Q&A with Zeeva Bukai

  

Photo by Ghila Krajzman

 

 

Zeeva Bukai is the author of the new novel The World Between. She also has written the novel The Anatomy of Exile. She lives in Brooklyn. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The World Between, and how did you create your protagonist?

 

A: My mother was born in Siberia in 1940, at the start of World War II. Her family, like the narrator’s in The World Between, was deported from Poland to the Soviet Union.

 

I wanted to understand what it was like for a child to grow up in a children’s home in a Siberian labor camp. My grandmother could only visit once a week because of her work as a laundress for the Soviet army.

 

I considered the loneliness, fear, the lack of food and medicine my mother must have experienced, and all of this in the midst of a devastating war. I wanted to understand this aspect of my mother’s life, one she rarely spoke about.

 

And so, I imagined it and in imagining it, I created the narrator whose experiences in Siberia shape her life.  It seems fitting that she is a Yiddish actress, a woman from a fading world, trying on different personas; it’s a form of escapism until it isn’t.

 

Exploring being an actor in the waning Yiddish theater in New York City in the mid-20th century spoke to the ineffable element of loss that I was trying to get at. When her marriage ends, the only thing she wants to do is return to the place where her marriage began, where she was the happiest and saddest in her life.  

 

She returns to Tel Aviv but soon finds herself in a sanitorium and it’s unclear how she got there.

 

The questions at the heart of this novel are, what are the effects of war and deprivation on children and adults? How does this childhood war trauma affect these survivors in their adulthood? 

 

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

 

A: Everything I learned about the gulag was new to me. I read Anne Appelbaum’s seminal book, Gulag, and skimmed Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn’s The Gulag Archipelago to get a better understanding of the gulag system, and Tom Snyder’s Bloodlands to learn about the war and the Soviets’ role in it, especially in Poland.

 

I also read the poetry of Osip Mandelstam, and read about his time in the gulag, and Anna Akhmatova’s work to get at the visceral experience of what it was like in Siberia. The history of the gulag system was a sad, grueling, and brutal one.

 

To learn more about Yiddish theater I read Yiddish stories and plays: Sholem Aleichem’s Teyve the Milkman, adapted into Fiddler on the Roof, I.L. Peretz, A Night in the Old Marketplace, and I read S. Ansky’s Dybbuk, and watched an old movie of the play.

 

I researched the Yiddish theater in New York City and was surprised to learn that there were as many as 20 established Yiddish theaters at the turn of the 19th-20th century; this does not include the number of small venues and halls where down-on-their luck Yiddish actors performed.

 

Yiddish theater was so prominent on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that Second Avenue was referred to as the Yiddish Rialto or the Yiddish Broadway.

 

I was also surprised to learn how many famous Yiddish theater families there were and about the actors who transitioned from the Yiddish stage to Broadway and Hollywood: people like Molly Picon, the sweetheart of Second Avenue; as well as Stella Adler (actor, director, and teacher to such luminaries as Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro); Academy Award-winner Paul Muni; and Zero Mostel, to name a few.

 

Yiddish was their first language, and it was natural for them to act in that language. These actors changed the art of acting in Hollywood and on Broadway.

 

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

 

A: The title, The World Between, refers to the place between heaven and earth where the soul ascends and shatters and waits to be reborn. It is the nischt ahyn, nischt aher – the neither here nor there. The title also alludes to the idea of straddling two worlds.

 

Q: The author Max Gross said of the book, “The World Between is fragile. It’s mysterious. It’s wonderfully written. Zeeva Bukai has created characters who breathe with weighty, tragic experience.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I love this description. I think Max Gross gets it right. The World Between is fragile, with fragile characters who are vulnerable to the joys and heartaches, to the vagaries of life. They live in the land of memory and loss. The backdrop to their lives is the war and the trauma they endured.

 

The structure of the story is like a glass puzzle, you can see through the pieces but you’re not sure how it all fits together. That is where the mystery lies. We don’t know why the narrator is in a sanitorium and we go with her through the events of her life to find out why she landed there.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on a short story collection and I’ve begun a longer piece about a daughter who believes her father was lost in the war. By chance she and her mother learn that he’s alive and living in Tel Aviv.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’d like readers to know that this was a difficult story to tell and that I hope I told it well. Ultimately, it’s a story about children, trauma, memory, and loss, and, above all, love and all the ways we seek it.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Zeeva Bukai.  

Q&A with Jake Korell

   

 

 

Jake Korell is the author of the new novel The Second World. He lives in Los Angeles. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Second World, and how did you create your character Flip Buchanan?

 

A: I've always been drawn to outer space and imagining what's out there and what the future might look like—it's something I inherited from my family and never really shook.

 

About 10 years ago, when I was trying to break in as a television writer, I developed an adult animation pilot set in a Mars colony. Several dozen horrific drafts later, it settled into this strange, funny idea of a new society forming off-world and slowly repeating familiar patterns from human history. 

 

I kept returning to the project over the years in different forms—shelving it, dusting it off, turning it into a narrative podcast (twice), then shelving it again.

 

Eventually it dawned on me that there might be enough for a novel, even though I'd never really pictured myself writing one. What I had at first, though, felt more like a history book full of jokes than a story with a pulse. 

 

Flip emerged when I realized the book needed a human center. I borrowed him from a fictional space blog I'd written during one of those in-between phases, and once he was in place, everything clicked.

 

He became a lens for the world—someone perpetually in the background, living in the shadow of a much louder, more powerful father. Their relationship gave the story its emotional engine and a way to explore generational tension, ambition, and identity...just on Mars.

 

Q: How did you create the world of Mars in the novel?

 

A: Worldbuilding is my favorite part of storytelling—it's where it all starts for me. It's taking the familiar world we already live in, twisting it just enough, and finding the absurd places where it still feels uncomfortably real.

 

The tone and voice of the book grew directly out of that process, and once those were set, the characters and story began to really mesh together.

 

Practically speaking, I tend to build worlds by making a few lists. One is everything that exists in the real world—government, money, food, sports, media. Another is everything specific to the fictional setting, in this case Mars, outer space, and as many sci-fi tropes I could think of.

 

Then I mash those lists together and see what creates something new. Mars dollars became "crimsons," everyone lives under the iconic science fiction image of a giant glass biosphere dome, and I invented a new sport since balls in Earth sports would simply fly too far in Mars's lower gravity.

 

Even small details follow the same logic. If algae is grown more easily than anything else, it probably becomes the base for your cheap alcohol too. Hence, pond-scum IPAs, which I imagine taste exactly as bad as they sound.

 

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

 

A: I've always liked titles that carry more than one meaning, and The Second World ended up having a few layers to it. On the surface, it's literal—Mars is the second world humans inhabit.

 

But the title also reflects Flip's position in the story. He's never the standout, never the first to do anything, never remembered. He lives in the shadow of a father who's powerful, charismatic, and constantly in the spotlight, which leaves Flip occupying a quieter, more invisible world of second place and near-misses. 

 

There's also a historical echo built into the title. The society forming on Mars is new, but it's already repeating familiar patterns—the sense that we're always living through something for the second time, even when we convince ourselves it's unprecedented. All of those ideas felt like they lived comfortably under the same name. 

 

Q: Can you say more about the dynamic between Flip and his father?

 

A: Flip's relationship with his father sits at the emotional center of the book. He grows up in his father's shadow, constantly measuring himself against expectations he can never quite meet. From Flip's perspective, he always feels like a disappointment—someone who arrives a little too late or falls just short. 

 

Their dynamic mirrors a familiar generational tension: different values, different ideas of success, and a lot of talking past each other. There is genuine love between them, but it's buried under miscommunication, ego, and unspoken resentment, which makes their relationship both painful and deeply recognizable. And while Flip's father isn't based on my own...I did borrow a few things.  

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I'm working on a second book, which I'm really excited about. It's completely separate from The Second World and lives in a different genre, but it carries the same sense of humor and love of worldbuilding.

 

It's set in a modernized fairy tale world where Sleeping Beauty is a narcoleptic and dragons are bred to be airplanes. Two true-loves must fight to save their failing marriage, but their relationship might not survive fairy-dust drug lords, deep-sea-drilling mermaids, and the Big Bad Wolf of Wall Street as they quest (of course it's a quest!) to reclaim their lost connection.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I wanted this book to make people laugh first, and then, occasionally realize a few pages later that something heavier has settled in. On the surface, it's a light sci-fi story, but at its core it's very character-driven.

 

If readers connect with Flip, his relationships, and his sense of humor, then the book is doing exactly what it set out to do. Mixing humor with emotional weight is the space I'm most interested in exploring, and it's something I plan to keep leaning into in future work.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Gary Fields

  

Photo by Emma McGowan

 

 

 

Gary Fields is the author of the new novel The Book of Judges. Also an attorney and a computer scientist, he lives in the Los Angeles area. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Book of Judges?

 

A: Historical fiction and thrillers are two of my favorite genres. When those are combined well (Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Katherine Neville’s The Eight are great examples) you get the best of both worlds. I’ve also had a lifelong interest in human rights issues.

 

One day, after my wife had just finished reading a book in this mixed genre, she looked over at me and said the four words we all need to hear from time to time from our significant other: “You could do this.”

 

Three days later, I had the kernel of an idea for my novel. That kernel? What if there were some powerful secret that judges across history discovered—a secret that could change our world for the better today?

 

Q: The writer Jacqueline Friedland said of the book, “Spanning continents and centuries, The Book of Judges invites readers to consider the weight of justice and the enduring impact of the past on the present.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Nailed it! (No wonder she’s a bestselling novelist). The eight historical stories woven into my modern-day thriller are about judges from different cultures across the past 2,000 years who heroically seek justice in life-and-death human rights trials.

 

Not only are the issues they face still extremely relevant today (as forces continue to conspire to crush human rights) but they each uncover a startling secret that has the potential to radically change our modern-day world.        

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it?

 

A: Absolutely. I had the beginning and the end of the main story, and the basics of each of the historical stories. But the middle was a muddle. Leaving room there, both in the main story and in each of the historical stories, allowed me to more fully develop my plots, scenes, and characters as I went along.  

 

Q: How did you create your characters Josh, Sammi, and Mark?

 

A: Write what you know. That’s what they pound into our debut writers’ skulls. So I drew on my background as a lawyer and computer systems analyst in constructing the book’s plotlines. I drew on that same background, as well as my family, in creating Josh, Sammi, and Mark.

 

Besides the lawyer and systems analyst part, Josh has some of me and some of my two sons mixed into his personality. There’s some strongheadedness, some logical thinking to avoid heavy emotions, but a caring heart and a powerful sense of right and wrong. His past, however, is nothing like ours.

 

Sammi is definitely an amalgam of my wife and daughter. Eternal student, empath, sweet, sharp, and with endless grit. No matter where she is, a part of her is always somehow back in Brooklyn.

 

Mark draws from some of the lovable, quirky personalities I worked with back in my days in the tech world. He’s geek level 10, but definitely not to be underestimated.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m well into a sequel to The Book of Judges. It will be Book Two of The Words series.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: For more on The Book of Judges and me (plus an opportunity to read an extended version of one of the historical stories from the book, in which you’ll get an introduction to The Words), please check out my website: www.garyfields.com.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Steven D. Meed

  

 

 

Steven D. Meed is the translator of a new edition of his late mother's (Vladka Meed, 1921-2012) Holocaust memoir, On Both Sides of the Wall: A Resistance Fighter's Firsthand Account of the Warsaw Ghetto. The book was originally published in Yiddish in 1948. Steven Meed is a retired physician.

 

Q: How did this new edition of your mother’s book come about, and what role did you play?

 

A: Vladka, born Feige Peltel, was a young woman, 17 at the outset of the Holocaust. She was one of the members of the Jewish resistance that gradually organized  within the Ghetto and was part of the resistance that became the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

 

She was better known both during the war and after she came to the US as Vladka, which had been one of her early false identities during the war.

 

Her importance was that she was one of the earliest couriers, young women who carried documents, guns, and ammunition, and provided for the needs of the surviving Jews who survived after the uprising was crushed. 

 

She was there from the earliest days in the Ghetto throughout the German occupation and was responsible, sometimes directly, sometimes with other comrades, for saving the lives of several hundreds of other Jews in hiding in the Ghetto and on the Aryan side.

 

She was famous for her coolness in the most dangerous situations, her ability to avoid capture and arrest, and her dedication to the needs of her clients.

 

After the end the war, she was one of the first eyewitnesses to publish what she had seen in the Ghetto and uprising, and her firm belief that the most heroic acts done were the acts of the those around her in the Ghetto, who resisted by remaining as Jews and staying with their loved ones, even in the worst of conditions, and even when death was imminent.

Vladka Meed

 

Her memoir, which first appeared in a series of articles in 1946, and then was worked into a memoir published in 1948, was one of the first documents that depicted the humanity of the vast majority of the Jewish population.  

 

In 1971, I worked with my mother on creating an English translation of the text. This book appeared in several editions over the next 20 years, but has been out of print since 1992.

 

When I started the project I soon saw that the original English text and illustrations of the previous editions did not do justice to the eloquence of Vladka's original Yiddish text. 

 

Also, most contemporary readers would not be familiar with the actual events in the story, and the participants. 

 

After discussions with several historians, I decided to try to do an updated translation of the original translation that would contain the original memoir, but add to it extra material from subsequent oral histories done by Vladka.

 

These would emphasize her personal experiences, and would make it easier for the reader to follow the story and have a better sense of who Vladka was, and what led her to do what she did.

 

Q: How was the book initially received, and what impact did that have on your mother?

 

A: When she first arrived in New York City at age 24, Vladka was already known as a spellbinding speaker in Yiddish and Polish, travelling cross country to speak first to Jewish audiences, and then gradually in English as well.

 

She dedicated herself to the task of speaking about the Holocaust and at a time when few people were speaking about the experience of those who died and especially the experience of those who survived,  giving dignity to the stories of other survivors who found that those around them did not wish to talk about the reality of their experience.

 

Together with my father, she worked to eventually produce a proper memorial in the form of the USHMM in Washington, and supported the work of the Ghetto Fighters Museum and Yad Vashem in Israel.

 

For 25 years of her life she created a program for American high school teachers to train the next generation of “witnesses to the eyewitnesses.”

 

The responsibility for preserving the Yiddish culture and literature and song, as well as keeping the memory of those who perished now and in the future, was the responsibility of her life. 

 

Q: Especially given the increasing antisemitism in today’s world, what do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: There are so many messages that I would want to be transmitted.

 

First, to take away a sense of long-term roots of the antisemitism in Poland, and throughout Europe, beyond the Nazis, and how the entire world, with only few exceptions, turned its back on the Jews and refused to pay attention to the hostility and murder of some 90 percent of Polish Jewry.

 

Although the Nazis were responsible for building the structure of the ghettos and killing centers, they were supported by a large number of the local population who eagerly cooperated with Nazis to eradicate the Jews.

 

And yet, as Vladka tells the reader, if it weren't for the sadly all too few Christians in Poland who did help the Jews, then even the  handful (about 30,000 Jews in all Poland out of a prewar 3.3 million) would not have survived.  

 

Vladka's approach was to respect the few Poles who did help,  honor the memory of those "Righteous Gentiles," and try to educate the next generation of school-age students. She felt that supporting institutions against antisemitism was the best approach. She created a school teachers training program to train American teachers in how to teach the lessons of the Holocaust to a new generation.

 

She would have been deeply saddened by the swing of many back to embracing or accepting antisemitism. But she would have kept doing what she could do to help hold it back.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: When I started this project, I did not anticipate the flood of antisemitism that has been unleashed here in the US, and around the world.

 

But I still see this book as a tool, to teach those who read it about the universality of lessons about Holocaust, or the Jews, but represent an ongoing problem throughout the world.

 

I hope that this new translation and with the additional material added, will help more people, both Jew and Gentile, be attracted and fascinated by Vladka's story, and develop a better understanding of what happened in the Holocaust, and how it speaks to our time.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Feb. 26

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Feb. 26, 1802: Victor Hugo born. 

Q&A with Sofia Robleda

  

 

 

Sofia Robleda is the author of the new novel The Other Moctezuma Girls. She also has written the novel Daughter of Fire. Also a psychologist, she is originally from Mexico and lives in London. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Other Moctezuma Girls?

 

A: As I researched my debut novel, Daughter of Fire, I came across the story of Tecuichpoch, the last empress of the Mexica (more commonly known today as the Aztecs).

 

She was baptized with the Spanish name Isabel Moctezuma, and not only survived the smallpox epidemic that killed 90 percent of the population, a siege during the Spanish conquest, six marriages, and giving birth to seven children, but also managed to sue the Spanish Crown successfully enough that she ended up being the wealthiest landowner in New Spain.

 

She left behind a will that was highly contested by all her children, and which tore her family apart.

 

For years, I could not get her or her testament out of my mind. I clearly remember thinking of her as I gave birth to my son four and a half years ago – so she has been with me for a long time.

 

I simply find it appalling that people don’t know who she is, that she has been relegated to the sidelines of history, and I am on a mission to make sure as many people as possible know and are inspired by her story as I have been.

 

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

 

A: The research for this novel was intense and built on a lot of the foundations I had established with my previous novel, Daughter of Fire. However, unlike Daughter of Fire, which relates more to the Maya in the 16th century in Guatemala, I was now focussing on a completely different civilization, the Mexica.

 

To build this new picture, I obviously read as many books as I could – not only on the Mexica and Isabel Moctezuma (there are sadly not many books about her), but also on the customs and ways of life in 16th century Mexico, both pre- and post-colonization.

 

I went back to Mexico City in 2023 and visited several museums. There was a lot of “experiential” research too. I love this type of ground research, because it gives me that sensory information that history books lack sometimes, and really makes the setting come alive.

 

I took several workshops – one which took me canoeing around the remaining lake and chinampas in Xochimilco to learn about the 700-year-old system of agriculture the Mexica used – and another with a chef who is an expert in pre-Hispanic food.

 

I walked around the forest of Chapultepec, and I hiked the foot of the volcano of Iztaccihuatl with my sister and an expert mountain guide. It was an incredible amount of work!

 

I’m not sure if there was much that really “surprised” me from my research, per se, as there was a lot of overlap with the research I’d conducted from my debut novel on the 16th century history of Guatemala and the K’iche’ Maya.

 

However, there were many facts that touched and saddened me. The fact that only 2 percent of the lakes in Mexico City remain, for example, because they were drained by the Spanish and Mexican governments. That is something I continue to be devastated by and think about often.

 

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

 

A: The book title was chosen after a conversation with my agent, Johanna Castillo, who was originally an editor and is just brilliant.

 

It happened many years ago, before my debut was published, perhaps 2022 even, so I can’t remember the full details, but we were talking about how much I love Philippa Gregory, and how I wanted to break ground like she had done with 16th century England, and bring 16th century Mexico to the world stage.

 

We were talking about the overlap between the Tudors and the Moctezuma/Cortes court in terms of the intrigues and the women who have been sidelined from the historical narrative.

 

I’m not sure if we were discussing titles, or what we were saying but I must’ve said something like, “I want to write The Other Boleyn Girl for Mexico. I want the Moctezumas to be as well-known as the Tudors. I want to be the Mexican Philippa Gregory,” and she said, “Well, call it that, then! Call it The Other Moctezuma Girl.” And because there’s more than one in the novel, we made it plural.

 

Q: The author Mariely Lares called the book “a superb reclamation of history rarely seen through the ends of women who endured, researched intelligently and written with heart.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Mariely is an incredibly talented author of two gorgeous historical fantasy novels set in Mexico, and she is just as invested as me in deep-diving when researching her novels so it was a relief that she felt this way.

 

She was one of the first people to read The Other Moctezuma Girls, because of how much I value her opinion and her expertise. I feel like her words sum up what I was trying to achieve, so it is humbling to think I may have done it.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: There’s a very intriguing character in this novel that makes a plot-twisting appearance, and they’re someone I’d like to learn about and explore a bit further.

 

Once I have a bit more time, in between raising my son, and working part-time as a clinical psychologist, and editing/promoting this novel, I’m hoping I can get back into researching them and their life, and write my next novel!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: This book was written out of my deep love of Mexico and our people, and it fills me with a deep sense of anger and sadness that it is coming out at a time when Mexicans and Latines are being harassed, rounded up, abused and scapegoated in the United States.

 

I hope that those who read it are touched by and buoyed by the pride, strength, and resilience of Tecuichpoch and her daughters. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Sofia Robleda. 

Q&A with Sandra K. Griffith

  

Photo by Ric Griffith

 

 

 

 

Sandra K. Griffith is the author of the new novel One Beautiful Year of Normal. She is a psychologist, and she lives in West Virginia and in Georgia. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write One Beautiful Year of Normal, and how did you create your character August?

 

A: I've always remembered wanting to have a career both as a psychologist and a writer, but it wasn’t until I read a Jonathan Kellerman novel as a graduate student in the early '90s that I realized it was possible to have a foot in both worlds. (Jonathan Kellerman is a psychologist whose fictional character is as well.)

 

As an avid reader of coming-of-age stories, psychological thrillers, and family sagas, I wanted to write something that combined genres. I just regret it took me so long to do it!

 

I’ve been a psychologist for over 30 years with a busy practice that has primarily focused on children and adults who experience severe, debilitating issues, some of which present in unusual ways. The mother-daughter dynamic in One Beautiful Year of Normal was shaped by this.

 

The devastating effects of mental illnesses are not confined to the people who suffer from them. They spill over to everyone around them, and in August’s case, change the entire trajectory of her life. 

 

Q: The author Suzanne Simonetti said of your novel, “Moving and mysterious, One Beautiful Year of Normal is a riveting family drama which takes a hard look at unchecked psychological issues that can ricochet through the generations. What do you think of that description?

 

A: When I read that my first thought was I wish I’d written it! I understand why she’s a bestselling author!

 

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

 

A: The book was submitted with a different title, but Brooke Warner from She Writes Press called and suggested this one. It’s a line from the book and references the main character as a woman in her early 30s realizing for the first time that the only normal period in her life was the year she lived with her aunt when she was 12 years old. 

 

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

 

A: I wrote the first chapter first, then the last, and worked my way through it from there. I then rewrote every word at least a dozen times. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m just finishing a second book, which is a much faster-paced psychological thriller. It is not a sequel, but there are some crossover characters. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb