagonists that unfolds against the backdrop of the second wave of Covid, the George Floyd protests, and the imminent fall of Afghanistan.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Dan Rosenfeld

  

 

 

Dan Rosenfeld is the author of the new book The Confidence Equation: Three Keys to Unleashing Self-Confidence as an Introvert. He is also a psychologist, table tennis player, and comedian.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Confidence Equation?

 

A: The Confidence Equation started as a memoir. In the book, I share my personal story living with cerebral palsy and how I overcame my disability to become a professional athlete, national stand-up comedy champion, and Ph.D. psychologist.

 

While writing, though, I realized my story offered lessons other people can apply to their own lives too, so I turned it into a memoir/self-help hybrid. Throughout the book, I use moments from my personal story to share life lessons on how readers can overcome self-doubt and build self-confidence.

 

Q: What do you think are some of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about introverts?

 

A: Two of the most common perceptions and misconceptions about introverts are that they’re shy and don’t like people. Shyness is a fear of social judgment; introversion means you fuel up on energy by spending time alone.

 

Those are totally different things. An introvert can be completely confident and conformable in social settings, and love being around people, but just need alone time to recharge afterward. In fact, that’s how most introverts are.

 

Q: What do you see as the major roadblocks to feeling self-confident as an introvert?

 

A: I believe there are two major roadblocks to feeling self-confident as an introvert.

 

The first comes from living in a culture that idealizes extroversion. Many Western cultures reward boldness, quick talking, and constant sociability. When that’s the default template for a “successful person,” introverts can internalize the message that something is wrong with them.

 

The second roadblock, on a related note, is misreading your own needs as weakness. Needing to leave a party early, going quiet in a group brainstorm, or feeling drained after a long day around people can feel like personal failure rather than simply being how you’re wired.

 

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

 

A: Writing the book was therapeutic, as I reflected deeply on my life story and what each challenge I’ve faced has taught me. I believe the writing process brought me clarity and calm.

 

I hope readers take away clarity about themselves and their own lives, as well as a more compassionate attitude toward their own self-doubts and struggles. I hope readers leave the book with not only an understanding that self-confidence looks different for each person, but also a clearer idea of what confidence means and feels like to them.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m currently working on a book about modern dating and why it’s uniquely frustrating for so many people. If anyone’s interested in reading that one, they can stay updated on its release by joining my newsletter: https://danrosenfeld.kit.com/45ef212e02

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I’m active on Instagram @dr.dan.phd (https://www.instagram.com/dr.dan.phd/), so people can follow my day-to-day writing there!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Lisa K. Richter

  

 

 

Lisa K. Richter is the author of the new memoir Fly, My Darling. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Santa Monica Review. She lives in Laguna Beach, California. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write this memoir?

 

A: Sometimes, perhaps only once in a lifetime, there comes along an event so consuming, so psychically altering, that it demands an investigation, an unraveling at the deepest level, to be given a name, to be written out, and through words, to understand, to uncover its truth.

 

For me, it was the entrance into my life of a remarkable woman. Lynda Roth dropped into my being, as my jazz instructor, when I was looking for a freer approach to music. I was 44 and married at the time with children; our unexpected and profound love changed everything about me and my life situation. Then a few years later she was gone from the world.  

 

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

 

A: Pinned to the cork wall in my office is a card from Lynda. A single wish she wrote me just weeks before she died. It watched me for years before I realized it was the place to begin. Three simple powerful words: Fly, my darling. A wish, an endearing command, a theme. Flying, freedom, improvisation in jazz, in life. Letting go. 

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of the book called it a “moving tribute to an unconventional person and the love she shared with the author.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: The description is true to the heart of the story. Lynda was certainly unconventional. She was spiritual, outspoken, and brutally honest—a brilliant and beloved musician. She shared her soul, her love, her life with me.

 

But the book is more than a loving tribute—it is also a personal journey of intense reflection and questioning, of family struggle, of newfound desire, of hope, resilience, and gut-wrenching grief. It is, as well, a musical tribute—a narrative composed of brief lyrical segments and shaped as a three-part musical composition.

 

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

 

A: Writing the book, revisiting those years, assembling all its parts from journal entries, emails, and taped conversations was, at times, a struggle. I had published poems and essays on the joy, eroticism, and grief of those years. But there was a wider story, a larger truth to be quarried.

 

I continued compiling scenes: childhood reflections, philosophical insights, riffs on mathematical and musical concepts, important moments from my larger world.

 

There followed the process of distilling each scene down to its essence. Paragraphs were reduced, sometimes to a single phrase, like the one asked of me early on, then echoed throughout the story: What is it you want, what?

 

Lynda had taught not to force a resolution. To listen. To allow each sound to speak, each riff to find its desired groove. I revisited the narratives of favorite authors to determine what made them work, to uncover the threads that held their stories together.

 

I worked out a rough chronological throughline with past events woven in—a story structure with the bones of a beginning (the searching and finding), a middle (the losing), and an end (the finding again). Segments were shuffled. And shuffled. Rhythms of anticipation, tension, and release began to flow. The process reinforced my belief that all writing is essentially musical when it is good.

 

I hope readers find comfort in the story’s honesty. That they trust to ask themselves the questions I did and realize that love is always worth its tribulations. It is never too late to begin anew.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am taking a close, revisionary look at the 28 essays in my themed online series, Searching for the Talisman (talismanofhappiness.com), with the intent of publishing them as a book. The essays are a meditation on family, food, the senses, and the Italian language.

 

Inspired by the 1929 classic Il Talismano della Felicità, inherited from my grandmother, my collection is a playful, personal inquiry into the culinary and (often poetic) life advice found in the historic tome of 1,320 pages. As a book, the essays will become a memoir of an entirely different sort, focusing on my Italian heritage and my love of cooking.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Memory holds so much. Some remembrances arrive as a salve, others shred us. And there are things which simply are too painful to write about, to share with the world. With memoir, it can be difficult to begin, difficult to continue. It can also feel nearly impossible to finish. But once you begin in earnest, it won’t let you rest until you do.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

June 7

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
June 7, 1917: Gwendolyn Brooks born.

Q&A with Andra Douglas

  

 

 

Andra Douglas is the author of the new novel Changing Cadence: Friendship, Football, and the Art of Transition. It's a sequel to her novel Black & Blue. She is a former quarterback and former owner of the New York Sharks football team, and she lives in New York City.

 

Q: Changing Cadence is a sequel to your previous book, Black & Blue--why did you decide to write this new novel about your character Christine?

A: I didn’t originally set out to write a sequel. Black & Blue explored identity, belonging, and what it meant for Christine to fight her way into a world that didn’t necessarily make room for her.

 

But after that story ended, I realized I was still thinking about her—not during the victories, but during the transitions. What happens when the thing that defined you begins to change? What happens when the game slows down and you’re forced to figure out who you are without the uniform, the structure, or the constant motion?

 

That felt deeply human to me, and honestly, very familiar.

 

In Changing Cadence: Friendship, Football, and the Art of Transition, Christine is older, more accomplished in some ways, but also more vulnerable. She owns the New York Sharks and is facing the end of an era while simultaneously watching her mother and her friends navigate aging and reinvention in Florida.

 

The story became less about proving yourself and more about learning how to let go, evolve, and stay connected to the people who shaped you.

 

And thankfully, humor survives all of it.

 

Q: The tennis star Billie Jean King called the book “a love letter to those who are committed to being their authentic selves.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: First of all, hearing Billie Jean King say anything positive about my work was surreal. She’s someone who changed the landscape for women in sports simply by refusing to shrink herself to fit expectations. So that description means a great deal to me.

 

I think she understood that the book isn’t really just about football. It’s about the tension between who we truly are and who the world is more comfortable with us being.

 

A lot of the characters in the book—Christine included—have spent years adapting, surviving, compartmentalizing, or armoring up in order to move through certain spaces. But underneath all of that is this desire to simply live honestly and be accepted without editing themselves.

 

So yes, I loved Billie Jean’s description because to me, authenticity isn’t always loud or triumphant. Sometimes it’s messy, funny, uncomfortable, or deeply quiet. Sometimes it’s just finally exhaling.

 

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

 

A: The title came from the idea of rhythm changing in life.

 

In football, cadence is the rhythm that starts the play. It signals movement, timing, readiness. But life also has cadences—family rhythms, career rhythms, emotional rhythms—and eventually those rhythms change whether we’re ready or not.

 

The book is really about learning how to move through those transitions without losing yourself.

 

There’s also something musical and emotional about the phrase “Changing Cadence” that I liked because the story shifts between humor and heartbreak, New York and Florida, competition and caregiving, endings and reinvention. The title seemed to hold all of that.

Q: What do you think the book says about the world of women’s tackle football?

 

A: I hope it shows how extraordinary and layered that world really is.

 

People often focus on the novelty of women playing tackle football, but what fascinated me was always the humanity inside it—the friendships, sacrifices, humor, heartbreak, obsession, resilience, and chosen family that developed around the game.

 

These athletes were balancing jobs, injuries, relationships, finances, and everyday life while playing a brutal, beautiful sport largely for the love of it. There’s something incredibly powerful about that.

 

I also think the book quietly asks why these stories haven’t been centered more often in sports culture. Women’s tackle football has existed for decades, yet so many people still react as though it’s some strange new concept. Meanwhile, the women involved have built entire communities and lifelong bonds around it.

 

The sport may be the backdrop, but the emotional stakes are universal.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m continuing to develop both Black & Blue and Changing Cadence for television and film, which has been exciting because the characters and relationships naturally lend themselves to that format.

 

I’m especially interested in preserving the humor and emotional complexity of the stories. I never wanted these characters to become symbols or inspirational slogans. They’re flawed, funny, sharp, stubborn, loyal people trying to navigate identity, ambition, aging, love, and belonging.

 

I’m also continuing to write. I suspect I always will.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Only that I hope people come away from the book feeling seen.

 

You don’t have to know anything about football to understand what it feels like to lose a version of yourself, to outgrow something you once loved, or to hold tightly to the people who helped shape your life.

 

And despite some of the heavier themes, the book is also very funny at times. The older women in Florida—the “Remoras”—might honestly steal the entire thing.

 

I’ve learned that humor is often how people survive change. That felt important to honor.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb  

Q&A with Tyson Stewart

  

 

 

Tyson Stewart is the author of the new novel The Return of the Nish. He is an associate professor at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario, and he is Anishinaabe of the Teme Augama Anishnabai. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Return of the Nish, and how did you create your characters Gerry Smith and Dale King?

 

A: I started writing the novel during the Covid lockdowns. I was walking around a bay (Wabi Bay in New Liskeard) near our house at the time. Much of the early draft was written in the context of a closeness to nature and reminiscing about my own childhood.

 

I wanted to write something that would allow me to explore facets of my own life, how I reconnected with my Anishinaabe relatives as an adult, while also blending that significant personal experience with something more…well, thrilling and suspenseful, like the kinds of films and literature that really excited me as a teenager.

 

Ultimately, I wrote this novel for my 18-year-old self. I thought, if I could impress that guy with something totally unexpected and fun, I’ve done my job.

 

The recent explosion of Indigenous creativity, especially Anishinaabe stories and films by Waubgeshig Rice, Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr., Darlene Naponse, and Karen McBride gave me the extra push I needed to “tell my story.” I’m also a big fan of the late Jeff Barnaby. I think his no-holds-barred approach to dialogue and dramatizing conflict is as influential as anything else.

 

I wanted to put my protagonist Gerry Smith through an unforgettable experience, like Luke’s journey in the original Star Wars trilogy or even the slightly naïve victim of an elaborate con in David Mamet’s The Spanish Prisoner.

 

Just because I was writing about something serious and emotionally true to me, I felt a duty to always entertain myself and the reader. This isn’t a documentary, it’s genre fiction. And I wanted to excel at the kind of art that I personally admire the most.

 

Dale King was the most fun to write. I just imagined an older Anishinaabe man who was dealing with failure and a large ego and mounting responsibilities. Someone who went down the wrong path at some point and never self-corrected.

 

It was liberating, and a tad scary, to contemplate this character’s motivations and actions. But I would rather write interesting, flawed Indigenous characters than censor my imagination in any way.

 

Q: How would you describe the relationship between Dale and his son, Gerry?

 

A: Ultimately, I think it’s good that they had this experience together. The troubling events at the heart of the story are retold three times throughout the novel: first, in the courtroom scene, then through Gerry’s eyes, and finally, in the last section focusing on Dale’s origin story.

 

One reader observed that it was fascinating to witness their budding relationship with the backdrop of crime and desperation. I suppose I wanted to put their relationship to the test and see what happened.

 

I think what becomes clear fairly early on is Gerry’s desire to have a normal relationship with his father. In other words, a relationship of some kind where both the son and father could learn about each other and enjoy each other’s company.

 

Gerry clings onto that hope way past the point of reason. But that’s what makes it a perfect con: of course, the son will believe and help his father with his predicament when the rest of the family has been so loving and welcoming to Gerry. Despite everything, the son wants to get to know his dad. Who can blame him?

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

 

A: As you can imagine, The Return of the Nish was not the original title of the novel. There were several others, which I will not mention.

 

The title was inspired by a painting that my cousin Blake Angeconeb made a few years ago. It’s an image of Darth Vader in a Woodlands-esque style complete with striking thought bubbles that, for me, represent all the different facets of the character, the bad, the good, and the spiritual.

 

Star Wars was such a big inspiration for the basic storyline that I’m still surprised the current title wasn’t the title from the get-go. I suppose I wanted to invite comparisons between the Nish and the Jedi, but it’s really the figure of Vader that I had in mind.

 

I think it signifies many things, but for sure something about returning home, returning to n’Daki Menan, after being away, and letting it transform you. For me, it’s about feeling less disconnected from family and the land.

 

I must give credit where credit is due. My wife Megan came up with the title while we were both looking at Blake’s painting. So, a family effort.

 

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

 

A: Tarantino has said somewhere that he just tries to get the characters talking to each other and then follows them down whatever path they choose or feels most organic. That’s a great idea for a novel, because it really forces you to get to know your characters and what makes them different from each other.

 

While the overall structure was always at the back of my mind, I tried not to sacrifice true-to-life experiences and spontaneity as I connected the dots and cranked up the tension of the story.

 

While there is a kind of fatalism to it all, I did not know exactly where all the chips would fall by the end. There were several different versions of the ending written along the way, but this one felt like the most impactful and inevitable.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m currently working on two books. The first is a history of film noir told through an Indigenous lens.

 

Covering an 80-year timespan, The World is Upside Down: Truth, Reconciliation, and Noir will explore classic noir's references to Indigeneity in Ride the Pink Horse (Montgomery, 1947), Key Largo (Huston, 1948), Devil's Doorway (Mann, 1950), and Ace in the Hole (Wilder, 1951), and the eventual and timely incorporation (or reappropriation) of noir themes and stylistics (e.g. non-linearity, alienation, and resentment) by contemporary Indigenous filmmakers in Rhymes for Young Ghouls (Barnaby, 2013), Falls Around Her (Naponse, 2018), Night Raiders (Goulet, 2021), Wild Indian (Corbine Jr., 2021), A Red Girl's Reasoning (Tailfeathers, 2012), and Biidaaban (The Dawn Comes, Strong, 2018).

 

The other is another novel, a stark thriller centered on Anishinaabekwe twins from Temagami. I can’t say too much about it yet, but I will say it is a metaphor for how this country (Canada) has treated Indigenous women throughout the years.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The Return of the Nish will be available on June 6 wherever books are sold.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Carolyn Crimi

  

 

 

Carolyn Crimi is the author of the new children's picture book Jayden Noticed. Her many other books include Just One Owl. She lives in Evanston, Illinois. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Jayden Noticed, and how did you create your character Jayden?

 

A: During the pandemic I watched a lot of webinars. In one of them, the writing coach asked everyone to create a list of themes or memories they’d like to explore.

 

After coming up with a list I circled “wishing,” which was big in my house growing up. My mom had me wishing on everything—eyelashes, four-leaf clovers, first blueberries of the season, first strawberries of the season, first corn on the cob of the season. If I accidentally wore something inside out, I had to make a wish.  If I found a penny, I had to make a wish.

 

I spent a lot of my time as a child wishing.

 

Wishing seemed like a good place to start a story. Initially, the manuscript was sort of a whimsical “how to” about collecting wishing rocks. My editor asked if I would consider making it more of a story about a kid who collected rocks, so of course I said yes. Once I started revising, I realized my main character loved nature and was noticing things that others might miss.

 

Q: What do you think Shamar Knight-Justice’s illustrations add to the story? 

 

A: Shamar adds a touch of magic to every illustration he creates. I especially love the illustration of Jayden finding his new wishing rock. Although I’ve never met him, I’m convinced Shamar is a Noticer.

 

Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book says, “Sensitive storytelling empathically captures Jayden’s experiences, yielding a supportive story about finding rock-solid stability amid life change.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: That reviewer captured the essence of the book perfectly. Before writing Jayden Noticed I had made a difficult move. I was definitely looking for “rock-solid stability amid life change.” Many of my books stem from struggles that I’ve faced. It’s cheap therapy.

 

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

 

A: Hope, always hope. That things will get better. That they can do hard things. That they will find a friend.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m tinkering with a few unfinished manuscripts. I can’t seem to decide which one to focus on right now.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Rock collecting is such an easy, inexpensive hobby. All you need is an empty mayonnaise jar. I’m hoping kids will try it after reading the book.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb