Rachel Kadish

Rachel Kadish is the award-winning author of the novels From a Sealed Room and Tolstoy Lied: a Love Story, as well as the novella I Was Here.

Her latest novel is The Weight of Ink.

From Kadish's Q&A at ArtSake:

Can you talk about what sparked The Weight of Ink? And what has been its journey since that initial spark?

I often start writing when something is troubling me and I can’t work out why. There are things I come to understand only through writing fiction: stepping into the fray with a set of characters and living the problem alongside them for enough pages to see it through. Years back, there were a few things troubling me, and one of them was that question posed by Olive Schreiner and then later and more famously by Virginia Woolf: what if Shakespeare had had an equally talented sister? What would her fate have been?

Woolf’s succinct answer – she died without writing a word – haunted me. I kept asking myself: what would it have taken for a woman of that era with a capacious intelligence not to die without writing a word?

And what if such a woman were further hampered by being poor… and perhaps a member of a religious minority…what would it have taken then?

For one thing, she would have to be a genius at breaking rules.

It took me...[read on]

Visit Rachel Kadish's official website.

The Page 69 Test: Tolstoy Lied.

My Book, The Movie: The Weight of Ink.

Writers Read: Rachel Kadish.

The Page 69 Test: The Weight of Ink.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robinne Lee

Robinne Lee's new novel is The Idea of You.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You write that a conversation between you and your husband led to the idea for this book. Can you describe how the book eventually took shape, and how you came up with your characters Solène and Hayes?

A: A few years ago, my husband was away on business and I was up late surfing music videos on YouTube when I came across the face of a boy I’d never seen in a band I’d never paid attention to, and it was so aesthetically perfect it took me by surprise. It was like…art.

I spent a good hour or so Googling and trying to figure out who this kid was and in doing so I discovered that he often dated older women, and so the seed was planted.

When my husband returned a couple of days later, I joked with him that I’d found the perfect guy and I was leaving him and our two kids, “oh, and by the way, he’s half my age.” My husband laughed, and then a moment later said, “You know, that would make a great book.”

He’d no sooner said it than I just knew. I could see it playing out so clearly in my head. I thought the story was rife with possibility.

Besides the obvious alluring aspects of what it could be like to date someone famous and beautiful and young and exciting, I wanted to fully explore the psychology of that kind of relationship. I wanted to delve into how our culture conditions us to believe that it’s...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Eric Kurlander

Eric Kurlander is professor of history at Stetson University. His books include The Price of Exclusion: Ethnicity, National Identity, and the Decline of German Liberalism, 1989–1933 and Living With Hitler: Liberal Democrats in the Third Reich, 1933-1945.

Kurlander's newest book is Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich.

From his Slate interview with Rebecca Onion:

Who participated in supernatural thinking in Germany in the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s? Everyone? And do you think Nazis actually believed this stuff, or did they find it politically convenient?

Educated urban liberal elites and Jewish intellectuals were the least likely to embrace any of this as authentic, or see it as anything other than a pathology of modernity that was particularly strong in Austria and Germany and needed to be dealt with. They could see people they otherwise respected finding some of it interesting, and worried about that response, but they were almost universally opposed to it.

Then you have the German and Austrian middle and lower-middle classes. Traditional religious practice was waning over the course of the 19th century. World War I was really galvanizing in that regard because it called everything into question. Many people who were—well, I don’t want to use the term that some of the intellectuals at the time used, like “half-educated,” “semi-educated”; Theodor Adorno [said] “occultism is the metaphysic of dunces.” Let’s say, clearly these were people who were educated enough to want an alternative to traditional religion, to want to be able to argue scientifically or with authority about religion, science, and politics, and they’re finding these alternative doctrines and institutes and classes on parapsychology and tarot reading as a kind of...[read on]

Learn more about Hitler's Monsters at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Eric Kurlander's Living with Hitler.

The Page 99 Test: Hitler's Monsters.

My Book, The Movie: Hitler's Monsters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephen Taylor

Stephen Taylor's new book is Defiance: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Anne Barnard.

From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you choose to write a biography of Lady Anne Barnard, and how was the book's title chosen?

A: I knew her as an interesting but neglected subject. She spent three years in Africa from 1798 and was one of those indomitable women travellers – there were a few – in the early days of the British Empire, a free spirit who mixed as easily with indigenous people as with the aristocrats she had known in London society where she was a leading figure.

That suggested the title. She was an aristocrat herself, but always unconventional even by the standards of a raffish era. Her rejection of at least 12 proposals from the rich and famous attracted plenty of gossip as well as disapproval. “Eccentric,” said many who knew her, but also “the devil in scarlet” according to...[read on]

Visit Stephen Taylor's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bryan Wagner

Bryan Wagner is the author of The Tar Baby: A Global History. From his Q&A at the Princeton University Press blog:

What is the tar baby story?

BW: There are hundreds of versions of the story, involving many characters and situations. It’s not possible to summarize the story in a way that can encompass all of its variants. The story does, however, follow a broad outline. I provide the following example in the book: “A rabbit and a wolf are neighbors. In the summer, the rabbit wastes his time singing songs, smoking cigarettes, and drinking wine, while the wolf stays busy working in his fields. The rabbit then steals from the wolf all winter. The next year, the wolf decides he will catch the rabbit by placing a tar baby, a lifelike figurine made from tar softened with turpentine, on the way to his fields. When the rabbit meets the tar baby in the road, and the tar baby does not reply to his greetings, the rabbit becomes angry and punches, kicks, and head-butts the tar baby until he is stuck at five points and left to the mercy of the wolf. The rabbit, however, is not trapped for long as he tricks the wolf into tossing him into the briar patch where he makes his escape.” In addition to this summary, I also provide an appendix with versions of the story transcribed in Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, the Cape Verde Islands, the Bahamas, Corsica, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, the Philippines, and the United States. I also include a map of these stories representing when and where they were collected.

Why did you write a book about the tar baby story?

BW: The tar baby has some familiar associations. People think about the ways in which the term “tar baby” has been used as a racial slur. Or they think about it as a figure of speech referring to a situation that gets worse the harder you try to solve it. Or they think about...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Gin Phillips

Gin Phillips is the author of five novels. Her debut novel, The Well and the Mine, was the winner of the 2009 Barnes & Noble Discover Award. Since then her work has been sold in 29 countries.

Born in Montgomery, AL, Phillips graduated from Birmingham-Southern College with a degree in political journalism. She worked as a magazine writer for more than a decade, living in Ireland, New York, and Washington D.C., before eventually moving back to Alabama.

She currently lives in Birmingham with her family.

Phillips's new novel is Fierce Kingdom. From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You write that "it occurred to me that maybe that dark daydream of a life-or-death situation could be the center of a novel about motherhood." How would you describe the relationship between your main character, Joan, and her young son, Lincoln?

A: That’s a tough question because in some ways that answer takes up an entire novel. Motherhood is hard to capture in a few words, and capturing it—as least as it applies to these two particular characters—was what I most wanted to do in the story.

But—to keep it short—I think Joan is someone who takes immense joy in her son, and he enjoys her. There’s a playfulness and great affection between them. She loves the way his mind works. She listens to him.

She’s a mother who enjoys motherhood and who does her best to appreciate the small things along with the big ones. And because he knows she listens, Lincoln talks to her. About ...[read on]

Visit Gin Phillips's website.

Writers Read: Gin Phillips (August 2017).

The Page 69 Test: Fierce Kingdom by Gin Phillips.

--Marshal Zeringue

Melissa Scholes Young

Melissa Scholes Young's new novel is Flood.

From her Q&A with Wendy Besel Hahn for Bloom:

Wendy Besel Hahn: Writing this novel involved a great deal of research into Samuel Clemens, the Mississippi River, and Hannibal, Missouri, as evident in your Notes. What was the most surprising discovery you made while researching?

Melissa Scholes Young: That the Mississippi actually DID run backwards. In 1812 a series of earthquakes on the New Madrid fault line in Missouri caused the river to run in the wrong direction for a few hours. I read accounts of that harrowing event from witnesses on the shoreline, mothers in boats with their babies, and historians trying to explain it all. The idea of recalibrating, of needing to run in the wrong direction to survive, and of how floods destroy but also make fertile ground was the beginning of my writing Flood.

WBH: Like the Mississippi River, which regularly leaves the confines of its banks, your novel breeches some genre boundaries by including expository sections preceding each chapter. Was this risk taking intentional on your part or instinctual?

MSY: I wrote the expository sections when I was researching almost as tales to myself. They were definitely from my subconscious and what was working in my brain behind the explicit plot of the book. The idea to incorporate them as a Tom and Becky manual...[read on]

Visit Melissa Scholes Young's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Melissa Scholes Young & Huckleberry Nacho Finn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robin Merrow MacCready

Robin Merrow MacCready is the author of the YA novel A Lie for a Lie.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for A Lie for a Lie, and for your main character, Kendra?

A: Kendra’s story is based on a few different events that took place when I was a teen. Without disclosing too much, let’s just say that it was shocking to find out the real life stories of friends and their families.

Even more intriguing were the ways in which they coped, or didn’t cope with their new realities. These events stuck with me and over time two separate novel ideas became one. I loved these characters!

Q: The book takes place in a community in Maine. How important is setting to you in your writing?

A: Both my novels are set in coastal Maine, as is my current work in progress, though half of the story takes place in...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Joshua Green

Joshua Green's new book is Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency. From the transcript of his July 2017 interview with Fareed Zakaria:

ZAKARIA: So there's so much in the book, but I want to focus on one piece, which is really this transformation, ideologically. The Republican Party used to be the party of free markets, free trade, openness. That was Reaganism; that was the kind of formula. And Trump and Bannon, both in their various ways, realized that the base of the Republican Party was in a very different place. Do you think that Bannon came to his nationalist, protectionist, populist views slowly, suddenly? What happened? This was a Goldman Sachs banker.

GREEN: I trace two strains in the book that I think led Bannon to his worldview. The first is that he had a deeply traditional Catholic upbringing. He went to a right-wing Catholic military academy, became fascinated with traditionalist intellectuals, including some of the nationalist thinkers of the 1930s and the 1940s, who tended to believe that the world was in decline, that the Western world was under assault by the forces of Islam, by the rise of secular modernity.

And I think the other thing is Bannon's own personal experience. He served in the Navy in the Persian Gulf during the failed rescue mission to rescue the American hostages. And Bannon...

ZAKARIA: This was under the Carter presidency?

GREEN: This was under Jimmy Carter's presidency. And Bannon was raised in a working-class, Irish Catholic, Democratic, pro-Kennedy family. So Bannon at the time was ostensibly a Democrat, but he described to me in interviews getting off the ship, taking shore leave in Pakistan and being horrified and worried by what he described as these teeming masses of young anti-American Muslims. And then watching the hostage crisis, he described the Middle East to me as being "primeval." He said it was like stepping back into the fifth century. And so I think that was the beginning, the roots of the Islamophobia that has characterized his politics...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Julia Glass

Julia Glass's newest novel is A House Among the Trees.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: One of the themes you address in your book is artistic creativity and how it affects your characters Mort, the children’s book author, and Nick, the actor who’s playing Mort in a film. Do you think their experiences of creating art are similar, despite their different mediums?

A: I like to think that the fiction writer’s work is almost identical to that of the actor, with one difference: the writer does it in private while the actor must, at some point, do it in public. (Yes, big difference!)

But we are both tasked with immersing ourselves in hearts and minds other than our own—and in making our characters come alive for the audience we want to entertain and move.

We are soul mates, perhaps, when it comes to the way we exercise our imagination. (The Nobel Prize–winning Australian novelist Patrick White once said that the only reason he became a fiction writer was that he couldn’t be an actor.)

So in that respect, Mort’s work is...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue