Dec. 29

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Dec. 29, 1936: Mary Tyler Moore born.

Top 10 Most-Viewed Posts of the Year: #4

Counting down the top 10 most-viewed posts of the year...here's #4, a Q&A with Ido Kedar about his novel In Two Worlds, first posted on 7/16/20.

Ido Kedar is the author of the novel In Two Worlds. He also has written the memoir Ido in Autismland, which describes his experiences with nonspeaking autism. 

Q: Why did you decide to write this novel, and how did you come up with the idea for your character Anthony?

A: I have a nonfiction book, Ido in Autismland, that I wrote when I was a teenager. It has had a significant impact on the lives of autistic nonspeakers and their families. I have continued to write nonfiction in my blog, idoinautismland.com, basically continuing where my memoir left off.

I have made inroads reaching out to families and professionals in the autism community through my nonfiction writing, but I realized the general public knew very little about autism.

In addition I craved a challenge and a new creative experience. Writing a fictional story about an autistic boy gave me the opportunity to do so much more than nonfiction allows.

Instead of me describing and explaining what autism is like, fiction lets the readers experience autism for themselves. They go into Anthony’s (the protagonist) head to swirl with his senses, hear his thoughts, and face his outer challenges.

Fiction let me create a true-to-life family and show how autism impacts them, for good and bad. It also gave me the chance to lay out current controversies through a variety of characters that have a huge impact on Anthony’s life.

In essence, fiction takes the reader on a journey into Autismland and exposes the reader to a new world that I hope will prompt social change and greater understanding and tolerance of nonspeakers.

Anthony is based on many of my own experiences and many observed incidents. In my case, as a boy who couldn’t communicate until I was 7, observation was incredibly important in my life. I noticed everything. Then, because I could not speak or share my ideas using other methods, I thought constantly about what I saw.

My own life is different than Anthony’s in key aspects. I have a different and more perceptive family. I learned to communicate at 7, not 16, as he did, but I observed many of my autistic peers waiting to learn to communicate until they were 16 or older. Some are waiting indefinitely.

To me, Anthony represents a kind of autistic everyman and his journey moves the reader from hopelessness to hope. 

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

A: The title, In Two Worlds, reflects the multiple dualities of Anthony’s life. He is torn between his inside and outside.

In other words, his inner autism and his outer therapies, his smart brain and his outer presentation of ineptitude and confusion, his at times hallucinatory sensory system and his outer life of mundane drills and behavior modification, his rich, intelligent, inner world and how he is erroneously perceived as low-functioning cognitively by experts, his life in silence without a means to communicate for 16 years with his entire destiny controlled by others and his ultimate liberation to communication and some measure of autonomy.

Anthony’s two worlds reflect a boy living in a trapped body while his mind and soul can soar freely.

Q: Can you say more about how the experiences of writing fiction and nonfiction compare for you?

A: Writing fiction is a lot more fun, to be honest. I have been writing nonfiction since I was 12, educating and advocating, and getting asked the same questions over and over. There are many misconceptions about autism that have truly harmed people and I have felt a need to help fix things, to the best of my ability.

My memoir, Ido in Autismland, was written between the ages of 12 and 15. I felt passionate about writing it and poured my soul into it. Nine years later I still get asked the same questions, and I assume I will forever.

That’s fine, by the way, but I needed to stretch myself in a new way. Inventing characters, villains and heroes, and the world of a family was incredibly enjoyable. I knew their world. I heard their conversations in my mind. The characters were vivid to me and became real to me and they became real to readers too.

It is worth mentioning that one widely believed theory about my disability is that we lack creativity, imagination, insight, and empathy. I hope my book turns that nonsense on its head. 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from In Two Worlds?

A: My hope is that by going into the head and heart of Anthony that readers will be moved and gain insight into the experience of what it is like to live bombarded by sensory stimulation but to be unable to communicate your thoughts and show people who you really are due to an unreliable motor system.

The reader is the only one, besides Anthony, who knows he is smart and understands everything he hears. Consequently they share his experiences and frustrations of living in a world that endlessly patronizes, underestimates, and misinterprets him. The reader experiences Anthony’s highly sensory, at times almost psychedelic, inner world with him.

His eventual liberation to communication follows what I would call a truly heroic struggle to be heard despite powerful forces that on the surface seem benevolent, but which actually keep him stuck in isolation. The reader is with Anthony as he finally breaks free from them.

In Two Worlds examines the toll nonspeaking autism takes on family life and it looks at the popular autism treatments and theories that dominate his every moment. Ultimately, In Two Worlds tells the story of autism from the inside out.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I am working on another book as well as collaborating with my mother to develop an online class to help other autistic people gain the skills needed to communicate and end their isolation. Many people have no access to a qualified instructor so online is the ideal venue for them. My goal is to keep educating and advocating, but to keep my challenges varied and fresh.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: It is important to understand that many people believe nonspeaking autism is a language processing and cognitive disability, when for me, and for  thousands of others, it is actually primarily a motor disability. 

Severe autism itself is a huge challenge and very frustrating. It prevents people from moving and behaving as they like and means they must always have some kind of supervision in life.

But the misunderstanding of the disability just makes the situation exponentially worse. After all, if you had a disability that trapped you in dumb-looking motor patterns, you might be annoyed at the trap, but then trapped further by the professional response that believed that the motor patterns reflected lack of intelligence or thought. Try to imagine being paralyzed. You tell your body to move and it refuses.

Your brain is ok. It’s the disconnect that causes the problem.

Now imagine that your body is moving but doesn’t obey your brain. That creates impulses, patterns, and erratic movements. That’s autism. Kind of a moving paralysis, not a lack of thinking or understanding. Simply put, not talking is not the same as not thinking.

In Two Worlds has been well reviewed by readers and is recommended by Kirkus Reviews and BookLife , where it was a quarterfinalist in fiction. You can find my books on Amazon, Kindle, Smashwords (eBook), and Ido in Autismland is also available on Nook. You can reach me through my blog, www.idoinautismland.com, or Facebook. 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Top 10 Most-Viewed Posts of the Year: #5

 

Counting down the top 10 most-viewed posts of the year...here's #5, a Q&A with Anthony Browne about his children's picture book Little Frida, first posted on 12/10/19.

 

Anthony Browne is the author and illustrator of the new children's picture book Little Frida. His many other books include Hide and Seek and Willy and the Cloud. He is a former greeting card designer, and was the UK Children's Laureate from 2009-2011. He is based in the UK.

Q: Why did you decide to create a children's picture book about the young Frida Kahlo?

A: Little Frida is a story I had been trying to write for about 15 years, but always struggled to translate the idea into a book. I’ve always liked the paintings of Frida Kahlo but really fell in love with her work when I visited her house in Coyoacán, Mexico.

After reading many books about the artist I learned of a story Kahlo once told of an imaginary friend she had as a child. She had a vivid memory of drawing a door in the condensation on her bedroom window, which she was able to open and climb through into fields beyond.

At that time Frida was very ill and struggled to walk, but in the fields she was able to run. In her memory she met a girl who looked just like her, but unlike Frida she couldn’t talk. Instead she communicated through dance – something that Frida was unable to do herself.

It struck me that Frida’s imaginary friend was in fact her alter ego and there was a strong connection with the silent girl and the many self-portraits that Kahlo painted throughout her life.

Q: What did you see as the relationship between your own illustrations for the book and Kahlo's own style?

A: I like the obvious surrealist nature of Kahlo’s paintings (a movement that has greatly influenced my own work) but I also enjoy reading the many visual clues that Kahlo includes in the background of her portraits, telling us what is really going on in her emotional and mental state.

This is a technique that I also like to use in my own illustrations, as I find it’s a great vehicle for telling parts of the story that the words cannot.

Q: Did you work first on the text and then on the illustrations, or vice versa--or simultaneously?

A: The words and pictures came together more or less at the same time. After having the idea for the story I drew out a series of 24 rectangles (representing the 12 double-page spreads which form the main part of a typical picture book) and filled them with very rough drawings and scrawls of text.

In my mind there is always a kind of animation to the idea, and I view my storyboards almost exactly as a filmmaker would. Rather than the fixed pictures they will eventually become, I view the boxes as frames or scenes from the story, with a clear sense of progression through time.

“Playing out” the book in this way ensures that the visual and the textual always come to me at the same time.

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

A: I hope children will enjoy the book and perhaps identify with the character of Frida.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I am currently working on The Elephant Book, a reworking of an unpublished book I wrote in 1974 to present to my future publisher (Hamish Hamilton) as an example of my graphic style and abilities. The book is very naïve and of its time, but I’m enjoying going back to my beginnings as a picture book maker and using the experience and skills I now have.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Our Girl will be published towards the end of next year. It is the next book from the My Mum, My Dad series and is based on my own daughter and granddaughter.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Counting down the top 10 posts of the year...#6

Counting down the top 10 posts of the year...here's #6, a Q&A with musician Suzzy Roche about her novel The Town Crazy, first posted on 9/4/20. 

Suzzy Roche is the author of the new novel The Town Crazy. She also has written the novel Wayward Saints and the children's book Want to Be in a Band?. A musician, she was a founding member of the group The Roches, along with her sisters.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Town Crazy, and how was the book's title chosen?

A: There were a few ideas that converged. I’ve always had a fascination with the poet Anne Sexton. I keep her collected works by my bed. Her poems cry. They seem to reflect the despair of a housewife in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

I was born in 1956 and grew up in a small suburban town. Catholicism was a huge influence on my early life, as if I was steeped in a pot of Catholic tea.

However, I remember very little about myself as a child, and was interested to explore those forgotten years. All I had to go on were shards of memories, and the feeling of being a child, of watching the adults. The world seemed like a scary place.

The title The Town Crazy came to me in a flash early on. I knew it was the right title. Obviously, it refers to one character, but also to the entire town. I love the way the title looks. I actually have a “thing” about the way words look.

Q: The novel takes place in 1961 in a small Pennsylvania town. Why did you choose that time period and setting?

A: Hanzloo, Pennsylvania is not a real town. I thought of it because as a touring musician I’ve driven across Pennsylvania a million times. It’s a very long state, and it’s the gateway from New York City to the Midwest, where I have often toured.

I thought I remembered a sign on the highway for a town that looked something like Hanzloo, but I doubt there is such a sign. Again, I liked the way it looked on the page.

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

A: I know that many writers have an outline before they write a book, but I had no idea what was going to happen in my book. It turns out to have quite a detailed plot, almost like an intricate puzzle, but I kept focusing on the deeper feelings of the characters. I was trained as an actress, so I guess I become deeply curious about the characters and understanding them from every angle.

Of course, all of the characters in the book are fictional, but they presented themselves to me as real.

Q: How do fiction writing and music coexist for you?

A: Writing fiction and writing songs are intertwined for me. Many of my songs are mini-short stories. It all boils down to making something out of nothing. My life’s work!

Q: What are you working on now?

A: What’s next? I have just completed a recording with my daughter Lucy Wainwright Roche called I Can Still Hear You due out on Oct. 30. We began the album in Nashville at the end of February 2020 but completed it in our bedrooms during the bleak and frightening lockdown in New York City. It’s a real “pandemic” baby. It sounds so beautiful. 

But I have to say, it’s a strange time to be releasing a book AND a record. All our gigs are virtual or postponed, check my website for updates.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: One last thing I’d like to say about The Town Crazy is that when I was writing the book, I was struck by how different life is for women now. I consider the book a cautionary tale. I worry that younger people won’t understand what life was like then. The idea of going “back” to an America in the ‘50s and early ‘60s is a nightmare for many women.

The pendulum swings back and forth, and I think we’re seeing that now.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Top 10 Most-Viewed Posts of the Year: #7

 

Counting down the top 10 posts of the year...here's #7, a Q&A with Edith Pearlman first posted back on 2/11/13!

 

Edith Pearlman is the author of four collections of short stories: Vaquita, Love Among the Greats, How to Fall, and her most recent, Binocular Vision: New and Selected Stories. She lives in Brookline, Mass.

Q: In her introduction to your most recent short story collection, Binocular Vision, Ann Patchett writes that Binocular Vision "should be the book with which Edith Pearlman casts off her secret-handshake status and takes up her rightful position as a national treasure." And in the New York Times review of Binocular Vision, Roxana Robinson wrote, "Why in the world had I never heard of Edith Pearlman? And why, if you hadn’t, hadn’t you? It certainly isn’t the fault of her writing, which is intelligent, perceptive, funny and quite beautiful..." What do you think of this belated recognition?

A: I think the world is full of cabbages and kings, things happen early or late or not at all.  It’s fun to be writing under the radar.  It’s more fun to be recognized.  But I’ll probably be forgotten sooner or later, and it will always be fun to write.

Q: Why have you chosen to write short stories? What about that form appeals to you, and what, in your opinion, are the elements of a great short story?

A: Concision, compression, suggestion.  And also a memorable character or two, a dilemma that grips at least as long as the story lasts, some memorable phrases – more likely to be found in the short story than the novel (and even more likely to be found in the poem).

Q: Who are some of your favorite short-story writers?

A: Sylvia Townsend Warner, A.S.Byatt, John Updike, John Cheever, Chris Adrian.  Ask me tomorrow and I’ll give you five different ones.  I love short stories and short story writers.

Q: Some of your stories take place in the town of Godolphin, Mass. Is Godolphin a stand-in for a particular Boston suburb, and where did the name come from?

A: I do not know where the name came from!  It fell from Heaven.  Godolphin as Godolphin made an early appearance in the 1980s in a story called Donna’s Ladle, about a soup kitchen in the basement of Godolphin Unitarian.  In the story Felix’s Business, Felix is a professional scribe, writing letters for people who cannot express themselves, a direct descendent of scribes in 19th century Russia, who wrote letters for people who could not write.  He has a storefront office in Godolphin.  The End of the World Man moved in sometime around this time and took his position in front of a hardware store, and as far as I know he stands there yet.  The characters in Mates came in, did lots of things in Godolphin, but vanished after their last child left the nest – not an idle figure of speech, for the characters are more like devoted mammal or avian parents than human.

A boutique hotel was erected after an enterprising person knocked a couple of brownstones together; and this place appears in a story called Shenanigans, and one called What the Ax Forgets the Tree Remembers.  Shenanigans has to do with love of various kinds; Christmas Eve romantic love, Quality Time parental love.  And a score more stories.

Godolphin began as a distortion of the town I live in, Brookline; but it is so changed by now I think Brookliners would repudiate it.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: More stories.  Stories are what I do.

Q: Anything else we should know? 

A: Returning to my current popularity …Binocular Vision got reviewed; got read; got some awards.  I became, for this short time being anyway, a figure.  I was very lucky.

You may say, as people have: Lucky? --  Ah, but your stories are good.  Sure – but they were good earlier when noticed only by a few. And the stories of many other writers are equally good, but they don’t get collected, or the collections don’t get noticed, or their publishers and agents don’t work so hard on their behalf.  To achieve success in the literary field, and perhaps in any field, you have to be talented, you have to work very hard, you have to tolerate disappointment, you have to have friends and colleagues willing to promote your work – and you have to be lucky.  According to Rabelais, it behooves all adventurers to treat their good luck with reverence.  This adventurer does.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Dec. 24

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Dec. 24, 1940: Anthony Fauci born.

Top 10 Most-Viewed Posts of the Year: #8

 

Counting down the top 10 posts of the year...here's #8, first posted on 8/1/20.

 

Veronica Waldrop was the author of The Nuff, a story she wrote for her daughters before she passed away in 2017. This interview is with Will Waldrop, her husband, and Alan Williams, a family friend who organized the publication of The Nuff. 

Q: How did Veronica Waldrop come up with the idea for The Nuff, and what message did she want to leave her daughters?

A: Veronica came up with the idea of The Nuff based on her experiences throughout childhood and into high school. She always struggled with insecurities and strived to find her place in some type of “group.”

As an adult, it is easy to look back and see how trivial those insecurities may have been, but for children they do not have that vision and foresight to navigate those issues. To compound things, we live in a day and age where social media serves as a highlight reel for people’s lives.

However, as we have learned the hard way, life is difficult and can give you many challenges that are extremely hard to accept.

At the end of the day, her message to the girls was for them to know they were amazing and created by God, which makes them beautifully and wonderfully made.

Q: What was the process involved in getting the book published, and what has the reaction been so far?

Alan: Ultimately, a friend asked me for help. Just weeks after Veronica passed away, Will shared the poem with me along with his desire to bring this poem to life. I created Tailwind Publishing with the sole purpose of producing The Nuff and fulfilling its mission to inspire every girl to know that she is enough.

Most importantly, we've focused on strategic partnerships that will ensure that this book gets in the hands of girls that might not otherwise receive it.

The reaction to The Nuff has been inspiring, joyful, and indicative that all of us – not just women – want to spread the powerful messages found in the book.

We've already launched the book in Texas with H-E-B across their 310 stores and our nationwide launch kicked off on International Women's Day. In a very short time, we've shipped books to individuals, retailers, and schools in over 45 states.

We're entering our fourth printing of the book and are just getting started. Parents are inspired by Veronica's courage and they want their kids to understand acceptance of self and acceptance of others.

Q: What do you think Cat Elliott's illustrations add to the story?

Will: Cat knew Veronica, and so only she could have brought this character to life. Her illustrations capture the life and the depth that Veronica envisioned for The Nuff when she would dress up as a unicorn to lift the spirits of her daughters during the final days of her life. 

The Nuff is a beautiful creation, but far from perfect. The character has a broken horn and a bandaid – a clear reminder that brokenness is beautiful. At the end of the day, I want my daughters to know that their confidence does not come from what they do, but who they are.

Q: Can you say something about Veronica's legacy today?

Will: Preserving Veronica's legacy – so that my daughters would forever be reminded that they are enough – is what inspired this project. The social media response to the book has been heartwarming and inspiring. This timeless story is resonating with girls and women of all ages and backgrounds. The Nuff may be a children’s book, but it is not solely a kid’s message.

As a dad, there are times when I don't feel like I am enough, but I'm thankful that, through this book, we can all be reminded that we are enough. Veronica said it best, "Grace is amazing, perfection is not – have faith in who you are. Just be you and love will shine through like a brilliant, sparkling star."

Q: Is there anything else we should know?

Alan: The Nuff is evolving as an educational resource. We are working with an educational partner to develop a curriculum tied to The Nuff for Pre-K through 2nd grade students.

These educators recognize that without a strong sense of self-worth, girls fall behind their peers, subconsciously setting low expectations and losing sign of their true potential.

But that can change. When a girl knows that she is enough, amazing things happen. She dreams big. She lifts others along the way, and she becomes resilient in the face of adversity – all things that I want for my own daughters.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb