Margaret Dilloway

Margaret Dilloway has been a writer ever since she learned how to write. In high school she was a California Arts Scholar in creative writing and she won a National Council of Teachers of English writing award. She practiced writing in a variety of forms, such as being a theater critic and a contributing editor for two weekly newspapers, doing technical writing, and writing plays, before publishing three critically acclaimed books for adults: How to Be an American Housewife, The Care and Handling of Roses with Thorns, and Sisters of Heart and Snow. Her research for Momotaro: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters included a trip to Japan and a samurai sword-fighting class. Dilloway lives in southern California with her husband, three children, and a goldendoodle named Gatsby.

From Dilloway's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with your character Xander and with the idea for retelling the story of Momotaro?

A: I'm half Japanese and my mom would read me this Momotaro picture book when I was little. The book only skimmed the story and I thought it could go much more in-depth and be relevant to today's events and a Western audience.

I wanted to create my own legend based on the story, using a character who would be half-Japanese, like me, because I never saw ...[read on]

Visit Margaret Dilloway's website and blog.

Coffee with a Canine: Margaret Dilloway and Gatsby.

The Page 69 Test: Momotaro: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters.

My Book, The Movie: Momotaro: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Oshinsky

David Oshinsky's latest book is Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital. From the transcript of his interview with NPR's Robert Siegel:

SIEGEL: And first you have to explain that as Bellevue evolved, the very definition of what a hospital is was evolving with it. Describe what Bellevue was when it began in the 18th century and what it became.

OSHINSKY: Bellevue in the 18th century was really both a poorhouse and a pesthouse. It was a place you came to die. It really began with the great yellow fever epidemics of the 1790s. And at that time, the great Bellevue estate, which became the hospital, was on the East River about two miles away from where most of New York was located. And you would send people who really had no chance of recovering.

SIEGEL: A defining relationship that you return to often in your book about Bellevue is between the hospital and the poor. Historically, well-to-do New Yorkers wouldn't have wanted to be in the same building as most of Bellevue's patients. What drove that sense of mission not just to get them out of the way, but what drove the sense of mission to treat the poor of New York?

OSHINSKY: There had always been a kind of group of physicians who believed it was their Christian duty to treat the poor. They also believed that if they wanted to do surgery or other kinds of medicine, it would be very easy to do it on uncomplaining bodies.

SIEGEL: There is that dark side - that the poor are often considered useful subjects for experiment.

OSHINSKY: That is true, and that is part of our medical history. On the other hand, it did push the needle forward. Medical reform and great medical discoveries also came with what you would consider today to be sort of outlandish assaults upon...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith's latest novel is Swing Time. From the transcript of her conversation with Isaac Chotiner at Slate:

I came across a quote where you talked about the “essential hubris of criticism” and how protected a position the critic is in compared with novel writing. Do you still feel that way?

Yeah, but I don’t mind that. I think it’s just different stages of life, like the kind of young angry man criticism that you write when you’re straight out of college and a young man. [Laughs.] It’s good that that stuff happens. Somebody has to walk in and say, “This is absolute shit.” Separating wheat from chaff with that kind of venom is completely appropriate for the young boy with a pen who wants to make a name for himself. I guess as I’ve got older, and with the more novels I write, I’ve gone soft from that boy’s opinion because I know what it takes to write a novel. There are plenty of novels I absolutely hate, but it’s no longer of interest to me to publicly destroy them. I know how much it hurts, and I just can’t do it.

I still think of criticism as a beautiful and intelligent way of describing the lay of the land. When I write criticism now, I do tend to write about things I love just because I’m more motivated by that. Hate is not enough for me anymore. It doesn’t give me the requisite energy to write 5,000 words. It really has to be adoration, I guess. But I do feel when I am writing criticism that I am much more defended, sure. I can be cool in criticism, and I can be right, which is a great joy, whereas in fiction you can only be variously vulnerable. There’s no such thing as a perfect novel, and you’ll always look the fool in some proportion, and also you’ll always reveal yourself in a way that is kind of horrifying. I can tell from somebody’s sentence the type of person they are and that’s the risk with a novel. With criticism it’s...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Marilyn Roosinck

Marilyn Roosinck is the author of Virus: An Illustrated Guide to 101 Incredible Microbes. From her Q&A with Debra Liese at the Princeton University Press blog:

Why 101 viruses?

MR: The original plan was to include 100 viruses, a nice round number and enough to allow a broad range of viruses, including those infecting all the major host groups, from bacteria to humans. Near press time the Zika virus outbreak in Brazil was attracting a lot of attention in the press, so we felt it was important to include Zika. We did not really want to remove one of the viruses that were already in the book, because these were chosen carefully, and each entry seemed important for the complete picture, so, borrowing from Hollywood, we decided 101 would also have a nice ring.

How did you choose the viruses described in the book?

MR: Making up the list of viruses to include in the book took a lot of thought. I wanted to cover every type of virus and every type of host. I also wanted to include some viruses that people would be very aware of, like influenza and Ebola. There are more human viruses in the book than those that infect any other host, because they are more thoroughly studied, and most of them are familiar to people. I also wanted to include viruses that were...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Catherine Fletcher

Catherine Fletcher is the author of The Black Prince of Florence: The Spectacular Life and Treacherous World of Alessandro de' Medici.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you decide to write a book about Alessandro de' Medici?

A: I came across Alessandro’s story when I was writing my first book, about Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. The pope who turned down Henry’s divorce was Clement VII, head of the Medici family, and he refused Henry in part because he wanted the support of Catherine’s relatives to get Alessandro into power in Florence.

A few years later, thinking about what to write next, I came back to it. It’s a fascinating piece of history, and the stories about Alessandro’s race (he was illegitimate, said to be the son of a Medici duke and a “half-Negro” woman) help lead into a different perspective on the Italian Renaissance from the traditional image of “dead white men.”

Q: You write, "For centuries after Alessandro's assassination, it suited both former allies and enemies to make a villain of him." Why was this, and what are some of the most common perceptions and misperceptions about him?

A: Alessandro was the first of the Medici family to rule the city of Florence as its duke rather than as “first among equals” in a republican government.

That was a controversial change of regime, achieved with the support of foreign troops, and not surprisingly it made him enemies. Some of them made very personalized accusations about Alessandro’s own behavior – that he was...[read on]

Visit Catherine Fletcher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Bianculli

David Bianculli is the author of The Platinum Age Of Television: From I Love Lucy to The Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific. From the transcript of hit Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross:

GROSS: If you're just joining us my guest is our TV critic David Bianculli. And he has a new book called "The platinum Age Of Television From I Love Lucy To The Walking Dead, How TV Became Terrific." What role did TV have in your life when you were growing up?

BIANCULLI: Jeez, everything. And I sort of had to confront that and discover it in the book. I'd never really been introspective in that way before. But I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid because I was alone a lot as a kid. It's also why I read a lot when I was young. And because my father, after my mom died, was working so many hours a week, I was...

GROSS: Doing what?

BIANCULLI: He was a pharmacist at the time and then a pharmaceutical chemist. But I got to watch a lot of TV and have control of it early. And so I was choosing what it was I wanted to watch, and that was kind of important. And then it ended up being - opening up a world to me that I responded to. I can remember watching things like - did you see Lee J. Cobb in "Death Of A Salesman" when it was on TV?

GROSS: I don't think so.

BIANCULLI: It was - it was a transformative moment to me. I'd never been to New York. I'd never been to a Broadway show. And that meant it was such a powerful performance and play. And I hadn't read "Death Of A Salesman" before, and TV gave me that. And TV made me laugh and TV entertained me, and I ended up going to college to want to be a TV critic at a time when film studies were...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

James Preller

James Preller's new novel for kids is The Courage Test. From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: You wrote that you were inspired by Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World to focus on a father-son dynamic in The Courage Test. How would you describe the relationship between your character Will and his father?

A: Yes, I came late to the Dahl classic and was struck that here was a loving book about a boy’s relationship with his father -- not the kind of thing I’ve seen in many middle-grade children’s books. I found it liberating, as if Dahl had given me a written note of permission.

In The Courage Test, William Meriwether Miller is a 12-year-old with recently divorced parents. His father has moved out and moved on. So there’s tension there, and awkwardness; William feels abandoned, and he also feels love, of course, because it’s natural for us to...[read on]

Visit James Preller's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Fall.

--Marshal Zeringue

Donald Lopez

Donald S. Lopez, Jr. is the author of The Lotus Sutra: A Biography. From his Q&A with Jessica Ganga for the Princeton University Press blog:

What is the Lotus Sutra?

DL: The Lotus Sutra is arguably the most famous of all Buddhist texts. It is one of only three Buddhist works, among a vast canon, that is well known in the West by its English title (the other two being the Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra). The Lotus Sutra was composed in India, and in the Sanskrit language, where its title is Saddharmapuṇḍarīka Sūtra. This might be translated as the Discourse on the White Lotus of the True Doctrine. As I explain in the book, this title is rather “loaded” from a Buddhist perspective. It is not just a lotus (the traditional flower of Buddhism), but the white lotus, the best of lotuses. It does not just teach the dharma, the doctrine, but the true doctrine. As a sutra, or “discourse,” it is traditionally attributed to the Buddha himself.

Why is it so famous?

DL: Although composed in India, the Lotus Sutra became particularly important in China and Japan. In terms of Buddhist doctrine, it is renowned for two powerful proclamations by the Buddha. The first is that there are not three vehicles to enlightenment but one, that all beings in the universe will one day become buddhas. The second is that the Buddha did not die and pass into nirvana; in fact, his...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Kathryn Lasky

Kathryn Lasky is the author of books for young readers include the Guardians of Ga'Hoole and Wolves of the Beyond series. Her new novel for kids is More Than Magic.

From Lasky's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for More Than Magic and your characters Ryder and Rory?

A: I have to admit that I was inspired by the animated character Merida in the enormously popular Pixar Disney movie Brave. My granddaughter loved that movie. I bought her one of those Merida wigs for Christmas and she was running all over our house in it.

Then it wasn’t six months later that I read about this outcry from some of the original artists who created the animated character. Merida was undergoing a makeover because she was going to become part of the pantheon of Disney Princess collection. There would be a myriad of products from backpacks to dolls.

They were changing her appearance drastically to make her look older, more sophisticated and more sexual for the teen demographic. Merida was no longer the...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Kathryn Lasky's website.

Writers Read: Kathryn Lasky (August 2013).

My Book, The Movie: The Rise of a Legend.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michèle Lamont

Michèle Lamont is Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies and Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Her books include How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment and the recently released Getting Respect: Responding to Stigma and Discrimination in the United States, Brazil, and Israel. From her Q&A with Michelle Nicholasen for the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs' blog:

Q: What inspired you and your colleagues to write Getting Respect, and how does it connect to your past scholarship?

A: Back in 2000, I published a book called The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. It was based on interviews with African American and white workers in New York, and native white workers and North African workers in France. I asked questions about what makes people equal and was surprised to discover that in France workers never talked about money making people equal, whereas many white and black American workers believe that “if I can buy a house, and you can buy a house, we're equal.” There is very little in the literature about “everyday” conceptions of racial inequality. We wanted to get at how people in different parts of the world understand similarities and differences and to learn about what kind of thinking racism is based on.

Q: In writing Getting Respect, what new insights have you learned about racism in the United States?

A: One of the main findings is that African Americans use confrontation (speaking up or calling out someone’s behavior) in response to...[read on]

The Page 99 Test: How Professors Think.

--Marshal Zeringue