Q&A with Amy Friedman

  

 

 

Amy Friedman is the editor of the new collection A Secret Chord: Poetry, Stories & Art. It features the work of teenagers who participate in the POPS and PATHfinder Clubs for young people affected by incarceration, detention, or deportation. Friedman is a criminal justice activist and co-founder of POPS, and she is based in Los Angeles. 

 

Q: What inspired this new collection of poetry, stories, and art?

 

A: At The PATHfinder Club (www.thepathfinderclub.org), we are committed to annually publishing a collection of works created by the youth we serve—teens and young adults whose lives have been altered as a result of incarceration, detention, or deportation.

 

And so, the start of a new school year was initially the inspiration for A Secret Chord.

 

Each year, as soon as we release a title, we open the door to submissions for the next year’s collection. Submissions come in slowly, and as they do, I read the poetry, the stories, the essays, the first-drafts and second; I study the paintings, drawings, collages, and other works of art.

 

And each year I’m struck by the marked differences that seem to reflect the mood of the nation and the rumblings of the world all around us, and that mood that colors the work is how I discover the theme.

 

In 2024/25, as work poured in, I kept hearing music, feeling a rhythm, sensing a collective composition emerging. By the time we neared deadline, this year’s theme was vividly clear.

 

Q: How was the collection’s title chosen, and what do you see as the connection to singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen?

 

A: The title came directly from the theme. Most people know Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah, even if they don’t know that it is Leonard Cohen who wrote the song because it has been covered by so many disparate artists—from Willie Nelson to Jeff Buckley, from Brandi Carlile to Yolanda Adams, and so many more.

 

Two things sparked the title of this collection.

 

First, the creators’ works kept playing music that rolled through my mind. The connection is less to Cohen himself than to that idea evoked in the line he wrote (and sang): “I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord…”

 

The extraordinary work by these young people felt like altogether they created a secret chord with their truths revealed, the melody of their many different, distinct voices, the rhythms of their language, and the heartbeat of their passions.

 

When I saw Ruby Pena’s photograph of the bird on a branch, once again Cohen’s words sounded from his "Bird on a Wire." That’s when the book coalesced, in a kind of magical moment that happens just once in a blue moon.

 

Q: What do you see as the importance of creative work at a challenging time in this country?

 

A: In a world drowning in misinformation and disinformation and the cruelty spreading of lies about our immigrant population, it is vital that we amplify true stories and nurture the abilities of young people to trust themselves and to use their innate talents, [and to] use art-making to better understand themselves and each other and to share those true selves with the rest of us.

 

As dark as these times so often feel, in the creative spaces that are these clubs, there is tremendous light and strength.

 

This is more than ever a moment when we all need to be creative in whatever ways we are able—to bring our best selves to each moment, and to support our youth in their creative and intellectual endeavors. Truth telling is cleansing; creating something out of nothing is inspiring.

 

I think of the recent moonwalk—the joy nearly everyone in the country felt as we followed the astronauts seeing what no human eye had ever before seen. That revelatory moment, just knowing that this was possible, healed and inspired something in nearly all of us. That is what creating does.

 

And creating forges connection. We see that in the clubs, and in these books. Everyone who has ever the TPC/POPS collections has found one or 10 or 20 pieces that seem say precisely, in words or visuals, precisely what that reader needed to hear and thus makes that reader feel less lonely.

 

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

 

A: Joy and a deeper understanding of how very wise, deep, honest, and resilient these teens are. I hope that with that understanding, readers will experience the pleasure those of us who work with these young people experience—the hopefulness about our future; the curiosity to know more; and an inexplicable, invigorating relief.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Two things.

 

We are working on our 2027 release. The deadline has just passed, and I’ve just discovered the theme—and title, and cover—of next year’s book. For the moment, I’m keeping it a secret.

 

We are also working on putting together a collection based on the Best-Of from our earliest books that were self-published, between 2013 and 2019, prior to Out of the Woods Press (outofthewoodspress.com), which has published these collections ever since it was established in late 2019.

 

Separate from The PATHfinder Club but inclusive of some of the youth we work with at TPC, I’m working on a project I launched in December 2025, All-American Story (All-AmericanStory.com).

 

Each week on Substack (ourallamericanstory.substack.com), we publish true stories, artwork, music, and other creative works created by American immigrants, and 1st- and 2nd-gen Americans. So far, a number of young people who were previously published in our anthologies have been, and are about to be, published.

 

All-American Story will also be doing LIVE performances across the country. Our Live performances launched in Los Angeles on April 26 at The Wende Museum. I trust many more of these amazing young people will be published by AAS.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Only this: The immigration raids have traumatized so many of the young people we work with, and their strength, their ability to continue to go to school despite their terror and sorrow and losses mounting is astonishing. I hope everyone will buy these books and if they love something they read, send a letter to the writer c/o publisher@outofthewoodspress.com.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Amy Friedman. 

Q&A with Peter Nathaniel Malae

Peter Nathaniel Malae is the author of the new novel Son of Amity, which takes place in Oregon. His other books include the novels Our Frail Blood and What We Are. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Son of Amity, and for the family you write about?

A: I was driving home from a 500-word writing session for my last novel, Our Frail Blood, down a pretty isolated country road that leads to my neighborhood. I had a CD of CCR on and was kind of disappearing into the music, as I sometimes do as a form of recovery after a day of digging through a scene. 

Anyway, this one song of theirs, “Run Through the Jungle,” opened up on the radio. It starts with this sort of long deep yet piercing guitar chord that sounds almost like a hell-bound demon moaning about being hell-bound, and as it was really stretching out, I thought, Wouldn’t that be crazy to be sitting in a movie theater in the dark when this sound comes on full blast, and then when the song starts into its riff eight seconds later the film opens with a close-up to a guy’s face. He’s driving up from a faraway place, you discover, to confront his sister’s rapist. 

Once I got this “image,” I had about two minutes until I reached my home. By the time I turned off the car, about 75 percent of the novel’s major plot points had already filled in for me, a skeletal story, if you will. From there it was just a matter of slapping on muscle and skin, and getting the story’s blood flowing. 

This is less rare then a non-writer might think: by the end of the day, on average, I’ve written a story or two in my head, a novel start once a week, but for some reason most of them die. Son of Amity determinedly held on like lucky salmon spawn, elusively escaping the assassin of my own brain, which is the same strange entity that birthed it.

Q: You tell the story from various family members' perspectives. Did you decide on your point of view characters from the beginning, or did you change things around as you wrote?

A: I’d just finished a novel, Our Frail Blood, which had ambitiously employed three different narrative vantages: first person active present; third person limited past; third person omniscient past. 

The novel is about 600 pages and when I hit the 300-page mark, I was gonna scrap it. At that point, I’d worked on it every day for a year and a half.

I couldn’t bear the thought of cutting it loose, though, and so I printed everything up one day, and sat in a coffee shop on this big table with all the papers in chapters around me. Took me about 10 hours of shuffling, but I finally figured out a way to structurally hold those three narrative vantages together without violating the integrity of the book. 

I share that now because it gave me confidence to be able to (almost) always forge order into the book, if I stay with three things going forward: real story-telling about real humans in real situations. I did have to scrap 50 pages of that novel, and so there was “loss” of writing that I liked, in and of itself, detached from the book. 

With Son of Amity, I felt that the structure of the book was very easy coming off of Our Frail Blood. This is pertinent to the question because revolving narrative perspectives need to be buttressed by structure. 

Two things I’d sort of subconsciously planned to happen: 1. I’d build up expositional backstory in the first third of the book.

This would be somewhat tough to read because of the intensity of its situations, tension-filled to the bone, and seemingly impossible to negotiate narratively. The book, like the characters themselves, wouldn’t be able to hold this kind of story to story’s end. I wanted the book to almost break, like the characters. 

And yet 2. the last two-thirds of the book, though comprising more narrative “space,” would actually go comparatively fast. This because there would be a release of the tension, as the same people who’d been screwed in the first third of the book would conceivably try unscrewing themselves, as a struggling family unit, in the last two thirds. 

Even writing this now it seems like you’re setting up stakes you can’t stand by. But that is exactly the reason to keep writing. More importantly, it underestimates the power of a child to stoke hope in even the most desperate of us adults. 

This really is a love-story dedicated to my sons, who, by merely existing, saved me from the most screwed of positions, and even still save me from that easy somewhat tired authorial cynicism about which there are too many real-life burn-outs to detail here.  That’s for the 924 bio section of the public library to contain.  

(As I write this, I’m remembering that I’d thought of Son of Amity as a slightly different metaphor: a dam. Fill it with water in the first third of the book, release it in the second two-thirds, and see who survives the flood. Also, the work of two writers gave me confidence in the sense that I didn’t feel alone: Faulkner (structure) and Denis Johnson (tone).)  

Q: The story takes place in a small town in Oregon. How important is setting to you in your writing?

A: For me writing place rightly is more than a matter of narrative vitality; without soap-boxing, I actually see it as a moral matter.  Saul Bellow wrote about this in his own way in a Paris Review interview. 

As there are real human beings living the stories you’re writing about, you have a real true responsibility as a novelist to get the story right. They are a part of the real place you’ll presumably render a version of. 

Furthermore, as literary novels are comprised of suffering, trauma, death, you’re obligated to get at the story’s deeper level with accuracy, which is a way of being respectful, and that even goes for the surface details, now that I think about it. I believe that every word is either strengthened by this, or infected by the lack of it. 

The present-day argument about cultural appropriation has everything to do with this idea: while every writer appropriates at some level, the authorial license isn’t just handed out like bingo chips. 

If people are suffering, if there is death involved, then any writer picking up the pieces and putting them to narrative order better be able to get the nod, and maybe even blessing, from the very people who’ve lived it. 

My standard is, If you’re gonna write a story about a lifer in prison, you need to get the blessing from the lifer in prison. He needs to look at what you’ve done, and say, Go, my son. You’ve done okay by my story. That standard, by subsummation, should bring every other kind of reader to the table since their standard of authenticity is lower than the person who’s lived the story. 

This is why before MFA programs and the internet “write what you know” was such a popular form of advice to young writers.

I tried holding to this same standard with Son of Amity, as I do with all my books. For instance, it took me living in small-town Oregon for half a decade before I started writing about the state. I didn’t trust my storytelling instincts to be free of the urban stories I’d been raised by and in, and had told in my three previous books. 

I worked on other stuff, set in California and Hawaii, but waited for Oregon stories to develop naturally, if at all. Actually, I did more than that: I started fishing: the Nestucca, the South Yamhill, the Row, and even some ponds like Sheridan Ponds, where I could get to know the people who live here. 

At the time I started the book (2010), Yamhill County was officially one of the poorest in the state of Oregon. Whiteson, half of Amity, Sheridan, Willamina, Grand Ronde, parts of Dayton, and even of Mac have pockets of white poverty that made me reassess certain ideas I’d had, culled of my own real-life experience. 

In the novel, the character Pika, a Samoan ex-con from urban California, references Malcolm X’s growth from a Black Muslim to a Muslim as similar to his own learning about white poverty.  Both had to be honest about what they were seeing, both had to broaden their horizons, and discharge the flotsam. 

Pika had always thought that poverty was exclusively brown, but he finds himself living in a part of Amity where the evidence suggests something else. Every place, he learns, has its own way of defining itself. 

He’s courageous in that sense: he asks questions about his own existence which could well challenge it definitionally. At the same time, he’s worried, even as he’s learning about Oregon, about his own end in Oregon.   

  

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

A: I’m fortunate to live right up the way from Amity, which means friendship. The boy in this story, for whom each of the three adults are trying to directly face their own backstories, is born of Amity, born of the horror of friendship, or else of the dream of its potential beauty.

The story cannot exist without the boy. Each of the adults, it’s easy to see, will drown without him. I’ve often thought this: sure, we feed and protect and clothe and educate our kids, but our kids keep us from drowning in cynicism. That’s a fair trade. 

Look around, without your kids, one day, and I think you’ll feel me. The stuff that makes us unique as humans—hope—comes back at us, day after day, via our kids’ existence, and in unexpected, often unappreciated, ways. Benji, then, is the son of Amity, a living embodiment of hope. 

I played with the term throughout the book, including the scene where a Hispanic gangbanger uses the term in Spanish, un hijo de Amidad, except pejoratively. At the center of it all, holding it together, is a kid who doesn’t really get why these people he loves hate each other so much. His journey of discovery is as much their own, of themselves, of each other. 

In Pika, a savvy urban ex-con from the “browner” parts of Cali, you have, presumably, the opposite of Michael, a five-tour Iraq War decorated Marine from small-town Oregon with a secret crime that nearly defines him. 

Among the other things you want of a book you’ve written, there is the inescapable goal of showing without preaching how much people, even those with true enmity, truly have in common. They just gotta stop for a second and check it out. A book, which forces you to remove yourself from real time and then accordingly ponder your life in real time, can help with that.    

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I’m working on two big epic novels, one set in Samoa, Hawaii, and Cali over three generations, and the other set in Oregon of a man trying to keep his family together against hostile social and cultural forces. 

On the business end, I have a finished novel set in Portland I’m shopping, and a finished story collection set at the paisa migrant campos in Dayton, Oregon. 

Also, I have a play about a state execution and single fatherhood I’m trying to find a home for. I don’t really know the theatre scene, though, and so when I have a little extra time, I go fishing for theaters which I think might like the piece. 

I love to see a play more than anything, especially when it’s a low-budget small-town theater where everyone is clearly pulling a lot of weight, pound for pound, to make the story happen. 

I once saw a woman playing Blanche Dubois go off-stage to weep into her hands, and then return, a minute later, to do her next scene. Watching that, I felt a fraternal kinship to that woman and her work, whomever she was, that I’m still, 20 years later, both tormented and exhilarated by.     

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Bridget Walsh

 

 

 

Bridget Walsh is the author of the new novel The Tumbling Girl, the first in her Variety Palace Mystery series. She lives in Norwich, England.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Tumbling Girl, and how did you create your characters Minnie Ward and Albert Easterbrook?

 

A: The Tumbling Girl is a marriage between my academic background and my love of crime fiction. Armed with a Ph.D. in Victorian murder, in 2017 I enrolled on a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. I started off thinking I should create something deadly serious and “writerly,” but soon realised I wasn’t that kind of writer. I wrote something that I thought was reasonably funny and it struck a chord.

 

In terms of characters, I knew I wanted a working-class woman at the heart of the book. Growing up, I rarely saw people like me as the heroines of stories. In Victorian novels, particularly with a good Irish name like Bridget, working-class girls were servants or, if they were really unlucky, ladies of the night.

 

I wanted to take someone who hadn’t had the best start in life and give her independence and agency. Theatres, music halls, spaces for the arts and entertainment have long allowed those outside the mainstream to flourish. Women in Victorian London who enjoyed success in the halls could make a decent living without the need for marriage.

 

But I had to work within the realms of reality. There were female detectives in the 19^th century, but they were rather limited in what work they could undertake. Minnie needed a partner - ideally a man.

 

Albert has turned his back on a privileged upbringing to commit himself to helping others - first as a police officer, now as a private detective. Between them, Minnie and Albert can gain access to pretty much anywhere.

 

I also wanted an emotional connection between Minnie and Albert. Minnie appears to move with confidence and ease through the world, but she has a secret from her past that is stopping her fully embracing the future.

 

Albert, despite the wealth and privilege of his upbringing, had a cold and unloving childhood. He feels like he never fits in anywhere, until he meets Minnie and discovers that the chaotic world of the Variety Palace is somewhere he can finally be at home.

 

I hope it’s obvious in the book, but I love Minnie and Albert dearly and often find myself baulking at the trials I put them through!

Q: As you mentioned, the novel is set in Victorian London--how important is setting to you in your work, and how did you conduct your research for the book?

 

A: As most writers would agree, setting is crucial. I’m a Londoner by birth and the city was pretty well-documented during the 19th century, so there was lots of research to draw on. I already knew a thing or two about the Victorian era from my Ph.D. The opportunity to use that knowledge while creating a fictional world has been a joy.

 

In terms of conducting research, that’s one of my favourite parts of writing. I read anything and everything about the Victorian era, and I also visit sites that I think might be useful. For example, Hoxton Hall is one of two surviving music halls in London that still operate as theatrical venues, and I was fortunate enough to be shown backstage, which helped form the inspiration for the Variety Palace.

 

Q: The writer Trevor Wood said of the book, “Delightful, dark and depraved all at the same time. What's not to like?” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I love it! The book does undoubtedly venture into the darker side of life, but my novels are also character-driven and to really care about a character I think you need warmth in their portrayal and an element of humour. The more you care about Minnie and Albert, the more invested you’ll be when I put them in perilous situations.

 

Q: Without giving anything away, did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I thought I knew how the novel would end and I also had a deadline to meet, as The Tumbling Girl was the dissertation for my Masters. So I was moving forward fairly confidently, until the day my husband, Micky, and I were walking our dogs and discussing plot as we often did.

 

Very casually Micky said, ‘What if X is the Hairpin Killer?’ and I just stopped in the middle of the pavement. I wanted to hug him and punch him in equal measure, because I immediately knew it was the right way to go, but it meant an enormous amount of work, going back through the whole book and laying new strands of hints and clues. It was worth it, though.

 

I also killed off a character in the original ending, which I regretted as they were someone I really enjoyed writing. Thankfully, I had the chance to go back and undo that and the character will resurface in book four of the series.

 

Q: This is the first in a series--can you tell us what's next?

 

A: The second Variety Palace Mystery, The Innocents, will be published by Gallic Books in March 2024. Bernard Reynolds, ex-Shakespearean actor and Variety Palace stalwart, enlists Minnie’s help in finding his missing brother. Before long, Minnie and Albert start to uncover the links between a series of seemingly random and disconnected deaths, all of them connected by a 14-year-old tragedy.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’ve completed the draft for Summerland, the third novel in the series, and that’s currently with my agent. That book centres on the Victorian fascination with spiritualism.

 

I have a chapter outline for book four, and I’ve just started writing it. I like to keep busy!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks, photo by Randi Baird

Geraldine Brooks is the author of the new novel The Secret Chord, which looks at the life of King David. Her other books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel March, and the bestselling novels Caleb's Crossing, People of the Book, and Year of Wonders. A former reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Wall Street Journal, she lives on Martha's Vineyard.

Q: Why did you decide to tell King David's story in the voice of Nathan the prophet?

A: [David’s story] is the first full political biography we have….I needed a narrator who was close to David and yet could see his flaws. That character, Natan, already exists in the biblical account…

And it’s tantalizing that Chronicles refers to Natan as David’s biographer—to a “book of Natan” that now no longer exists, or that we have not yet rediscovered.

Q: How did you settle on the way you portrayed David in the novel?

A: …I have tried to let the duality [between light and dark within David] exist, and to leave it to the reader to assign weight between his flaws and his admirable qualities.

Q:  How would you describe the role of women in this novel?

A: They are probably the most important element. In the biblical account, they are sketched marvelously—they’re very critical players—but we meet each of them only briefly, because the biblical account is only concerned with how they affected David. 

I’m also interested in how he affected them, and what their lives were like before and after they intersected with his. So much of the Bible and so much biblical scholarship is from a patriarchal, male view. I wanted to switch the point of view at critical places, and observe the action through women’s eyes.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: It’s another historical novel, based on the true story of a remarkable horse and a missing painting. I’m loving it, because it is a complicated, braided narrative in several time periods, a bit like my novel People of the Book. Also because it is about two of my great passions, horses and art.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Ella Schwartz

 

 

 

Ella Schwartz is the author of the new children's picture book Violin of Hope. Her other books include Her Name was Mary Katharine. She lives on Long Island, New York.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Violin of Hope?

 

A: I am the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. As an author, I always wanted to write a story to honor my grandparents, but Holocaust books for young readers are tricky. None of my story ideas struck the right chord.

 

I can’t even count how many concepts and half written books I discarded over the years. All of them didn’t feel like a fitting tribute to my grandparents and other Survivors.

 

When I heard about the real-life organization Violins of Hope, I was deeply inspired by their work. Their mission was just the right backdrop for the story I had always hoped to tell; one of family, legacy, traditions, and hope. 

 

Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that particularly surprised you?

 

A: I am not a violin player, but I had to become a luthier in training! I learned all about violin construction, the parts of a violin, and the craft that luthiers use to build, repair, and tune these instruments.

 

Violin construction is based on science and engineering, and I am an engineer by career and education, so this was an exciting new research opportunity for me.

 

I’ve always loved the music of violins and researching this book inspired me to take up learning to play! I hope my family will be patient with me as I fumble through the learning experience.

 

Q: What do you think Juliana Oakley’s illustrations add to the story?

 

A: Feiga and Itzik, characters in the book, are inspired by my grandmother and grandfather, survivors of the Holocaust. When Juliana joined the project, I sheepishly gave her a photo of my grandparents. I wanted to give her an idea of the period and the backdrop of the story, but also introduce her to the real-life Feiga and Itzik.

 

When I first saw Juliana’s drawings I was profoundly moved. Not only did she capture the period so beautifully, but I saw flashes of my grandparents.

 

The expression on Papa’s face or the way Mama puts her hand on her daughter’s shoulder; somehow Juliana captured not only the spirit of Jewish families in Eastern Europe during WWII, but also the essence of my grandparents. 

 

Q: What do you hope kids (and adults) take away from the book?

 

A: People say “Never Forget” but the Holocaust happened over 80 years ago, so it’s easy to forget, especially as the number of Survivors are sadly dwindling. As the descendant of Survivors, I feel it is my responsibility to remember.

 

I hope my book will not only help readers remember but will also provide inspiration. At its core, this book is about family, traditions, and legacy and these are themes that extend beyond Holocaust education. I hope readers will reflect on their own family legacies.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m deep in the research trenches for a new project about a largely unknown but inspiring Civil War hero. Stay tuned!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Since this book is dedicated to my grandparents, your readers may be interested to know that when I was growing up, my grandparents lived with us in the same house.

 

Even though I lived with my grandparents until they passed away, I never knew their stories. We all knew my grandparents had been through the Holocaust, but nobody in the family asked questions. We worried the memories would be too painful.

 

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I became curious about my roots and started researching my grandparents’ journey through the Holocaust. Uncovering my family’s dark past was painful but important. Now, as a Holocaust educator, I get to tell my grandparents’ story. Finally, the story that was buried for so long is no longer a secret. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Ella Schwartz.