Q & A: Caroline Leavitt

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Pictures of You, plus eight other novels. Pictures of You was on the Best of 2011 Lists from the San Francisco Chronicle, the Providence Journal, Bookmarks Magazine and was one of the Top Five Books on the Family and Love from Kirkus Reviews. She is a book critic for People Magazine and the Boston Globe and a book columnist for Shoptopia.com and Dame Magazine. She teaches novel writing at UCLA Writer's Program online and mentors writers privately. She lives with her husband, the writer Jeff Tamarkin, and their son Max, in Hoboken, NJ. She can be reached at www.carolineleavitt.com.

What are some elements of your background that led you to pursue a career as a writer?

I grew up sickly with asthma and bullied in my small town of Waltham (near Boston). I had a lot of time to myself to read, which I loved because I didn’t have to be a little girl struggling to breathe—I could be a dancer in Paris!  But I didn’t want to just read books, I wanted to write stories and I began to do that. The first time I read a story in front of my class and they liked it (instead of mocking me or throwing spitballs, the way they usually did), I knew this was what I wanted to do.

Who are some of your favorite writers and artists?

Cindy Sherman’s photographs, Mark Rothko’s paintings, F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby is a perfect book.)

What is your process and schedule when creating a new book?

I’m always haunted by an idea and a character, some question that I want to answer. I do outline but the outline is rewritten every day that I sit down to write.

Can you share with readers a bit about your love of movies and how it influenced your bestseller, Pictures of You?

I’m a total movieholic. As a little girl, I spent a lot of time in the movies, and I never stopped loving them.  I began to want to write them years ago and I took a few classes, Robert McKee, which I didn’t like, and John Truby story structure which changed my life. I won a Nickelodeon Finalist for a script I wrote for Doug, a cartoon my son adored. Knowing how to write scripts helped me in my novel to visualize the scenes more, to get the rhythm of them faster and tighter and to make sure there was lots of subtext in the dialogue. I’ve just written the script for Pictures of You and sent it off to Sundance Screenwriting Lab (really competitive—I can’t imagine I will get in, but you never know), and to a producer who said she’d give me notes.

Are there autobiographical characteristics between you and Isabelle, the main character in Pictures of You?

The only similarity we share is that we both are phobic about driving! Like all 16-year-olds I got my license but all they made me do was drive around the block and I still couldn’t drive! I was too terrified that I would get in an accident and kill someone. I took these refresher courses and the instructor finally pulled me over to the side of the road, sighed, and said, “You know, Caroline, some people just aren’t meant to drive. You may be one of them.”

Unlike Isabelle, I still don’t drive. I don’t even like to be a passenger in a car. Lucky for me, I live in the NYC area where you don’t have to drive.

How did you land the coveted position as a reviewer at People Magazine?

Luck and timing. I had been a book columnist at the Boston Globe for a few years already and a friend told me that they were hiring a new books editor and they were looking for new reviewers. I applied INSTANTLY. I love working for them. They send me books I might never have picked up, so I’ve gotten to read really widely.

When I pick up new books, you are always giving praise. Why are you such a strong advocate for new authors?

Because the business is so, so hard. I’ve had successful authors help me as I came up the ladder, and I never forgot their incredible kindness, and I was determined to pay it forward. But I’ve also had writers hurt me—one even denigrated me by name in print!  This shocked me, and that made me vow that I was always going to do the opposite.

What inspires you?

I would use the word haunt instead of inspire. I write because I have to. I have to explore the things that obsess me, to try and figure out answers to the things that haunt me.

In your opinion, is social media a benefit or hindrance to authors?

Definitely a benefit. I’ve gotten research help in seconds just by posting a query. I’m actually putting FB and Twitter in the dedication of my new book because I’ve felt that so many people supported me during the writing of the novel by responding to my postings about how it was going. They cheered me on!

What are your current projects and dreams for the  future?

My new novel, tentatively titled Is This Tomorrow, will come out from my beloved publisher Algonquin Books in 2013. It’s set in the 1950s and 60s, during the cold war, and is about a seemingly unsolvable crime in a supposedly safe suburban neighborhood (a child vanishes), and how the one different family—a divorced Jewish woman and her son—are somehow targeted for the crime.

Q & A: Filmmaker: Chris Chong Chan Fui

       Q & A:  Chris Chong Chan Fui

1.       In an online interview, I read that you were originally a student of business and are a self-taught filmmaker.   How were you able to make this transition?

CCCF:  The transition from business to film was made blindly. In business, decisions are made with historical data so as to graph a direction of what the future holds.  I took the opposite, and more naïve approach, and believed that the unknown future ahead would lead me to answers of the past.  Moving into manipulating film was out of pure wide-eyed curiosity.  A curiosity much like opening a book of fantasy that leads to a more entertaining and unpredictable realm.

2.       As a child, what were some experiences in your background that cultivated your artistic pursuits?

CCCF:  My childhood was in a fishbowl, as it is now. 

3.       In Block B, your internationally award winning short-film, the setting is a Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) apartment complex.  Please describe the demographics and background of this site.

CCCF: The area, called Brickfields, is a major local transportation hub (mono-rails, trains, and buses), but also an area of red-light prostitution, blind massage parlors, Indian cafés, temples, churches and mosques alike. This is a place where the overriding sounds of the azan (Muslim call to prayer) coming from the mosque compete with the chimes rising from the pooja (Hindu prayers). In effect, this mélange of sounds mimic the disparate voices that comprise the country’s own religious complexities and insecurities. Brickfields is also known as the ‘Indian’ part of town because of the large population of expatriate Indians working in Kuala Lumpur (KL) in IT, engineering, architecture, etc. for 2-4 year contracts. The husbands, who are hired to work in KL, bring their families along. Their wives are usually highly educated, but become housewives in an effort to support the husband’s careers. It was common that the wives rarely left the apartment compound. Only venturing outside with their husbands, and sometimes with their neighbors. Usually  they visit others within the same floor, or from the floors above/below. But they rarely venture far. In a country that highly discriminates against Indian-Malaysians, these residents fall between the cracks because they are expatriate, middle-upper class, highly educated, brought to KL to work. They are self-contained within their own compound, looking at the troubles of Malaysia and the Indian-Malaysians from a distance even though they live in the same area. It’s a community within a community. A detail within a detail. Connected, but distant.

4.       Why did you choose this specific place for the film?

CCCF:  I had lived in this building for two years.  This was my community for that period of time.  This was my sightline.   

5.       What was the artistic process of Block B from start to finish?

Block B is a moving painting.  The project started from a canvas of the monolithic cement building which neither had a personality nor unique features.  The challenge was to allow the different personalities of the building and their stories seep out.  What this meant was to partially choreograph or paint the singular unmoving image of the building into a vibrant ‘moving-image’ using physical movement and varying light sources.

6.       How can individuals in the United States and abroad see more of your innovative work and other international short films?

CCCF:  That’s tough question as it depends on festivals / exhibitors.  Perhaps the website.  

7.       Where do your artistic inspirations come from and how do you hone your creativity?

CCCF:  Normally, I am provoked to create a work.  It is not necessarily an idea because I feel an idea is too casual.  I am provoked like a nagging voice.  A clear nagging voice with no source. 

8.       Who are some of your favorite filmmakers, artists, and authors?

CCCF:  Francis Bacon. 

9.       What are your current projects and how can people outside of Malaysia see more of your amazing work?

CCCF:  I’m sorting that out at the moment.  Hoping to be provoked very shortly. 

The Story of Beautiful Girl: Rachel Simon

The Story of Beautiful Girl is a 2011 New York Times bestselling fictional novel by Rachel Simon. The story begins in 1968 on a treacherous, rainy November night at the Pennsylvania farmhouse of a semi-reclusive widow, Martha. Her lonely solitude is abruptly interrupted by the sudden appearance of two disheveled and desperate strangers, Homan, a deaf African American man and his companion, Laynie. As Martha bravely accepts the stricken travelers into her home she realizes that Laynie may be mentally disabled and that she carries a tiny newborn under her rain soaked blanket. Commotion erupts as the police arrive and take Laynie into custody. Homan is able to escape into the stormy night while the baby remains hidden in Martha’s attic. This cataclysmic night propels the conflict of the story and we follow the characters through four decades of its ramifications. Simon eloquently chronicles these events and the aftermath of the the characters’ attempted escape this night from the nearby Pennsylvania School for the Incurable and Feebleminded. The school provides an element of historical realism to the novel, as it is loosely based on actual mental health facilities of this time period. This was an era in American history when mentally challenged children or those with misdiagnosed disabilities where locked away from society and their families, many times for life.

The Story of Beautiful Girl paints a realistic depiction into the minds of its characters who may appear externally disabled but internally live the same human condition as the rest of us. Simon writes from the unique perspectives of Homan and Laynie and readers observe a vivid internal dialogue. Martha also lends her voice to the narrative as her life has been irrevocably changed by her chance encounter with Laynie and Homan.

Being inquisitive, I was compelled to do a bit of outside research into historical accounts of state institutions for the mentally disabled. In Q & A at the end of the book, Simon mentions a young Geraldo Rivera’s Peabody Award winning television reports on the Willowbrook State School located in Staten Island, New York in the early 1970’s. Rivera documented the deplorable and atrocious conditions at Willowbrook School and brought awareness to the plight of its residents. Also, there are two current documentary films,Cropsey (2009) and Unforgotten: Twenty-Five Years After Willowbrook (1996), which reference the chilling conditions at Willowbrook and the aftermath of its closing.

In the opening reviews of the novel, author John Grogan (Marley and Me), writes, “I dare you to read the first twenty pages and not keep going.” Fortunately, I took his challenge and was pleasantly surprised with an amazing work of fiction most worthy of reading.

Girl Unmoored: Jennifer Gooch Hummer

Girl Unmoored:

What it means to me 

I started writing Girl Unmoored when I was ten years old. I know because I still have the original notebook on which I sketched her face and wrote: A Girl Named Apron. I don’t know where the name, Apron, came from but my mother maintains that her name started out as “April.” It didn’t. But I don’t make a big deal about it; I have the notebook.

I never finished the book. Probably because there was no plot. All Apron did was pack up to go live with her grandmother, with no particular reason as to why. That’s the problem with not having a plot; the characters don’t do much.

It wasn’t until after I met my friend Mike that Apron showed up again.  My Mike isn’t the same as the Mike in the book, but he too, was a dead ringer for Jesus. My Mike was an actor, although the closest he got to playing Jesus Christ was Rocky Horror, who also had long blond hair that he whipped around a lot. These hair-whipping days were in the early 80’s. Just when AIDS showed up. I didn’t know Mike then, and I barely knew about AIDS.

Girl Unmoored is the story of a girl lost in a sea of grief after losing her mother. When she meets Mike, she’s met her mooring. Although Mike and his cantankerous boyfriend, Chad, don’t know what to do with her at first-Apron just seems to keep showing up, usually with a fat lip-they eventually offer her a summer job in their flower store. And then its smooth sailing for Apron--until she uncovers Chad’s secret. He’s sick and there’s nothing anyone can do to save him. It’s also 1985, when no one really knows how AIDS is transmitted, or who might be at risk.

Suddenly Apron is forced to leave behind the safe harbor of childhood and navigate the stormy seas of a young adult. She knows what her real job is now, and it has nothing to do with flowers. Mike needs her to show him how to let Chad go.

There’s a whole lot of other stuff that happens, with a whole lot of other people—there’s Grandma Bramhall, too busy shopping for the perfect bikini to help Apron; and M, the deluded future stepmother; and Rennie and Mr. Perry, both of whom are about to be exposed for their betrayals—but mostly Girl Unmoored is about friendship. Deep, loyal friendship. The kind that supersedes family.  The kind that keeps you anchored when everything else is falling apart. The kind that can save you.

Watching Mike and Chad endure in a world that despises them, Apron begins to understand that sometimes you don’t have to do anything for some people to hate you. Mean is just the way they came out.

This is what Apron learns.

This is what saves her.

I wish my friend Mike was here to read the book. He would have liked it, I think. Especially the part about how well he sang.

--Jennifer Gooch Hummer

December, 2011

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Katherine Boo

Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012) Katherine Boo

February 7, 2012 Random House Publishing Group

In her author’s note, Katherine Boo writes, “Ten years ago I fell in love with an Indian man and gained a country.  He urged me not to take it at face value” (Boo, 245).  Ms. Boo, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, writes a non-fiction account of life in the slums of Annawadi, India called Behind the Beautiful Forevers.  Annawadi borders the international airport in Mumbai and the major trade of its inhabitants is trash collection and resale.  From the beginning of the narrative, readers follow a sixteen year old Muslim named Abdul Husain, who is a veteran and adept trash collector.  Abdul has helped his family survive amongst the 90,000 residents of Annawadi and they are able to build a small business from his industrious endeavors.  Unfortunately, there is dissention among the residents of the slum who are packed so closely together and the Husain family has an altercation with their neighbor, Fatima or “One Leg,” a crippled woman who neglects her children and whose sole pleasures in life are the extramarital affairs she partakes in when her husband is at work.  Boo also chronicles the difficult lives of other young people in the slum including:  scrappy Sunil, charismatic Kapa, and Meena, a young girl of a poor caste who is regularly beaten.  Machu, the only girl going to college attempts to teach the young children of the slum who lack any education.  The books focuses on the effects of modern day globalization on the residents of Annawadi and depicts some of the corrupt elements of the police and politicians.  Educated Manchu’s mother, Asha, is the powerful female slum lord who tries to rise above her caste and succeed in a patriarchal society.  Hunger, poverty, and a daily struggle for survival pervade the piece and readers will become more aware of life in one of the most populated cities in the world. Boo states that she had previously been writing about the poorest residents of the U.S. but observed, “A lack of nonfiction on India” (Boo, 248).  Behind the Beautiful Forevers is a story that will remain with readers long after the book is finished and will bring awareness to the affects of capitalism and globalization into one of the poorest regions of the globe.

Lunch a favorite author, Dr. Samuel Park

Lunch with a favorite author:  Dr. Samuel Park

A few weeks ago, I received news that Dr. Samuel Park, English professor and acclaimed author of This Burns My Heart would be presenting at the Gaithersburg Book Festival in MD.  We have been friends on social media and via this blog for some time so this was exciting for me.  I easily found him at Kramerbooks  in Dupont Circle, Washington, DC. Is it ironic that I learned about a cool restaurant with books from a visitor to my area of abode? The two of us got on like two old chums and noted that when you meet someone you already know from interacting through technology; it can be interesting. We concluded that we were both just like the online presence we projected.  Finally, I decided we might have come up with an interesting sociological study.

We chatted on writing, teaching, and life in general. It’s a wonderful day when you find that rare person with whom you have so much in common. I was beyond excited to hear a few details about the incredible new novel he has in the works. I appreciated this gifted author telling me his tales!  Make sure to read This Burns My Heart and make him giant on @amazon.com rankings!

Heaven is Here: Stephanie Nielson

Heaven is Here:   Stephanie Nielson

I always look forward to the Parade Magazine insert in my Sunday Washington Post and usually put it aside for later reading.  On April 8, 2012, I was riveted by the cover of a young couple and their story. I immediately devoured the article about Stephanie Nielson and her monumental journey. I was thrilled to learn that Mrs. Nielson had written a memoir of her experiences and proceeded to read her book in about two days. Here is my review:

In August 2008, Stephanie Nielson was a loving wife and devoted mother of four children. She happily chronicled her life journey on a successful blog: nieniedialogues.com which became a very successful endeavor. The blog stood out for its authenticity and Nielson’s inherent love of motherhood and her devout Mormon family. On one fateful August day, Stephanie and her husband, Christian, embarked with flight instructor, Doug Kinneard, on a daytime flight to her in-laws retreat in New Mexico in a small Cessna airplane.  On the return flight, the plane crashed and was consumed with fire.  Mr. Kinneard perished and Stephanie and her husband were severely burned. Mrs. Nielson was burned over 83% of her body and was not expected to survive her injuries. She was in an induced coma for six months and her loving sisters, Courtney and Lucy, took her children in as their own, embracing them in the large Clark family fold in Provo, Utah. In this tale of resilience, Mrs. Nielson describes her harrowing journey out of her coma and back to a new normal of motherhood. She picks herself up through inexplicable pain, depression, and disfiguring burns to triumphantly return to her one true calling of motherhood. One of the most painful portions of the book involves her difficulty reuniting with her small children as a severely burned person. Yet, she overcomes these obstacles with an unmatched bravery and determination.

I shared the YouTube video of Heaven is Here with my college English students and they were moved beyond expectation. This book is why I share what I read; to connect others to the written word and the brilliant messages they contain. Please read this amazing story of human survival and love. Readers will be changed in their outlook of the life and will garner understanding of the true meaning of perseverance.

*Update: On April 3, 2012, Stephanie Nielson gave birth to baby Charlotte Nielson and her book is now on the New York Times Bestseller list!

Please follow her blog: http://nieniedialogues.com/