Caitlin Moran

Caitlin Moran is the author of How to Be a Woman and other books.

From the transcript of her interview with Terry Gross for Fresh Air:

GROSS:...Caitlin Moran, ... why do you think so many people, so many women, don't want to be associated with the word feminism?

MORAN: I think it's simply because they don't know what it means. When - one of the reasons that I wanted to write a whole book about feminism, rather than just endlessly wanging on about it in a bar - which had previously been my technique in order to spread the word for the sisterhood - it was because I was meeting a lot of younger women. And I would kind of confidently say oh, well, you know, we're all feminists here.

And they would, with a look of horror, as if I had just banged them on the knee with a fork, go no, I'm not a feminist. And you go, what do you mean? And, you know, you kind of - you run through kind of, you know, what being a feminist means, sort of like voting and, you know, rape being illegal and not being a legal possession of your husband.

And they go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, we're into all of that. I said, well, you are a feminist then. Women are feminist by default. And you live in a feminist world. The first world is feminist. You are educated equally to boys. You're expected to go into equal employment with boys. In a marriage, you are legally equal. So, you know, you cannot deny we live in a feminist world.

GROSS: What made you realize that?

MORAN: I never didn't realize it. I was, I mean, I was brought up in a kind of, you know, very hippie, liberal family. And it was just always automatically assumed that men and women were...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Danny Johnson

Danny Johnson's new novel is The Last Road Home.

From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with your characters Junebug, Fancy, and Lightning, and why did you choose to set the book in the 1950s and '60s?

A: I grew up during that era, and the setting of the book came from my own childhood of spending every summer on the farm with my grandparents, who were tobacco farmers.

I lived in a city housing project until I was around 15, where it could get a little dicey much of the time, and tell folks the two things I learned best was the value of friends and how to be the fastest white boy in the project.

But, as soon as summer came, I looked forward to spending it on the farm, enjoying the peace of the slow life, watching how the natural world interacted, and I loved being alone.

My grandmother taught me to read at an early age, and she was an avid reader, letting me read the books she would get from the book-mobile when it came around every couple of weeks. My great grandmother also lived with them and taught me to count by sitting me on her lap as a small child and counting my knuckles.

I made friends with a couple of black kids around the community because there were no white kids, and we spent hours playing, me learning from them and them from me. I loved it.

As for Junebug, Fancy, and Lightning, one of the things I used to do when I had no ideas, was sit in front of my computer and simply begin typing the first words that came to mind, eventually making them into flash fiction stories or short stories and not caring if they sucked or not…somewhere in the mix of that, Fancy and Lightning came to me, like...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson is the author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption and the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. From his interview with Fareed Zakaria:

ZAKARIA: I want you to tell the story of really what got you involved in this -- in this crusade that you are on. You're a young lawyer and you decide to get involved in the case of a guy, Walter McMillian, who was wrongly accused of murder and on death row when you met him, in a town that ironically was the town that is supposed to be the place where "To Kill a Mockingbird" was set, right...

STEVENSON: Yes.

ZAKARIA: Harper Lee's birth town?

STEVENSON: That's right. Well, I think it was that disconnect that really got my attention. When I finished law school, I was shocked to know that there were people on death row literally dying for legal assistance. We don't provide lawyers to even condemned prisoners.

And I met Walter McMillian in Alabama. He was convicted of a crime that took place in Monroeville, the very community where Harper Lee grew up and write "To Kill a Mockingbird." And that community loves the story. They romanticize it. They celebrate it. They put on plays about it. And yet they were completely indifferent to the plight of a black man wrongly accused of killing a young white woman, convicted in a trial that lasted a day and a half. The jury returned a verdict of life, but judges in Alabama, elected judges in Alabama, have the authority to override jury verdicts of life and impose the death penalty. And so the judge, whose name was Robert E. Lee Key, overrode the jury's verdict, imposed the death penalty, for a crime this man did not commit.

And it was a challenging case, because he was with many people when the crime took place. The entire black community knew he was innocent. But because they were there with him, they felt convicted; they felt condemned.

And I think what we have done in this country with mass incarceration, with excessive punishment, is not just incarcerate a lot of people, convict a lot of people, condemn a lot of people, but we have marginalized whole communities; we have demoralized whole communities.

And Walter McMillian's case tells that story. We fought for six years to...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Ethan Michaeli

Ethan Michaeli is the author of The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America.

From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You worked at The Defender in the 1990s. What did you learn from working there, and why did you decide to write a book about the paper’s history?

A: I didn’t know anything about race in America, African American history, Chicago history, and the history of African Americans in Chicago when I got to The Defender. It all was a blind spot in my education….

The time I spent at The Defender was transformative…I learned about The Defender’s pivotal role in American history. I always felt it deserved a book. I started to get the ambition to write nonfiction, and no one else had told the story and it deserved to be told.

It came to me slowly. At times I thought it would be better to do a memoir about my time at The Defender, but at the end I thought the best way would be to walk the reader through the history of the paper.

Q: You begin the book with a preface set in 2004 featuring Barack Obama, then a senatorial candidate. Why did you choose that episode as the book’s opening section?

A: President Obama really is the end product of more than...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Megan Abbott

Megan Abbott's new novel is You Will Know Me.

From her Q&A with Kat Kinsman of Extra Crispy:

So much of your work is so dark and noir, and I'm trying to imagine the breakfasts of the women in your books.

In the noir world, they always have black coffee and a diner egg. The one meal you see cooked in noir novels is breakfast, because even the men would make their own breakfast. Raymond Chandler often had Philip Marlowe eat eggs and make coffee in the percolator. He had an elaborate percolator routine. One of my favorite noir novels—which was a big influence on me—was Mildred Pierce. She's famous in that for making pie. I always think that pie is a great breakfast. I remember my mom—that gave her permission to eat pie for breakfast, and she loved it. After you have pie for dessert, you can have it the next morning. That does come from...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Megan Abbott's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Fever.

--Marshal Zeringue

Camille Perri

Camille Perri's new novel is The Assistants. From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You’ve worked as an assistant--how did your own experiences factor into the writing of The Assistants?

A: A lot of the book came from my own experiences or funny work-related horror stories fellow assistants shared with me. However, for the sake of humor and entertainment value, I blew up many of those real events and experiences tenfold. I wanted this book to be just like real life, but a little more fun than real life.

Q: Money, specifically student loan debt, is a major theme in the novel. How have readers related to that theme, and do you see the book appealing to a specific demographic, or not necessarily?

A: I’ve found that many people are itching to talk about money. Perhaps because we’re conditioned to think of money-talk as impolite, or because so many of us are stressed out about our finances, or ashamed of being in debt. I do think the book has resonated most with...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Midge Raymond

Midge Raymond's new novel is My Last Continent. From her Q&A with John Wilkens for The San Diego Union-Tribune:

Q: What is it about Antarctica that makes it a good setting for a love story?

A: The character of Deb is a loner, and she’s been unlucky in love. She’s very passionate about animals and the environment, and she feels quite at home there. It’s a place that’s unlike anywhere else on Earth. And I think for people like Deb who don’t feel as if they fit in, it’s the perfect spot. It’s very isolated. But it’s also hard to have a relationship when you are going off to Antarctica all the time.

But when she meets a person there who has discovered Antarctica for similar reasons — Keller’s had a tragedy in his past that left him a little lost and unmoored — they bond. Antarctica is very much a third person in the relationship because it’s such a huge part of who they are.

Q: Penguins are characters in the book, too. Did you have an experience with penguins on your own trip, or was there something about the way they bond that spoke to you?

A: A little of both. I loved watching the penguins when I was in Antarctica. It’s a...[read on]

Visit Midge Raymond's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Last Continent.

Writers Read: Midge Raymond.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marcia A. Zug

Marcia A. Zug is the author of Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail-Order Matches. From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you decide to write this book, and what do you see as the most common perceptions and misperceptions about these "mail-order matches"?

A: I wrote the book because it’s at the intersection of my two areas of interest, which I’ve been interested in for a long time—I teach family law and immigration law. This is one of the areas that hits both perfectly. I thought about writing it for a while. There was so much, it wasn’t hard to turn it into a book.

The common view of mail-order brides is that they’re desperate, exploited women, that it’s a horrible practice, and we should work hard to reduce it. That was my perception when I went into it.

One difference is that I recognized there was another view of mail-order brides, and I wondered why we had both, why it was [seen as] good before.

I found that the benefits in the past were real, and a lot were the same as modern mail-order brides receive—that as long as there are protections and regulations, this is a really good option for...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Ben Winters

Ben H. Winters's new novel is Underground Airlines.

From his Q & A with Dimana Tzvetkova for Indianapolis Monthly:

Underground Airlines takes place in present-day Indy. The conceit is that the Civil War never happened, slavery continues in a few states, and Indiana exists as a destination on a latter-day underground railroad. What inspired the idea for the book?

I came into my own as a writer with this series of books called The Last Policeman trilogy. In writing those books, I discovered the kind of writer I wanted to be. That specifically involved writing mystery fiction, and imbuing it with, I guess, thematic resonance. You know, finding interesting ways of tackling a mystery so it’s more than just a puzzle and a solution. And like most progressive and engaged people, I found myself increasingly distressed about the things I was reading in the newspaper. Unfortunately, there continues to be a series of alarming, high-profile incidents of police violence in the African-American community. Those two things came together. The idea was to take the metaphorical idea that slavery is still with us and make it literal.

In what ways do you think we could be doing a better job about confronting racism?

Very often, when people think...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at the official Ben H. Winters website.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Policeman.

The Page 69 Test: The Last Policeman.

The Page 69 Test: Countdown City.

Writers Read: Ben Winters (September 2014).

--Marshal Zeringue

Amy Gottlieb

Amy Gottlieb is the author of The Beautiful Possible: A Novel.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the ideas for your characters Walter, Sol, and Rosalie, and for the dynamic that exists among them?

A: The novel began with Walter, a traumatized German-Jewish refugee caught between worlds. I was compelled by his poetic sensibility and plowed through early drafts to uncover his story.

Along the way, I stumbled upon the characters of Sol and Rosalie, who are struggling to make their way as a rabbinic couple in a postwar suburban synagogue.

The character of Rosalie was influenced by my mother and her friends, who were pushing against their traditional roles as suburban Jewish wives and mothers in the 1960's and '70s. I grew up listening to their stories and Rosalie's voice was very familiar to me.

Sol was my most elusive character, but I recognized his situation. For 14 years I worked as an editor for rabbis, and heard many accounts of religious doubt, professional ambivalence, and the inherent dissonance between a spiritual leader’s love of tradition and a community that may not understand that passion.

This is Sol’s plight, yet I had to write many drafts to understand how he loved both Walter and Rosalie. Each character is marked by...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue