May 3, 1896: Dodie Smith born.
Friday, May 3, 2019
Thursday, May 2, 2019
Q&A with Mira Jacob
Mira Jacob is the author of the new graphic memoir Good Talk. She also has written the novel The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing, and her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times and Electric Literature. She lives in Brooklyn.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for Good Talk, and why
did you choose the form of a graphic memoir?
A: Actually, the conversations themselves chose the format.
My son was asking me a lot of questions about being brown in America, and I
didn’t know how to answer him.
I kept trying to write an essay about it, but I froze up
every time because we were living in a country in which no story could ever be
bad enough, no feeling could ever be scary enough. As many times as I tried to
position us, I felt the gaze of the disbeliever. And I was exhausted.
So drawing the conversations just felt like a shortcut.
Readers could choose to read our conversation or not, but I didn’t have to
explain the reality of our situation any more, or beg anyone to care about it.
Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify
for you?
A: You know when people say "Good talk"? When they
haven't had one. When they've left the conversation confused or off-kilter
or unsure of what just happened--i.e. 95 percent of all our conversations.
And yet we try, over and over again, to talk to each other.
There is something so endearing and sweet and weird about that to
me--this very human impulse to be understood, and to believe that will
happen when we push noises through our mouths. I wanted to get to all the
layers a conversation can be.
Q: What do your family members think of the book?
A: If they hate it, they haven't told me.
In general, my family has been remarkably cool about
this going into the world. I don't doubt that some of them
are uncomfortable with parts of it, but I'm not overly worried about
their discomfort either. It's an uncomfortable time for many, many people,
and for far worse reasons. A little introspection between family is necessary
and good.
Q: Celeste Ng wrote of the book, "Good Talk isn't just
Mira Jacob's personal story. It also illuminates the increasingly fractured
world we live in." What do you hope readers take away from Good Talk?
A: These conversations are the ones that are particular to
my life, but I think everyone has things that have been said to them, and
things they've said to other people, that live inside them on repeat
because they are too scared to investigate what those things mean.
My hope is that by reading mine, some of theirs might
bubble up too, and reveal themselves as not so scary. I think when we have that
kind of patience with ourselves, we find it for other people, too.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Good Talk has been optioned and I am working on turning
it into a television show.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Mira Jacob.
Q&A with Carolyn Meyer
Carolyn Meyer is the author of Girl with Brush and Canvas, a new novel for older kids. It focuses on the life of artist Georgia O'Keeffe. Meyer's many other books include the novel Girl with a Camera, about photographer Margaret Bourke-White. Meyer lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Q: Why did you choose artist Georgia O'Keeffe as the subject
of your new novel?
A: After writing so many historical novels about European
royalty, my interest refocused on Americans: Margaret Bourke-White; and the
Harvey Girls with their New Mexico roots. Georgia O’Keeffe, of course, is the
iconic New Mexican artist, and she seemed such an obvious choice that I wonder
why I didn’t think of her sooner.
Q: Your most recent previous novel focused on photographer
Margaret Bourke-White. What similarities and differences do you see between the
two?
A: They were both strong, independent women at a time when
being strong and independent was not a feminine virtue. Thank goodness that has
changed! Margaret struck me as being an extrovert, putting herself Out There,
while Georgia is much more introverted. I doubt that either of them was easy to
get along with, although they’d have been great to have at a dinner table.
Q: How did you research this book, and did you learn
anything especially surprising?
A: I read biographies, looked at art books, and of course
visited the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, an hour from where I live in
Albuquerque. I’m familiar with many of the areas that she visited and painted.
It’s always fun to discover something quirky, like Georgia’s decision to learn
to drive an automobile and how THAT turned out!
Q: What do you see as O'Keeffe's legacy today?
A: Her artistic vision was unique. Her paintings are
instantly recognizable and always exciting.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: This is going to surprise you, but I’ve made a quantum
leap in terms of a career. A couple of years ago I signed up for an improv
comedy class - completely outside my comfort zone, and of course I was decades
older than the other “kids” in the class.
I loved it, even though it scared me half to death, and from
there I went on to performing standup comedy and making use of my storytelling
skills. In February my one-woman show opened here in Albuquerque, and after 10
sold-out shows I’m getting ready to take it on the road.
I’ve been invited to perform “Don’t Call Me Young Lady!” at
the United Solo Theatre Festival in New York in October. It’s a new world and a
whole new life. Of course there’s probably a book in there somewhere, but I’m
not ready to write it yet.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Carolyn Meyer.
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
Q&A with Angie Kim
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| Angie Kim, photo by Tim Coburn |
Angie Kim is the author of the new novel Miracle Creek. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Vogue and The New York Times. A former trial lawyer, she lives in Northern Virginia.
Q: How did you come up with
the idea for Miracle Creek?
A: Miracle Creek is centered
on a fatal fire and explosion in a hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) chamber.
HBOT is a real medical treatment used in hospitals as a treatment for carbon
monoxide poisoning and diving accidents, and it’s increasingly being used as an
experimental treatment for a wide variety of conditions, ranging from
infertility to cerebral palsy and autism.
One of my kids, who has
celiac disease and ulcerative colitis, was an HBOT patient years ago in a
privately-run facility with a group chamber. It was an intense experience,
being sealed up in a submarine-like chamber with three other families for an
hour at a time for 40 consecutive “dives.”
We shared our life stories
with each other and were forced to deal with minor emergencies that came up
while we were sealed inside (including some temper tantrums, panic attacks, and
bathroom emergencies).
When I set out to write a
novel years later, I immediately thought of the chamber, a crucible in more
ways than one, and I wondered what we would have done if something truly
horrific had happened during a dive, when we were sealed inside with no way of
getting out.
Once I decided on a fire/explosion as the inciting incident, it
seemed natural to have a murder trial provide the main throughline, given my
experience as a former trial lawyer.
Q: You alternate among
several characters' viewpoints in the novel. Did you write the book in the
order in which it appears, or did you move things around as you wrote?
A: I largely wrote the book
in the order in which it appears. It was an iterative process in which I wrote
a rough and very general outline, wrote 2-3 chapters, then went back and
changed the outline, wrote another 2-3 chapters, changed the outline again, and
so forth.
Once the entire draft was
completed, I was able to look at the outline and make structural decisions,
some of which necessitated moving a few scenes and chapters (as well as adding
or deleting some). But for the most part, the iterative approach I used allowed
me to build from the bottom up without making huge changes in structure.
Q: Can you say more about how
your background as a lawyer affects your fiction writing?
A: I have experience working
as a trial lawyer, and my favorite part of being a litigator was being in the
courtroom, and cross-examining hostile witnesses in particular.
I don’t just love doing it
myself; it’s translated into a love of courtroom dramas in all forms, whether
it be movies, TV shows, books, plays, everything! I love the drama of it, the
psychological insight into the witnesses who squirm and try not to answer the
questions directed their way.
So when I set out to write a
novel with a mystery who-/how-/why-dunnit element, I decided to have the mystery
play out in a courtroom setting rather than, say, through a police
investigation.
As for the writing itself, my
experience as a trial lawyer made it both easier and harder to write the
courtroom scenes.
On one level, it was easier
because I knew what types of questions the lawyers should ask, how the trial
would be structured, and so forth.
But on another level, it was
more difficult because I was tempted to make it as realistic as possible and
follow all the standard rules of evidence and criminal procedure, which would
have made the novel 2,000 pages and made it harder to do things like have all
the characters sitting in the courtroom, listening and responding to each
other’s testimonies.
So I had to take a lot of
liberties in the courtroom, which the lawyer in me fought. In the end, though,
I had to remind myself that this is fiction, and I had to serve the story
first.
Q: How was the novel's title
chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Miracle Creek is the name
of the fictional town in which the HBOT chamber (named Miracle Submarine) is
located.
It was important for me to
have “Miracle” in the title, because that’s what so many of the parents in the
novel are chasing, whether it be Pak and Young, the Korean immigrant couple who
moved to the U.S. for a better life for their daughter Mary, or the parents of
the special-needs children who have elected to do HBOT in hopes of a miracle
treatment. They have all been displaced from their normal life and are
isolated, and they are desperate for connection and a sense of community.
Also, Dennis Lehane’s Mystic
River was one of the novels I had by my side as I wrote Miracle Creek. That
novel is one of my favorites of all time, and the voice, multiple-POV
structure, murder mystery plot combined with a literary feel were all things I
loved and tried to learn from, so I meant for Miracle Creek to be an homage of
sorts to Mystic River.
Q: What are you working on
now?
A: I’m busy working on
everything related to the release of Miracle Creek, including writing essays
about both the substance and process of writing Miracle Creek, doing radio and
magazine interviews, reading and signing at festivals and bookstores, and
discussing the novel with reviewers, bloggers, bookstagrammers, podcasters, and
readers. I hope to get back to work on my second novel soon.
A: I love hearing from
readers and discussing Miracle Creek with book clubs, so please feel free to
check out my website,
which has my contact information and special materials for book clubs!
The
website also has reviews, interviews, and my essays about everything from HBOT
and my immigration experience to writing courtroom scenes. Hope you enjoy it!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Q&A with Helen Scales
Helen Scales is the author of the new book Octopuses. A writer, marine biologist, and broadcaster, her other books include Eye of the Shoal and Spirals in Time. She teaches writing and marine biology at Cambridge University.
Q: Why did you decide to write this book about octopuses
(and why is it octopuses and not octopi)?
A: I was approached to write the book after the editor of
the series read my previous book Spirals in Time, about seashells and the
animals that make them. In that, I wrote about an obscure group of octopuses,
called argonauts, that re-evolved the ability to make shells (octopus ancestors
lost that ability millions of years ago).
And personally, I am a big octopus fan. I’ve seen them many
times, diving in various places around the world, and have always found them to
be intriguing, captivating animals. Each time I’ve seen one I’ve had a
strong sense that they're watching me and contemplating what I'm up to. There's
definitely something powerful going on behind their eyes.
And the octopusi/octopodes/octopuses question? You’ll have
to read the book to find out! (but I can hint that it has something to do with
an odd mixture of ancient languages brought into the modern day!).
Q: What are some of the most common perceptions and
misperceptions about the octopus?
A: A recent idea that has been doing the rounds on the
internet is that octopuses are aliens. They are certainly very strange,
wonderfully so, but there is really no evidence to suggest they came from outer
space. That didn’t stop a group of legitimate scientists (admittedly
physicists, not biologists) recently suggesting that octopus eggs could have
arrived on Earth, locked inside a frozen comet.
Rather than pondering an extra-terrestrial origin for
octopuses, I think a far more interesting question is to think of whether the
existence of octopuses raises the chances that there could be other intelligent
life forms, elsewhere in the universe.
What octopuses show us is that intelligent life evolved here
on Earth twice — once among the vertebrates (including us humans) and once
among the octopuses, which are invertebrates and only very distantly-related to
us creatures with backbones. So if it happened twice here, maybe thinking,
smart organisms could evolve elsewhere too.
And I do rather like idea that octopuses could take over as
the dominant, intelligent lifeforms on the Earth, if humans went extinct. But
there’s only one, rather drastic way of testing that theory.
Q: How did you research this book, and did you learn
anything that especially fascinated you?
A: I did a lot of reading to gather information and details
for the book, including both academic literature and other, longer books about
these incredible animals.
The challenge for me writing this Ladybird Expert book was
distilling ideas down to short prose, something I’ve not done before. The book
is made up of 24 mini-chapters, each taking a single page, with a piece of
original artwork accompanying each one. So I had to think carefully about what
to include in the book.
A story I tell, and one I find truly fascinating, is how the
octopuses lost their shells. There’s no way of knowing for sure why this
happened, but one theory holds that the ancestors of octopuses adopted a
shell-free life during a time called the Mesozoic Marine Revolution, between
160 and 100 million years ago when the oceans were a dangerous place, full of
giant predatory marine reptiles like ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs.
Some animals evolved thicker, tougher shells in response,
but octopuses seemed to have done the opposite; they lost their shells and
became nimble predators, able to escape the jaws of all those giant reptiles.
The part of the story that really intrigues me is that losing their shells may
have been the precursor that lead to octopuses evolving their large brains and
amazing intelligence.
Q: What do you see looking ahead when it comes to
discoveries about the octopus?
A: There is the big, enticing question of whether octopuses
are self-aware, whether they have a sense of consciousness. Testing for
consciousness in animals is tremendously difficult but octopuses show many
signs of higher intelligence that make them strong candidates. As and when
someone comes up with a way to test if an animal is conscious, then I'm sure
octopuses will be one of the first to test positive.
There is also the matter of how their brains evolved
independently from vertebrate brains. I think there will be great strides in
that too, as we come to understand more about the basis for intelligence and
the ecological drivers that lead to it.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: My next major book project is underway and for this one I
am focusing on life in the deep sea. My aim is to open a window into this
mysterious part of our world, to show some of the extraordinary discoveries
being made there and to reveal just how important and threatened the deep sea
is.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Octopuses, and other cephalopods including squid and
cuttlefish, are one of the few marine animals that seem to be faring well, so
far at least, in our changing world. Studies have shown their numbers have
increased over recent decades.
One possible explanation is that octopus predators,
including fish, have been depleted by overfishing so octopuses could be doing
well in their absence. Some species are able to adapt to rising temperatures
and increasing acidity. Whether this will continue to be the case we will see,
but for now they are doing well.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Helen Scales.
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