Q&A with Omer Friedlander

 

Photo by Yam Traiber

 

 

Omer Friedlander is the author of the story collection The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land. He grew up in Israel and now lives in New York City.

 

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

 

A: I started writing more regularly during my year doing an MFA in Boston. But it was difficult. I felt like my writing was going nowhere. I was trying to write different things, none of which were working, but I felt as if I had no choice but to keep writing, hoping it will work out eventually. 

 

After that year in Boston, I moved to New York City. I lived in Flatbush with four other housemates and wrote almost every day at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn. I wrote the first draft of many of the stories over there. It was a short period of time, maybe six months. Then the revision process was longer, trickier, and uncertain in some ways. That took another year and a half or so.

 

Overall, I think the book was written very quickly. Maybe the reason for that is that it’s my first book, and therefore I had less expectations surrounding it, at least before I knew it would be published. Now, for better or worse, I’m a slower writer.

 

Q: In an interview with the Times of Israel, you were asked about writing this collection in English, and you said, “I think it’s a way of being both familiar with a place but also having a bit of an outsider’s point of view when I write in English I think it creates a little bit of distance, which allows me maybe to write about it in a way that’s more clear or at a different angle.” Can you say more about that?

 

A: The poet Yehuda Amichai says that a writer should never take anything for granted, not formulations or words or reality. For me writing in English about Israel is a way of not taking reality for granted, keeping my familiar world new and strange.

 

Q: You write from the perspective of a wide variety of characters. How do they come to you, and do you have any preferences in terms of the type of character you like to write about?

 

A: I am interested in characters that are outsiders, characters have lost something crucial to them, characters that struggle with the burden and weight of memory. I’m also interested in the inanimate, in the way objects can be containers for history. One way to reveal character is through their possessions, and in particular the things they have lost.

 

Charlie Baxter has a beautiful essay called “Things About to Disappear: The Writer as Curator.” In the essay he refers to the Book of Job. which opens with an inventory of Job’s possessions: 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 oxen, 500 donkeys, and so on.

 

Baxter writes that the nature of inventories suggests not only what’s been gained, but what’s about to be lost: “every inventory implies a plot involving loss…by adding up what seems to be an account of fullness, they seem to create exactly the opposite effect, which is that of an emptying out…the shadow is more visible than the body that casts it.”

 

Q: Given that these stories mostly take place in Israel, do you have a sense of what you hope readers take away from the stories about Israel itself?

 

A: Writing about a surreal place such as Israel is a balancing act. Sometimes, true stories feel like total fantasy. 

 

In Israel, as you may know, any forgotten backpack is a potential bomb. As a kid, I had been known to daydream from time to time, and so it came as no surprise to anyone that one day I left my schoolbag on a bench in the bus station. It was apparently reported as being suspicious, and the bomb squad unit sent a robot to blow it up.

 

When I finally remembered my backpack and where I had left it, I returned to the bus stop, and it was gone. I complained to my teacher the next day: I lost my homework because my schoolbag was blown up. The Israeli version of “the dog ate my homework.”

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on a novel called The Glass Golem, forthcoming from Random House. I don’t like to talk too much about a work in progress, but I think it will be quite different to the stories. Not only in terms of form, but also in the sense that with every new writing project you’re teaching yourself to write all over again.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Jan. 6

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Jan. 6, 1931: E.L. Doctorow born.

Q&A with Jim Popkin

 

 

 

Jim Popkin is the author of the new book Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America's Most Dangerous Female Spy--and the Sister She Betrayed. A former NBC News producer and correspondent, his work also has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Washington Post Magazine and WIRED. He lives in Washington, D.C.

 

Q: What inspired you to write this book about the spy Ana Montes, and how long did you work on this project?

 

A: I first heard about Ana Montes right after 9-11, when Ana was arrested in Washington. But since I was covering the terror attacks at the time for NBC News, I didn’t have the bandwidth to pursue her story.

 

It wasn’t until I learned that Ana had bought my college roommate’s condo in Washington that I really began to focus on her story. I had spent so much time in that apartment, in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, and it made me feel a personal connection to the story.

Several years later, I interviewed the main investigators who had tracked down Ana. And I connected with Ana’s sister, Lucy Montes, who was working for the FBI in Miami as a translator.

 

Lucy informed that that, completely coincidentally, four of Ana’s family members worked for the FBI while Ana was secretly spying for the Cubans. They are all patriotic Americans and had no idea that the greatest Cuban spy of all was sitting right next to them at Thanksgivings, baptisms, and weddings.

I wrote a cover story on the Montes sisters for the late great Washington Post Magazine in 2013 and then, later, decided to write Code Name Blue Wren. Off and on, I’ve reporting on this story for 15 years.

 

Q: How would you describe the relationship between Montes and her sister, Lucy?

A: Lucy and Ana Montes have a complicated relationship, for obvious reasons. They were extremely close as little girls, and Ana played a protective, motherly role with her younger sister, Lucy. But as they grew, there was more and more of a distance between them.

 

It got so bad, and so strained, once Lucy was at the FBI and Ana was deep into her spying career with the Cubans (and simultaneously working as a top military analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA). Ana refused to share any details of her professional or personal life with Lucy, which Lucy found extremely odd. And then Ana began to feel the strain of keeping a lie all to herself, which led to psychological problems.

 

When Ana finally was arrested after 9-11, one of Lucy’s immediate emotions was relief. She was relieved to at long last understand why her sister had been so abrasive, so secretive, and so miserable for so long.

 

Q: Reporter Carol Leonnig said of the book, “Jim Popkin takes us deep into a long-ignored story of an intel officer who went rogue, spilling US secrets to Cuba, endangering US operatives, and tricking presidents and her own sister at the FBI in the process.” What do you think of that description, and why do you think Montes’ story didn't receive more attention?

 

A: Ana became an important analyst in the US intelligence community, and one of the US government’s top subject-matter experts on Cuba. She is smart and diligent and was really good at her day job.

 

She kept getting raises and promotions and very few of her colleagues ever suspected that she was turning around and sharing with Cuba all that classified information she devoured every day, legally, as a DIA rising star.

 

But Carol is right. Ana had them all fooled. If it weren’t for a very brave NSA analyst who, ironically, is Cuban-American, this case might never have been solved. She worked with DIA investigators to identify Montes as a spy and then had to convince the FBI they were right.

 

Why didn’t the case get more attention? It’s all about timing. The FBI arrested Ana 10 days after 9-11, and her story simply got lost in the shuffle. The headlines quickly came and went. I’m convinced that Ana would be thought of in the same rogue’s gallery with spies Rick Ames and Robert Hanssen if she had been arrested before the 9-11 attacks.

Q: Ana Montes is set to be released in the next few days--what do you see looking ahead for her?

 

A: Ana will be on probation for five years after her release, and under tight restrictions. I believe she will keep her head down and move in with sympathetic relatives who will help her. The last thing she wants is to be sent back to prison. She was housed for decades in one of the toughest women’s prisons in the nation, and will not want to risk going back.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m actively looking for my next nonfiction book idea. I loved the process of writing Code Name Blue Wren, and have the bug now.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Shirley Russak Wachtel

 

 

 

Shirley Russak Wachtel is the author of the new novel A Castle in Brooklyn. Her other books include the story collection Three for a Dollar. She teaches English literature at Middlesex College, and she lives in East Brunswick, New Jersey.

 

Q: What inspired you to write A Castle in Brooklyn, and how did you create your characters Jacob, Esther, and Zalman?

 

A: A Castle in Brooklyn, like all my writing, was inspired by my family. My parents were Holocaust survivors; in fact, my father, like Jacob, was the only survivor in his family. Jacob, Esther, and Zalman represent individuals like my parents, who experience hardship and yearn for a better life in America.

 

For Jacob, that means building the home he has always dreamed of, and along with it, rebuilding the family he has lost.

 

Esther, like my own mother and so many others of the period, learns to reinvent herself as experiences change her. She evolves from a young working woman to housewife, and ultimately someone who finds a sense of fulfillment in a teaching career (like myself) and at home.

 

Zalman is like many people I have known who delight in a close friendship, doing all they can to help others, but eventually discovering their own abilities and carving out a life for themselves.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamic among the three?

 

A: What binds these three characters is their love for Jacob. Zalman loves Jacob not only because he saved his life, but also because he admires his passion, his drive as he pursues home and family, a life Zalman wants to be a part of.

 

Esther too loves Jacob’s drive, loves him in all the ways a wife can love her husband so that she is even willing to give up a business career to stay home. Later in the novel, she is not quite sure about how to deal with Zalman’s conflicted feelings, but only knows that the three must stay together at all costs.

Jacob comes to understand this too, even though it is too late to restore that dynamic. It is Jacob’s passion that draws the others to him, but also what drives his friend away.

 

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

 

A: My intent in writing the novel was to show the life of a home, how the home begins, how it is changed as people come to live there, and ultimately, how it finds its purpose. I usually begin my writing knowing how a novel will end. I wanted the novel to come full circle, ultimately fulfilling Jacob’s dream, and I think I have accomplished that.

 

As for changes, there are certainly many. As I began writing, I realized that Jacob, his wife, and friend and their relationship became central to the story. While Riku and Francine’s life in the home is different from Jacob’s family, I hope readers will be able to see certain parallels and ironic moments in the tale.

 

While I do have a general idea of where the novel is headed, it is the characters who lead me into their stories. I was surprised to see Zalman as a farmer, and while I knew that a tragedy would change the course of the novel, I didn’t know exactly how that would occur until I wrote it.

 

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

 

A: I write about family, friendship, and dreams. These are ideas we can all relate to. Whether they are newly arrived immigrants, people who have lifelong friends, females trying to establish themselves in a career, or those who have experienced loss, it is my hope that readers will see themselves in A Castle in Brooklyn.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I am currently revising a novel tentatively titled My Father’s Songs, which is also about family, but one with a very different dynamic from Jacob’s.  It is a contemporary tale of a girl who is abused but comforted by the “songs,” or poems, written by her father, which she keeps in a dresser drawer. Like Jacob, she is driven to succeed under difficult circumstances.

 

I am also in the middle of writing another novel, this one about a young woman who is a baker during the 1970s and is haunted by her parents’ experiences in the Holocaust.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I am very excited to announce that a launch event for my book will be held at Middlesex College, where I am an English professor, on Jan. 26 at 5pm in Crabiel Hall 102 & 104 (the New Brunswick Rooms) in Edison, New Jersey. If any readers are in the area, I would love to meet them personally!

 

Also, I want to mention that the publication of this book is the culmination of my lifelong dream. If you work hard and long enough, then nothing, NOTHING is impossible.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Jan. 4

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Jan. 4, 1943: Doris Kearns Goodwin born.

Q&A with Nicole Kronzer

 

 

Nicole Kronzer is the author of the new young adult novel The Roof Over Our Heads. She also has written the YA novel Unscripted. A former actor, she teaches English and creative writing. She lives in Minneapolis.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Roof Over Our Heads, and how did you create your character Finn?

 

A: There’s a whimsical answer to this question: I love old houses, treasure hunting, theatre kids, romance, and comedy. This book is all of that! 

 

But, like in the book, there’s a much more serious answer underneath all that whimsy, and it has a lot to do with identity and belonging.

 

I teach high school English–mostly seniors–and it’s such a privilege to stand by students as they investigate the world and themselves and try to figure out who they are and their place in the world. When I was their age, I struggled so much with the answers to those questions. It has taken me decades to figure out just some of the answers. 

 

So Finn comes from a multi-racial family (like me), is trying to figure out how to navigate the expectations of his family and society and his friends (me, too), and to be okay with all of himself–even when other people aren’t (oh…).

 

Finn came out of my heart to lead the way to understanding and acceptance of myself. I didn’t know that’s what he was doing until the book was done. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop calls books “mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors” for readers. Finn has been all three of those things for me, too. 

 

Q: The author Carrie Mesrobian said of the book, “A fun, joyful, and multi-genre romp—with murder mystery, treasure hunts, romance, and historical fiction, to name a few—The Roof Over Our Heads is full of all the juicy backstage intrigue theater fans will love.” What do you think of that description, especially regarding the idea of a multi-genre novel?

 

A: I love that description. As far as it being a multi-genre novel, I suppose it technically is! Between the prose and the scenes from the play we see as well as the newspaper articles and social media posts–yeah! That’s a pile of genres! 

 

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

 

A: Oooh good question. I knew some of it–what Finn would learn and who he’d end up with and that there would be an issue with a doorknob–but my original outline ends way earlier than the book actually ends now.

 

While there is totally a love story in this book, there isn’t just a romantic love story. There’s also a love story about a family, and that was another something that I only discovered along the way. But the last line–which I love–stayed the same from my first draft. (After I axed the epilogue. Woof.) 

 

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

 

A: One thing I tell my seniors is that you have to follow the spark in your heart. And as much as you might love your adults, you are the one who has to live your life–not them. I see teenagers make choices that they think will bring them security or approval, but your soul can’t thrive on those things alone.

 

Somehow, this message ended up in the book in the mouth of my bro-y organ performance major, Magnus Torvald. But Magnus also tells us he understands he won’t be able to only play the organ for a living, but there has to be organ-playing in it.

 

Award-winning author Elana K. Arnold tells writers (and all artists) to have an “alongside plan.” It’s not a back-up plan–it’s the thing you do that pays the rent alongside the work of your heart. YOUR heart. And as we know, the heart is a pretty important part of the body!

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: So much and nothing I can talk specifically about yet. Publishing is weird! But rest assured it’s more classic me: funny stuff mixed with serious stuff with plenty of hope wrapped up together.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The cover of Roof is so gorgeous, and the illustrator is UK-based artist Andrew Hudson. Go check out his work! 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Jay Hosler

 

 

 

Jay Hosler is the author and illustrator of the new middle grade graphic novel Santiago!: Santiago Ramón y Cajal--Artist, Scientist, Troublemaker. Hosler's other books include The Way of the Hive. He is a biologist and cartoonist who is on the faculty of Juniata College.

 

Q: Why did you decide to create a graphic novel about artist and scientist Santiago Ramon y Cajal?

 

A: I was introduced to Cajal as a graduate student and was immediately inspired by a scientist who made his mark with his artistic and storytelling skills. That was a very personal connection for me and I think that is what is required to tell good stories in general but especially stories about science and the natural world.

 

His struggles and his doubts were also things I could relate to, and that helps me to enrich the story and art.

 

Cajal wanted to be an artist as a kid but his dad told him he had to be a doctor so he figured out how to do both and he won the Nobel Prize. Obviously I share his love of art and science, but I was also drawn to his differences. Cajal was a troublemaker as a kid. I was (am) a goody-two shoes. Telling his story allowed me to embody my inner naughty middle schooler and it was a blast.

 

Another difference that was interesting to explore was his conflict with his parents. I had amazing support as a kid, but I think most of us can imagine how tough life would be if we hadn’t. It was a painful to write that conflict because I could feel his disappointment, even though I had never experienced anything like it.

 

I imagine there are many kids who have had to deal with this and I hope seeing how Santiago navigated things may be helpful for them.

 

Q: How did you research Cajal’s life, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I used several sources to verify specific elements of his past, but relied most heavily on his 600-page memoir Recollections of My Life. He outlined his youth in remarkable detail, which made it possible for me to construct a story about his early years with so much interesting detail.

What surprised me most was discovering that he had actually written several short fictional stories that he used to explain the science of the time. I thought it was cool that I was trying to use narrative in the same way he did to explain his life and his scientific discoveries.

 

Q: The book's subtitle is "Artist, Scientist, Troublemaker." How did Cajal unite the three, and what do you see as his legacy today?

 

A: Cajal was a troublemaker as a kid but the trouble he made was often in the defiance of his parents demand that he not make art. This led his to work on his artistic skills in private, often manufacturing his own paints and tools.

 

This time working and hiding away from his folks led him into nature and a deep appreciation for the natural world. Soon his art turned to focusing on subjects in the wild and the skills he had developed as an artist became useful for recording what he saw and capturing the specific beauty of the natural world.

 

He united what I consider the three fundamental aspects of human creativity: science, art, and storytelling.

 

The legacy of his work researching and illustrating the nervous system was to fundamentally change how we think about thinking. He provided conclusive evidence that the nervous system was composed of several separate cells that talked to each other to send information around the body. His work laid the foundations for modern neuroscience.

 

Q: The Kirkus Review of the book says, in part, “Slapstick humor and stylized, exaggerated representations of an impish Santiago contribute to the story’s liveliness and fast pace.” How did you create your illustrations, and did you work on the text and illustrations simultaneously?

 

A: I start from a script which I essentially act out and read aloud to be sure I have decent flow of language. When I think I’m close, I print it out and prepare to draw.

 

As I’m writing I can generally envision what the page will look like, but when I start putting pencil to paper the staging of scenes or camera angles of panels start to feedback on the script. So, I take the script and thumbnail a page and those thumbnails may feedback and make me adjust the scripts which may in turn change the art and so on.

 

Once the cycle of feedback starts it can end up altering the trajectory of the passage, the personality of a character, and sometimes the entire book.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on a book about a cartoon ant who was born into a real world of ants.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Just that I am grateful for this opportunity to talk about Santiago! I love that kid.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb