Seth Holmes

Seth M. Holmes is an anthropologist and physician. He received his PhD in Medical Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco, and his M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco. He is Martin Sisters Endowed Chair Assistant Professor of Public Health and Medical Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

His new book is Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States.

From Holmes's Q & A with Eliza Barclay at the NPR blog, The Salt:

What was the most surprising or shocking aspect of the food system that you uncovered in your research?

"Before I did the research, I had a sense of the hierarchy of people involved in the food labor chain. But over the course of the first five months, it became clear that the hierarchy is much more detailed and subtle. There are indigenous Mexicans [like the Triqui] who occupy the rung with the most demanding physical labor — they're the ones who are bent over picking. The mestizos operate the machines — that's not quite as demanding. Then the U.S.-born Latinos are in charge of some things, and use English and Spanish. The white Americans have the most control.

"What was troubling was that people on every rung of hierarchy are legitimizing and justifying it. Farmworkers are doing that, too."

Do you think that hierarchy is representative of farms in other states in the U.S.?

"I think it is. The indigenous people from Mexico and Central America have the least powerful position. The system is different in California, because farms tend to hire to get big fields picked or pruned. The contractor goes out and finds laborers, and in my field research, I found that system to be worse in the sense that farmworkers are not paid directly by the farm. There's no paper trail. When we were in California, every time we pruned, we were paid less than minimum wage. With that system, labor laws are less likely to be enforced. But in Washington state, the farmworkers were hired directly by farmers, who were more likely to pay minimum wage."

Do you think that the American public cares about the labor required to produce our food?

"We...[read on]

Learn more about Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa Brackmann

Lisa Brackmann has worked as a motion picture executive and an issues researcher in a presidential campaign. A southern California native, she currently lives in Venice, California. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Rock Paper Tiger, set on the fringes of the Chinese art world, made several “Best of 2010″ lists, including Amazon’s Top 100 Novels and Top 10 Mystery/Thrillers, and was nominated for the Strand Magazine Critics Award for Best First Novel.

Brackmann's new novel is Hour of the Rat.

From the author's Q & A at Lost Laowai:

Your novels often centre around a woman who is either living or visiting a foreign country. What about that dynamic appeals to you as a writer?

Lisa: A couple of things. On a practical level, I’m writing suspense fiction – quirky suspense fiction maybe, but there still needs to be some suspense! When you have a “fish out of water” scenario, you’ve upped the degree of difficulty for the main character – she may not be familiar with how things work in the country she’s visiting, or she may not have the resources to deal with the trouble she’s in that a local would have.

Also, it’s a reflection of my love of travel. When people ask me why I go to China, one of my answers is, it’s never boring. When you travel, you tend to be more open to experiences and details because they are not part of your every day life. So it’s a sort of heightened sensory state that I really enjoy. And I also enjoy taking readers somewhere they may never have been, or for readers who do know the setting, depicting it in a way that they will recognize as being accurate and credible.

I also think that the “heightened sensory state” I mentioned is really connected to the process of writing in general – when I write I am trying to create a world on the page that’s vivid and that you can “see” and feel – and in order to do that, I have to be in that state where I’m able to come up with those very specific and impactful details. I’m basically putting myself in a scene and observing it, and writing down those observations. That applies to...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Lisa Brackmann's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Hour of the Rat.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mischa Hiller

Mischa Hiller is a winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in the Best First Book Category for South Asia & Europe. Raised in London, Beirut, and Dar El Salaam, Hiller lives in Cambridge, England.

Hiller's acclaimed, first thriller Shake Off has been called "deadly, poignant, and powerful" (The Economist),"Smart and tense and real enough to be scary" (David Morrell), and "A spy thriller of the highest class" (Charles Cumming).

From the author's Q & A with Wes Miller at the Mulholland Books blog:

Wes Miller: Let me start by saying SHAKE OFF was one of those novels I just knew we needed for the Mulholland Books list as soon as I started reading it. The degree to which you bring readers into Michel’s world—a world in which almost anything is either a weapon or a tool, in which everyone Michel meets may be trying to lead him astray—is just astounding.

One of the things I’ve noticed about SHAKE OFF, rereading that evocative first chapter, is how absolutely chock-full of seemingly genuine tradecraft the opening section is. Had you done deep research into the tricks of the espionage trade in writing SHAKE OFF? Were there books or individuals (whether you can tell us about them or not) that were particularly useful in crafting such an air of authenticity? And did you always know you’d start the novel with what is practically a how-to on the art of subterfuge, or was this something that came later as you were figuring out how to introduce Michel’s world to readers?

Mischa Hiller: Well, let me start off by saying how proud I am to be published by Mulholland, whose list includes some great writers. To answer your question: yes, I did a lot of research, but was also lucky to have access to someone who had gone through this kind of training. There are books you can buy that detail surveillance and counter-surveillance but it’s the little insights that make it real, like trainee surveillance officers using dead letter drops to get their paychecks.

I felt the training was an integral part of the book in the sense that it is part of what makes Michel and explains his paranoia. A lot of spy books imply that this sort of constant subterfuge can be lived with easily...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Mischa Hiller's website.

The Page 69 Test: Shake Off.

My Book, The Movie: Shake Off.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Sedaris

David Sedaris's latest book is Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls.

From his Q & A with Leigh Haber at Oprah.com:

LH: Who are some writers you really enjoy reading?

DS: I just finished the George Saunders book Tenth of December. Right now, I'm reading Aleksandar Hemon's essay collection, The Book of My Lives. He grew up in Sarajevo and is writing about his life as a writer in the middle of a war. As I'm reading it, I'm thinking, "Oh...don't end." The book I'm going to do on the next tour is a book on North Korea by Barbara Demick called Nothing to Envy.

LH: Is there one book you return to again and again when you really want to escape?

DS: I go back to Richard Yates' The Easter Parade. Books that follow the entire course of somebody's life are always so sad. The novel starts out when two sisters are just 7 and 8, and then follows them through their mid-50s, which was old when the book was written. One of the sisters is not married. We don't use the term "old maid" anymore, but when the book came out, being that age without children and a man in your life was such a tragedy. Drinking plays a huge role—one of the sisters dies of alcoholism. I think it's easier to conceive of our own death than of old age. I turn down...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Helene Wecker

Helene Wecker grew up in Libertyville, Illinois, a small town north of Chicago, and received her Bachelor’s in English from Carleton College in Minnesota. After graduating, she worked a number of marketing and communications jobs in Minneapolis and Seattle before deciding to return to her first love, fiction writing. Accordingly, she moved to New York to pursue a Master’s in fiction at Columbia University.

She now lives near San Francisco with her husband and daughter.

The Golem and the Jinni is Wecker's first novel.

From her Q & A with Foyles:

What made you think of mixing an East European mythical character - the Golem - with the Arabian Djinni?

The idea came from a conversation with a friend at Columbia University, when I was in graduate school. I was writing a set of linked short stories, based on tales from my own family history (I'm Jewish) and my husband's (he's Arab American). Only problem was, the stories weren't good enough, and I knew it. They didn't have much energy, and just sort of lay there on the page. Looking back, I think I was too familiar with the details; they felt like worn retellings, instead of something I was discovering anew. I complained about it to a friend of mine in my workshop, basically saying 'What on earth am I going to do?' She knew my reading habits, and asked me why I was writing in this very realist style, instead of something closer to the sci-fi and fantasy that I loved to read. It made a lightbulb go off: of course! So I swapped my Jewish girl and Arab-American boy for two fantastical creatures, taken from the folklore of each culture. The rest of the novel fell out from there.

Why do you think these two have endured and remained so potent?

Like the best of our imagined monsters, golems and djinn address specific questions about human nature. In creating them, we take a worrisome aspect of ourselves, blow it up larger than life, and set it loose to wreak all sorts of havoc. With golems, it's the perennial question of what happens when...[read on]

View the video trailer for The Golem and the Jinni and visit Helene Wecker's website.

Writers Read: Helene Wecker.

The Page 69 Test: The Golem and the Jinni.

--Marshal Zeringue

Matthew Quick

Matthew Quick is the author of Silver Linings Playbook. His new YA novel is Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock.

From his Q & A with Breia Brissey for Entertainment Weekly:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Your novels often tackle difficult issues, but Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock seems especially topical considering how front-and-center the gun violence debate is. What was your inspiration for the book? Were you at all influenced by how big of an issue gun violence is?

MATTHEW QUICK: I wrote the book during the summer of 2011. I never set out to explore gun violence. I’m a voice-driven writer, and Leonard’s voice came to me fully formed. As I listened to him—sorting through his pain, snark, and desperation—a story emerged along with a P-38 Nazi pistol. I did my best to record everything honestly. For years, as a high school English teacher, I counseled troubled teens which mostly meant listening. Whenever there is a school tragedy, we ask what’s wrong with teachers, education, and the youth. Logical questions to pose in the wake of tragedy. But I wonder if we are not missing out when we fail to ask this question: What is going right on the many days when kids in crisis get help and tragedy is avoided? There are hero teachers in every high school quietly helping troubled teens. We can learn from them. We should celebrate them.

The book is in no way preachy, but I think it could be really helpful to a struggling teen. What do you hope readers take away from the novel?

I hope Leonard Peacock types might feel less alone. As a teen, that’s why I went to literature—to know there were others out there who had wrestled with the same questions and emotions I was taking on for the first time. And I also hope all readers will ponder...[read on]

Learn more about the novel and author at Matthew Quick's website.

The Page 69 Test: Matthew Quick's The Silver Linings Playbook.

--Marshal Zeringue

Adrian Miller

Adrian Miller is the author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time.

From a Q & A at the publisher's website:

Q: You aim to explore "where Southern food ends and soul food begins." What's the difference between the two?

A: Inside the South, the distinctions between the two are so subtle that it almost seems meaningless. In my experience, black Southerners are just as quick to call soul food "home cooking" or "country cooking." I found that the Southern diet, particularly after the Civil War, is demarcated more by class than race. In other words, blacks and whites of a similar socioeconomic background pretty much eat the same foods. That said, I find that soul food dishes tend to have more intensity than their counterparts in Southern cuisine. They're sweeter, more highly spiced and tend to have a higher fat content--all the things that one would expect from a cuisine using a lot of bland starches and lesser cuts of meat. Then there are the differences in preparation. Soul food joints and home cooks tend to have more bone-in meat selections (neckbones, smothered chicken, and meaty soups) and hardcore offerings like chitlins.

Q: Soul food has developed something of a bad reputation. Why?

A: Soul food has sustained a number of one-two punches over several decades. One punch is psychological. Some soul food critics argue that diners are internalizing white superiority by celebrating and eating soul food since it is the "master's leftovers." The other, more dominant critique is the health consequences of eating a sustained diet of sugary and fatty foods. Exhibit A for the latter argument is the high incidence of chronic diseases among African Americans. Though many of these diseases are diet-related, I don't think that there's been much critical thinking about whether or not traditional soul food is the main culprit. Look, there may be...[read on]

Visit Adrian Miller's website.

---Marshal Zeringue

David Gordon

David Gordon was born in New York City. He attended Sarah Lawrence College and holds an MA in English and Comparative Literature and an MFA in Writing, both from Columbia University, and has worked in film, fashion, publishing, and pornography. His first novel, The Serialist, won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award. His work has also appeared in The Paris Review, Purple, and Fence among other publications.

Gordon's latest novel is Mystery Girl.

From the author's Q & A with Michael Hafford for Interview:

HAFFORD: Someone told me the other day that if your character needs to have a different job or have something changed about him, to just do it and worry about going back and fixing it later.

GORDON: That's the miracle of word processing. Think about when every one of those changes meant retyping. I agree. The problem then, though, is that I literally forget and sometimes I have characters whose names change three or four times in the course of the story. Remember, too, that there's a time factor. If you're drafting novels, you maybe haven't gone back and looked at chapter two in months. So, suddenly you're re-reading this thing and you're like, "Mary, Marcy, Marlene, Magdalene," and you're like, "Wait a second." Another thing I do is write notes to myself and tape them to the wall right in front of my face. I actually have some pictures somewhere of the Mystery Girl wall, because I was moving. Basically the whole wall of my room is this weird collage art project of scraps of paper and charts of things that bit by bit I kept adding. And theoretically I would go back and change those things. That's another thing you can...[read on]

Visit David Gordon's blog.

Gordon's first novel, The Serialist, won the VCU/Cabell First Novel Award and was a finalist for an Edgar Award.

The Page 69 Test: The Serialist.

Writers Read: David Gordon.

The Page 69 Test: Mystery Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Don Winslow

Don Winslow's novels include The Dawn Patrol, The Winter of Frankie Machine, The Power of the Dog, California Fire and Life, The Death and Life of Bobby Z, and Savages.

From his Q & A with the Sarah Weinman and others at the Mulholland Books blog:

Sarah Weinman: There’s a one-page narrative monologue near the end of the book that I think really delivers Savages knockout punch to American material culture and to the way boomer selfishness has not only failed subsequent generations but the country as a whole. Which is to say, you don’t mince words, and it seemed like the whole book was written from a place of frustration, if not anger, at how we ply ourselves with consumerism and are wholly ill-equipped for a world where such values don’t count.

Don Winslow: Yeah, I was pretty angry when I was writing this book. Hell, I’m pretty angry now. The widening economic disparity, the yapping, quarreling politicians who won’t address the real problems, the obsession with celebrity and cheap fame, and the endless consumerism that serves as a narcotic – really our worst drug problem. I was especially pissed off at the right-wing media bullies and congressional cretins who feel entitled to say anything, but then go running to mommy if anyone hits back. So I thought I’d take a rhetorical baseball bat to...[read on]

Learn about Winslow's hero from outside literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Lee Burke

James Lee Burke's latest novel is Light of the World.

From the author's Q & A at his publisher's website:

Light of the World is the twentieth novel to feature Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux and his partner Clete Purcel. What, if anything, has changed about the way you write Dave and Clete over the years?

JLB: I don’t believe people change. I think they simply grow into what they already were. Dave and Clete grow into the fine men they have always been, namely, the Bobbsey Twins from Homicide.

Dave’s and Clete’s daughters—Alafair and Gretchen—are featured in this novel. Fans seemed to love meeting Gretchen Horowitz in Creole Belle. What do you like about writing the younger generation of Bobbsey Twins?

JLB: Gretchen Horowitz and Alafair Robicheaux are both strong women. Much like the relationship between Dave and Clete, one possesses what the other lacks. Gretchen was abused terribly as a child, but through her courage and her refusal to let the world hurt her again, she becomes a female knight errant, a warrior not unlike Jean D’Arc, and gives voice and refuge to those who have no place to flee.

Alafair is the intellectual novelist and Stanford law graduate. She immediate recognizes the artist at work in Gretchen, who put herself through film school in Los Angeles. Alafair has a black belt in karate and, like Gretchen, takes no guff from anyone. They’re a formidable pair, and the bad guys know it.

In Light of the World, Dave Robicheaux runs up against his most evil foe since Legion Guidry, a villain many of your fans remember from Jolie Blon’s Bounce (2002). What draws you to write about men like Guidry and Asa Surette, the antagonist of Light of the World?

JLB: Both these figures are...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue