Claire Cameron's latest novel is The Last Neanderthal.From her Q&A with Amy Shearn at JSTOR Daily:
JSTOR Daily: What was the finding about Neanderthals that sparked this story? How did you come across it? How did you decide you wanted to write fiction in response?Visit Claire Cameron's website and Facebook page.
CLAIRE CAMERON: I am an avid reader of New Scientist magazine, which had an article about about Svante Pääbo, a palaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and his team who sequenced the first draft of the genome. He made a comment about how Neanderthals were much more like us than we had previously imagined. Coming from a scientist who works at the micro level, this really struck me. It was also evidence of interbreeding, which made me curious about how modern humans and Neanderthals made contact.
The more I read, the more I came to understand that scientists can only speculate so far. It might be up to a novelist to take the risk of imagining answers.
JD: Tell us about the Lovers of Valdaro, and how that photograph changed your creative process.
CC: The Lovers of Valdaro are two skeletons found near Montova, Italy. They were positioned in an embrace with their skulls facing each other, as if they were...[read on]
See Cameron's five notable stories about unlikely survivors.
My Book, The Movie: The Line Painter.
The Page 69 Test: The Last Neanderthal.
--Marshal Zeringue