Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer is one of only eight writers in history — and the only Canadian — to win all three of the world's top Science Fiction awards for best novel of the year: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Sawyer's new novel is Quantum Night.

The CBC asked eight authors to pose questions to Sawyer. One exchange:

Kate Pullinger asks, "What relationship does your writing have to your own childhood, both in terms of where you grew up as well as whether or not you were a happy child?"

I grew up in Canada, which seems like a trivial observation for a Canadian writer to make - but in my field of science fiction there were almost no Canadian writers when I was a child (Phyllis Gotlieb was the only significant Canadian SF writer, and - speaking as the person who ultimately was the editor of her final novel - her work had not a single hint of her national origin). I decided to ignore the advice I heard constantly when starting out: "Don't set your stories in Canada; they'll never sell to the States or internationally." Twenty-three novels for major New York publishers later, the flagrantly Canadian settings, Canadian values, Canadian multiculturalism and Canadian humour in my books has proven to be one of the most popular elements of my writing worldwide; my books have been translated into 20 languages, and I was recently flown to China to receive an award as the most popular foreign science fiction author there.

As for my childhood, yes, I know the quintessential CanLit novel is the angsty boy coming of age on the prairies or in Montreal; done to death. Perhaps writing is a form of therapy, but it should never be self-indulgent or self-important. I'm much more interested in...[read on]

Visit Robert J. Sawyer's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: WWW: Wake.

The Page 69 Test: WWW: Watch.

The Page 69 Test:: WWW: Wonder.

The Page 69 Test: Triggers.

The Page 69 Test: Red Planet Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Quantum Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Adam Hochschild

Adam Hochschild's new book is Spain In Our Hearts: Americans In The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. From the transcript of his interview with Terry Gross:

GROSS: One of the most interesting characters that you write about in this book is the head of Texaco oil, Torkild Rieber. He was the head during the Spanish Civil War, and he supported the fascist cause, the military coup in Spain. And he made a deal with Franco's regime. What was the deal?

HOCHSCHILD: Here was the deal - before the war, Texaco had been the principal oil supplier to the government of Spain. The moment the war began, Rieber signaled that he would cut off oil supplies to the Spanish Republic, the Democratic side, and would sell oil to Franco's Nationalists. He not only did that, but he gave them the oil at a big discount, which, as far as we can tell, he never told Texaco shareholders or even his board of directors about.

And he violated American law in a couple of ways because U.S. neutrality legislation was pretty strict and said that if you were selling anything to a country at war, the oil couldn't travel on American ships. But he shipped it on Texaco tankers. The Nationalists had no tankers. U.S. law also said you could not sell things on credit to a country at war, and Rieber gave the Nationalists very, very, very generous terms of credit. And he did something else as well.

Texaco, being a major oil company, had offices, installations, agents, tank farms in ports all over the world. And he sent out orders to them saying, send us as soon as possible any information you acquire about oil tankers heading for the Spanish Republic. And this information was passed on to the Nationalists to help submarine captains and bomber pilots look for targets. Twenty-nine oil tankers headed for the Spanish Republic were destroyed, damaged or captured during the war. And in at least one or two cases, we can specifically tie it to information supplied by Texaco. So the United States might be neutral, but...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Serhii Plokhy

Serhii Plokhy is the author of The Last Empire, The Cossack Myth, and the new book The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine.

From his Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You write of The Gates of Europe, “The title of the book…is of course a metaphor, but not one to be taken lightly or dismissed as a marketing gimmick.” Why did you select this title for your history of Ukraine?

A: There is a long tradition in historiography to treat countries in Eastern Europe as bulwarks against the East—anything from the Mongols to the Russians. I appreciated that this metaphor was there.

I look at this region not only as a battlefield…but also as a contact zone, an area where different ethnic groups lived together and cultural exchanges were taking place. Gates can serve as a perfect metaphor. Also, it’s a battlefield occasionally and the gates are closed. But through most of history, they’re open, and that’s where I hope the future of the region lies.

Q: Describing the situation today in Ukraine, you write, “For Ukraine, Russian aggression raised fundamental questions about its continuing existence as a unified state, its independence as a nation, and the democratic foundations of its political institutions.” What do you see looking ahead?

A: Some elements of the story are very familiar with historians-- starting in the early modern period you see an interregnum and a neighboring state acting as a perpetrator [who] tries to use the confusion and grab some territory and gain some political advantage. In a sense it’s...[read on]

Learn more about The Gates of Europe at the Basic Books website.

My Book, The Movie: The Last Empire.

The Page 99 Test: The Gates of Europe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Helen Ellis

Helen Ellis is the author of the story collection, American Housewife. From her Q & A with Tim Adams for the Guardian:

Am I right in saying that the first story [from American Housewife], What I Do All Day, is drawn pretty much entirely from your Twitter feed?

You are. Twitter is the best editor I have found. I will delete a tweet in a heartbeat if it has not been retweeted, because if no one retweets, it is not funny. Reading two years of that stream I saw how it was the story of a weird, happy Mrs Dalloway, who doesn’t kill herself at the end. I taught myself a new way to write. I find stories now by paying attention to patterns in what I am tweeting. I was tweeting a lot about book clubs, so I wrote a story about that. I tweet about my cats and so that was a story too.

There are echoes of etiquette guides about the voice.

Yes. I was definitely raised with manners. You are never going to get “Ma’am”d in New York in the way you do down south. If someone calls you Ma’am in New York, they will be saying you are a bitch. I am an old-school lady. I hate to see young women hunched like crows over their telephones in restaurants. A lot ...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter Ross Range

Peter Ross Range's latest book is 1924: The Year That Made Hitler. From his Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you decide to focus on 1924, and why do you see it as “the year that made Hitler”?

A: I discovered a gap in the literature regarding Hitler’s year in prison. It is discussed in all the biographies but no one had ever done a whole book just on this pivotal year (actually it is 16 months from the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923 to Hitler’s re-founding of the Nazi Party in February 1925).

And, to my surprise, no one had ever done a book, in English or in German, on Hitler’s notorious treason trial, which catapulted Hitler into the national limelight in Germany. And clearly the writing of Mein Kampf deserved a closer look, I thought.

Hitler said that “the failure of the putsch was perhaps the greatest good fortune of my life.” He recognized that without having been halted in his tracks, his revolutionary approach to gaining power in Germany would have been doomed to failure. The putsch ended that phase of his political life; the year in prison guided him to the next phase, the electoral phase—the one that eventually succeeded.

While in prison Hitler went from impetuous revolutionary to patient political player. Serving prison time bent the arc of Hitler’s trajectory from simple outrage to careful strategizing. His months in prison were his time of reflection, his 40 days in the wilderness—a period that hardened his world view and fed his soaring belief in himself and his mission to save Germany. He went from mere megalomaniac to messianic maniac obsessed with his savior’s mission.

Writing Mein Kampf also significantly fed Hitler’s self-belief. The book’s most important audience was...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Tom Wainwright

Tom Wainwright is the author of Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel. From the transcript of his interview with Fareed Zakaria:

ZAKARIA: You have a business solution [to the problem of illegal drug cartels]. You say that economists would be better police officers than people trained in law enforcement. What do you mean?

WAINWRIGHT: Well, I think there are various elements to this, but one of the main findings of the book, I think, is that we've been, so far, focusing very, very tightly on the supply side of the business. And I think there's a good economic case for looking instead at the demand side.

What we've been doing so far is trying to eradicate coca leaf in South America. We've been battling the Mexican cartels. We've been locking up dealers in the United States and in Europe. And all that this succeeds in doing -- all this succeeds in doing is reducing supply and pushing up price. And if you push up price, normally you'd expect consumption to go down. But because most of these drugs are addictive, you find that consumption actually remains about the same and all we succeed in doing is inflating the size of this illegal market and enriching those cartels.

ZAKARIA: And you would legalize...

WAINWRIGHT: I would, yeah.

ZAKARIA: ... most drugs?

WAINWRIGHT: I think you can do them one by one. The evidence so far from the United States is that legalizing marijuana has greatly reduced the size of the criminal economy in places like Colorado. For Mexican cartels, for some cartels, marijuana makes up about half of all their income. And so taking that away, giving it to the legal sector of the economy, is devastating for them. It's a huge blow against organized crime.

In Switzerland, they've also legalized heroin, which sounds extraordinary, but they've legalized it in a way that gives control of it to doctors. It's a very, very tightly controlled prescription model, in which doctors can prescribe addicts a dose of heroin. And what this means is that those addicts no longer have to steal to fund their habit. And it also means that those addicts, who themselves are very often dealers, have stopped dealing. It seems to be working. And policies in the war on drugs...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Richard Jenkyns

Richard Jenkyns's latest book is Classical Literature: An Epic Journey from Homer to Virgil and Beyond. From his Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You begin your book with Homer and The Iliad and The Odyssey, and you write, “The majority view today is that there were two poets, but the issue cannot be conclusively determined.” Why do most scholars think there were two poets involved?

A: Some people think that the differences between the two poems, in (for example) attitudes to the gods and their moral function, to the possibility of the afterlife, etc., are too great for them to be by the same author.

There are other more technical arguments: that sometimes the author of the Odyssey seems to be imitating the Iliad in ways which suggest that he didn't fully appreciate what the earlier author was trying to do, some difference of language, etc. All these arguments are contested, however. My own position is agnostic.

An older argument (about both Iliad and Odyssey) is whether the poem is the work of one author or many. Here I have a firm view: that each is essentially the work of a single author, but using traditional material.

Q: You write that “it seems always to have been agreed that by far the best tragedy came out of Athens and within a period of less than a century.” What about that particular time period lent itself to this cultural feat?

A: A Roman writing in the 20s AD asked the question: why is it that the best periods for any genre of literature are short? Tragedy was one of his examples.

His answer was...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Amy Sue Nathan

Amy Sue Nathan was born and raised in Philadelphia and is a graduate of Temple University with a Bachelor’s in Journalism (a degree she actually uses). She has called the Chicago area home since the late 1990s, and is the proud mom of two grown children (her favorite oxymoron). In addition to being a writer, editor, and blogger, she's a dog-lover, vegetarian, not-so-secret crafter, and lover of all things wine and chocolate.

Nathan's debut novel, The Glass Wives, was published by St. Martin’s Griffin in May 2013.

Her latest novel is The Good Neighbor.

From Nathan's Q & A with Cathy Lamb:

Amy, before we get into “the guts,” so to speak, of your wonderful book, The Good Neighbor, I have to tell you that I loved the first line, “The doorbell rang and I knew it was my ex, just like when my lip tingled and I knew it was a cold sore.”

I just laughed out loud. Dare I even ask? Is any of this book your personal story?

Nope. The Good Neighbor is not about me, but there are overlaps.

Izzy and I are both divorced moms, and while divorce is no laughing matter, you have to find humor in the horrendous situations we find ourselves in sometimes. (Like having an ex-husband show up at your door twenty minutes early.) I’m also a blogger like Izzy – but in contrast – all my blogging (since 2006) has given me the opportunity to be completely honest and Izzy uses her blogging to tell, let’s say, tall tales.

Or we could call it a Giant Fib. A tiny lie. I loved it. I cringed when she did it, and I kept reading to see what would happy in her future because of it. But I won’t ramble on. It’s your story, tell us what The Good Neighbor is all about.

In a broad sweep I’d say The Good Neighbor is about accepting yourself wherever and however you happen to be in any given moment and not looking at “the other guy or gal” and wishing.

More specifically, The Good Neighbor is about...[read on]

Visit Amy Sue Nathan's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Coffee with a Canine: Amy Sue Nathan & Mitzi and Lizzie.

My Book, The Movie: The Glass Wives.

The Page 69 Test: The Glass Wives.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Neighbor.

My Book, The Movie: The Good Neighbor.

Writers Read: Amy Sue Nathan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Anthony S. Pitch

Anthony S. Pitch is the author of The Last Lynching: How a Gruesome Mass Murder Rocked a Small Georgia Town. From his Q & A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you decide to write a book about this lynching case, which took place in rural Georgia in 1946, and how did you research the book?

A: I have wanted to write about a lynching - the murder by mob action without a trial - since 1998. However, I never found enough documentation to research until six years ago, when I began this book.

That was when I got about 10,000 classified papers from the FBI and the National Archives, mainly through the Freedom of Information Act. I was also astounded that one of the victims was a veteran of World War II.

Writing about a mass lynching would pit innocents against vigilantes, show the horrors of rogue actions, expose corrupt juries, and record for posterity an evil slice of American history.

Q: The case you write about still hasn’t been solved. Do you have suspicions about what unfolded, and do you think more information will ever come out?

A: The case...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephen Policoff

Stephen Policoff has taught writing at Wesleyan and Yale and is currently Clinical Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies at NYU. His books include the novel Beautiful Somewhere Else, the memoir Sixteen Scenes from a Film I Never Wanted to See, two YA books, The Dreamer’s Companion and Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens (co-authored with Jeffrey Skinner), and the children’s book Cesar’s Amazing Journey.

Policoff's latest novel is Come Away.

From his Q & A at Serious Reading:

Do your novels carry a message?

I don’t like messages, except maybe cryptic ones. If I could boil down my work into a sentence or two, why would I write it? I don’t think most art worth anything has a discernible message. I think a writer’s worldview is what is conveyed in a worthwhile novel, and I hope that this is true of my work. A picture of the world, an image of the strange ways we act and react with others, a sense of the universe as a complex and not-entirely-understandable place, that’s what I strive toward. Nabokov says somewhere that “reality” is the only word which does not make any sense without quotation marks. That sensibility is one which I hope and believe I am conveying in Come Away.

How much of yourself do you put into your books?

I think all writers put themselves into their books, even if it is only bits and pieces. Paul Brickner, the narrator of both Beautiful Somewhere Else and Come Away, sounds just like me (or so I am told), and I have certainly used...[read on]

Visit Stephen Policoff's faculty webpage and Facebook page.

Writers Read: Stephen Policoff.

The Page 69 Test: Come Away.

My Book, The Movie: Come Away.

--Marshal Zeringue