ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Jan. 29, 1860: Anton Chekhov born.
Thursday, January 29, 2026
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Q&A with Poppy Kuroki
Poppy Kuroki is the author of the new novel Passage to Tokyo. Her other books include Gate to Kagoshima. She lives in the UK.
Q: What inspired you to write Passage to Tokyo, and how did you create your character Yui?
A: After writing Gate to Kagoshima, I wanted to continue writing about Japanese history. I was attracted to the idea of making book 2 about a natural disaster rather than a war, and the 1920s was such a richly cultural time that was fascinating to research.
I was surprised how many people don’t know much about the 1923 earthquake, and real accounts of it make for an incredible, and tragic, story.
Yui, in some ways, is everything I wish I was more of: unafraid, ready to stand up for people, and sassy along with it. She is cool and passionate, which is why Chiyo loves her so much.
Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I visited the museum in Tokyo that commemorates the earthquake. It’s well worth visiting, as it has artists’ depictions of the events (they can be very upsetting, so it’s best not to visit with children). They even have the remains of bits of wall, bicycles, etc., that were damaged by the fires.
I also did research on homosexuality and the attitudes towards it back then. Since Japan has never been a Christian country, there is no historical oppression of homosexuals (that I’m aware of) and I wanted to make sure I got it right for the book.
The theme of Passage to Tokyo is being with the one you love even if society frowns upon it, such as Chiyo’s parents, and I wanted to continue the theme.
Q: Can you say more about the relationship between this novel and your novel Gate to Kagoshima?
A: It’s not a direct sequel, in fact the character starts off in 1995 (10 years before Gate to Kagoshima) but for those who have read book 1, there are some easter eggs.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A: As with Gate to Kagoshima, I hope people learn this important part of Japanese history, the bad and the ugly as well as the good. It would also be nice if readers could take away the reminder of the importance of family, both natural and found, and being with the person you love even through adversity.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Book 3! It’s set in the 16th century this time, which was very different from the 19th and 20th century. It’s a lot of fun to write, with new characters in the present and maybe some easter eggs too…
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Book 2 is out in January 2026 and Book 3 around January 2027. I also have a book released under the pseudonym Molly Reid called The Library of Second Chances, a cosy fantasy about a magic library in a small town in Derbyshire.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Q&A with Matthew F. Jones
Matthew F. Jones is the author of the new novel A Reckoning Up Black Cat Hollow. His other books include A Single Shot. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Q: What inspired you to write A Reckoning Up Black Cat Hollow, and how did you create your character Jack Spinks?
A: The entire novel was born from a single vision – a set of headlights coming at me on a dark, desolate road in rural upstate New York I was walking up after the bicycle I had been riding had a flat tire.
The next time I sat down to write I saw a driver behind those lights, a distracted man burdened by a heavy mental weight of some kind, and a girl the lights picked up who might have been real or might have been a vision borne of that mental weight.
That made me very interested in the man – Jack Spinks – in who he was, in what was weighing on him. As a writer who relies mostly on listening to his characters, I discovered those things mostly through Jack’s actions in trying to help the distraught girl his truck’s headlights picked up.
The more I wrote I realized Jack and the girl’s characters were in part a composite of people I knew or knew of in my own life.
Q: The author Brian Panowich said, “Matthew F. Jones is the true heir apparent to the kingdom of Cormac McCarthy.” What do you think of that comparison?
A: It’s an honor to be compared to a writer whose work I much admire.
I understand where the comparison comes from. McCarthy wrote dark, psychologically intense fiction that explores violence, morality and the human condition, as I do in much of my work, including in this novel.
Though it seems to me McCarthy’s work explores violence in universal terms, as an inevitable human condition removed from human choice or conscience, whereas my work explores the psychological aspects of violence and credits the existence of self-awareness and the ability of human beings to understand and confront their own guilt.
Though our work explores similar themes, McCarthy’s novels, it seems to me, take place in a sort of mythical landscape ruled by an elemental, cosmic force, devoid of God or choice, whereas my work is more earthly based and confronts those same themes in psychological, humanistic terms and credits the existence of human will.
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 have never known the ending of any novel I’ve written before I started it. To me that would be the same as knowing how a person’s life story would end before they’d lived it.
Part of the joy of writing for me is discovering through the writing who the characters are and where their story is going. It’s about trusting the characters you’ve created to take you on this journey.
That said, there were more than a few times when I realized I had gone in the wrong direction and had to go back to discover why. In those times it felt as if I was lost in a vast wilderness, searching for the one road that would lead out of it.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I had a working title for the novel that my publisher wasn’t enthralled with. She asked me to come up with some other options.
When I happened upon this one, it felt exactly right. I think any reader of the book will understand why. In one sense, the entire night that the book encompasses was Jack’s reckoning.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m superstitious about saying much about the novel I’m currently working on. Though a quite different story and setting from A Reckoning Up Black Cat Hollow, it is at the same time a gripping, psychological character study.
I’m also in the middle of reworking for the umpteenth time an original screenplay I wrote several years ago that on two separate occasions was close to being made before the funding fell through. It’s attached to a new director who’s known of and loved the script for close to 10 years. Hopefully, the third time will be the charm.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: My hope is that readers of A Reckoning Up Black Cat Hollow will love the novel as a gripping, pulse-pounding thriller and admire it as a psychological character study of a good, but deeply troubled man.
For whatever reason one chooses to read it, I hope they will enjoy it, and I am very grateful.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Q&A with Georgette Bennett
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Georgette Bennett is the author of the new book Half Jew – Full Life: The Unlikely Journey of a Voluntary Jew from Nazi Persecution to the American Dream. Her other books include Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By. She is also a sociologist and a journalist.
Q: What inspired you to write your new book about your relative Pips Phillips?
A: Pips was an important figure in my life. He and his wife met my parents and me at the pier when we arrived in New York City as stateless refugees. My father died within a year of our arrival and Pips became a kind of surrogate father.
He was a character – unfiltered, wildly inappropriate, funny; and passionate about a Jewish identity that he had constructed in the belly of the Nazi beast. When he died at age 93, he left me the rights to his story. And what a story it is!
The son of an Aryan mother and Jewish father born in interwar Berlin, he could have been spared the worst of the Nazi war on Jews. But the very week that the Nuremberg laws were enacted, he chose to become a bar mitzvah.
Even with the label “Jew” now permanently stuck on him, he would have been spared deportation so long as he was living with an Aryan parent. However, he gave up that protection when he fell in love with a full Jew and convinced her to go into hiding with him under the noses of her persecutors.
What followed was a cinematic series of adventures, both terrifying and farcical. And a story that’s different from most Holocaust stories in four ways: Pips was a voluntary Jew; he could have been spared the losses he suffered. While most Berlin Jews were deported, he was one of 6,000 who chose to take their chance by going underground.
He was arrested four times and escaped three times. He could have escaped a fourth time but realized that he had nowhere to go in a city that was largely destroyed and a Jewish population that was largely deported or killed.
Finally, Nazis didn’t just persecute him; on several occasions, Nazis saved his life. In the end, it wasn’t just the story that inspired me, but the unexpected paradoxes that it contained.
Beyond Pips himself, his story meshes with my own story. I’m a child of the Holocaust, born into a bombed-out apartment building in Budapest. Most of my family in both Poland and Hungary were murdered and, although my parents miraculously survived, they went through all the horrors of the Nazi machine.
That background inspired the work to which I’ve devoted the last 33 years of my life: interreligious relations, human rights, and conflict resolution. Prior to that, I had a groundbreaking career as a sociologist/criminologist.
I’ve always had an interest in the links between religion and violence, and all my books have explored the various forms of violence that we do to each other. In the case of this book, I looked at violence through the lens of a single person’s life story.
The second part of the book focuses on Pips’s new life in America – a life as unlikely as his life in Berlin. Starting out as a waiter and bicycle messenger, and never having owned as camera in his life, he ends up co-owning the largest photo agency in the world.
That brings him into the orbit of many of the celebrities of the day – and lands him in a Playboy layout surrounded by a bevy of nude models.
There were some seedy aspects to Pips’s later years and I was torn about whether to include them in the book. So, I consulted his psychiatrist. He told me that Pips would not have wanted me to whitewash his story. He contextualized the sordidness of these episodes as echoes of early wartime experiences and a need for human contact and comfort.
Finally, Pips felt he had nothing to contribute to the world, except his story. And I felt it was my responsibility to tell that story. This story is his legacy.
Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: For his entire life, Pips’s most fervent wish was to be recognized as a full Jew, not a half Jew. Hence, the title “Half-Jew – Full Life.” The subtitle, “The Unlikely Journey of a Voluntary Jews from Nazi Persecution to the American Dream” is a mouthful. But it captures the complete arc of his life.
Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: Pips left me dozens of audiotapes that contained his sessions with his psychiatrist. His therapy consisted of telling of his life story and working through the guilt he felt about choices he had made.
I had those tapes transcribed while Pips was still alive so that he could review them and make corrections. The transcripts were my primary source material, along with letters and various other documents.
Memory can be flawed, so I fact-checked everything I could to ensure that the book would be accurate. I omitted anything I couldn’t verify. I also did research about Nazi Germany to provide context for Pips’s experiences and create a sense of place.
In short, I needed to be both a detective and a historian – neither of which I am by training nor profession! However, I am a Ph.D. sociologist and a former journalist – and that gives me a set of tools that came in very handy in the writing of this book.
I was surprised to learn that very little has been written about the experiences of those whom the Nazis classified as Mischling first degree – especially those who identified as Jewish. Beyond the novelty of the story itself, I was glad to break some new ground in a well-trod canon.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book, especially at a time of increased antisemitism?
A: There are many takeaways: First, a cautionary tale of how quickly a country can turn from normalcy into the worst kind of autocracy; the short leap from dehumanization through hate speech to genocide.
Then there’s the question of identity: its meaning and the price human beings pay to hold on to their identity. Specifically, what is Jewish identity?
Then there’s the human tendency to be in denial as one’s world collapses.
Perhaps the most important takeaway is the dilemmas one faces in trying to survive. Pips never saw himself as a hero. He saw himself only as a survivor. But Holocaust trauma follows survivors and can ripple through one’s entire life.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: Through various channels including the two nonprofit organizations that I founded – the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding and the Multifaith Alliance – I’m involved in a number of Israeli/Palestinian initiatives, Muslim-Jewish initiatives, and Black-Jewish initiatives.
These have brought me into contact with many compelling figures and involved me in back-channel work about which I’d like to write.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Yes. I am pleased to announce that I will be speaking about Half Jew – Full Life at the New York Public Library on Thursday, February 19, 2026, and at New York City’s 92NY on March 10, 2026. You can learn about additional talks and events by visiting my website: www.bennettny.com
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Q&A with Doron Keren
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| Ignacy Chiger |
Doron Keren is the grandson of Holocaust survivor Ignacy Chiger (1906-1975), who wrote the memoir Beneath the Lightless Sky: Surviving the Holocaust in the Sewers of Lvov. The book, originally written in Polish, is now available in English.
Q: What led to the publication in English of your grandfather’s memoir?
A: Once I read his memoir, I felt a calling...a sense of duty, to share his story with the world.
To reach a wide audience I began my journey with the idea of creating a TV series on a streaming service platform. The first person I contacted, simply for advice, was Charles Kipps, a noted screenwriter and producer. After reading just 10 pages, he was hooked. He wanted to be a part of it.
I knew I was onto something. The best path was to publish Ignacy's memoir in English that would someday be optioned for the series.
My publisher, Liesbeth Heenk - Amsterdam Publishers, took less than a week to greenlight the book deal.
The validation from everyone who has read Beneath the Lightless Sky is proof that I'm on the right path. I feel it in my bones.
Q: How much did you know of your grandfather’s story as you were growing up?
A: I grew up hearing bits and pieces of the survival story from my mother. The timelines were blurry. It's hard to believe, but the first time I put it all together, in chronological, order was when I read her book, The Girl in the Green Sweater.
My grandfather's memoir (then loose paper typewritten Polish manuscript) was a vital resource for her. Dan Paisner, her ghostwriter, told me Kristine would exhaustingly sift through scattered pages of his memoir to jar her memory.
My mom would always say how smart her father was...a genius, she called him. I didn't fully grasp that until I read her book. But once I read his memoir, I was literally blown away... for the second time.
Q: As you mentioned, your mother also wrote a memoir--how was her story similar to and different from your grandfather's?
A: My mother's memoir, told from a child's perspective, covers some of the historical context during the Soviet and German occupation of Lvov, Poland. Beneath the Lightless Sky adds nuance and complexity of life and death under two brutal regimes.
I didn't realize that there was so much more to the story - Ignacy's personal connection to both Soviet and German psychopaths, and how he managed to outmaneuver them all. It's a story of a hero of the Holocaust, not just a victim. My grandfather became my superhero!
Q: What impact has your grandfather’s story had on you, and what do you hope readers take away from it, especially given the current increase in antisemitism?
A: History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes - Mark Twain.
Unfortunately, I see the cancer of antisemitism metastasizing once again. Beneath the Lightless Sky doesn't just remind us of how brutal humanity can morph into something heinous, given the right circumstances. It is also a tribute to the fortitude and resilience of brave Jews...hope in the face of hopelessness.
What makes this story so unique is that it's also a story of a Catholic hero - a savior who sought redemption and who fell in love with a Jewish family along the way. This remarkable human being who came from society's lowest station rose to the height of an angel, as my grandmother always called him.
Today, more so than any other time in my lifetime, we as Jews need upstanders like Socha - people who rise above the constant noise of antisemitism on social media to be ambassadors for humanity.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm focused on getting this memoir in front of as many people as possible. This part of Jewish history is too important to be missed. Each generation must be reminded of how easily Jew hatred can regenerate and resurface into the mainstream.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: One topic I hope readers take away from Beneath the Lightless Sky is that the story is not only about how Jews died, but also about how Jews lived.
Ignacy's memoir restores the vivid human world of pre-war Lvov: a Jewish community of 150,000 that was educated, industrious, culturally rich, and entwined (not always well) within Polish and Ukrainian societies.
That world was destroyed by the Soviets, who promised liberation, and by the Germans whose sole purpose was annihilation. Yet within its destruction, individuals—Jewish and non-Jewish—found ways to assert their humanity. Ignacy asks within his pages, "are they humans or are they jackals?"
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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