Writer's Voices

Shortly after a piece about her story came out in the New York Times, Cowan started receiving various phone calls regarding her memoir. She thought her journey had ended when the book was published, but conversations from these calls helped her gather more details she felt were necessary to include. Because of this, the paperback copy of The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames contains an additional chapter with this new information. Even with the conclusion of her memoir, there were still a number of mysteries that remained, such as, where did her mom learn how to play the piano? Where did she get her upper crust accent? Many of these questions are still left unanswered.

Does Cowan think her relationship with her mother would have been different if she knew of her mom’s history and issues? “I do think it would have made a difference if I’d understood early on, but as a child, I’m not sure you really understand the concept of inter-generational trauma and all of that… Looking back, I think that my mother and what she went through was so horrific that I’m not sure if we can parse through and say, ‘well if this had happened and this had happened’ it would’ve been that significantly different, you know? Perhaps.”

Both the families and the children of them, you could sense how impactful the book was for them that they felt heard and believed.

The need for nurturing, for love, prompts the need for food and without tenderness and security in early childhood, the ability to form meaningful and healthy attachments is irrevocably damaged.

In the story, a mysterious character that Will and Maggie meet bears a peculiar obsession over things that are poisonous. Kang explains that her knowledge and interest of poisonous plants came from her own childhood fascination with plant life growing out in the wild. When she was younger, she enjoyed learning and making note of anything that grew around her. Later in college, she was drawn into herbology and the medicinal aspect of plants, which became especially important when she was studying to become a physician. It was amazing to her how simple, everyday plants found in the most common places could be used in medications as important as heart medicine and chemotherapy treatment. She said, “We’re surrounded by all these things, you know, yew trees, or yew shrubs, they’re these evergreens in people’s front lawns all the time…there’s a chemical in that that’s used in chemotherapy…so I’m always looking and seeing things and just fascinated by how plants feed us, and they cure us, and they poison us depending on what they’re doing. I just really love that relationship we have with that natural world.”

In addition to historical fiction, Kang has also written several young adult fiction novels. While many YA novels include characters that are younger than 18, she said that anywhere from a quarter to 50% of her YA readers are adults. There’s a common misconception that YA novels contain light-hearted, fluffy subject matters, however, Kang argues that teen books now are filled with serious and relatable topics, such as trauma, abuse, generational conflict, racism, and other relevant issues that people of all ages deal with. “I think that what ultimately matters is that if you can write a good story and it gets into the hands of readers, you’ve done a great job and we shouldn’t discount the fact that literature is literature and the more people read the better and so if it so happens that it’s young adult and this is a book or series that’s just sparking so much interest in a large readership, that’s better because we all get to experience other lives through books and I think that’s ultimately really good for everybody.”

There are some people who write books and they don’t know how it’s going to end but I can’t, I can’t do that. I have to have charted my path before I start writing so I plot my books out.

You never know what is in your future, so maybe keep in writing a book.

When doing research for her book, DasGupta discovered some unfortunate truths about the realities of debate culture in high schools. Initially, she had included sexism and misogyny to complicate the debate experience for her characters. However, after exploring the topic further, she found actual, real-life accounts from high school students who courageously spoke out on social media about the sexually inappropriate behavior that happens quite frequently in the debate circuit. “…Certainly, I was deeply moved, saddened, but also inspired by the bravery of these young people speaking out against what was going on in debate culture in high school… I really wanted to create a space in Debating Darcy to honor the scariness, but also the importance and bravery of being able to use your voice, and speech and debate is about using your voice, and speaking out against injustice is about using your voice, so that’s where that was coming from that I included it at the heart of Debating Darcy .”

What does DasGupta think of the Netflix series, Bridgerton , which boasts an exceptionally diverse cast of characters? She delightfully remarked, “It is incredibly gratifying, especially this season, to see dark-skinned Indian women being centered, being beloved, being considered beautiful. It was not something I ever thought that I would see on American television in my lifetime…There’s something extraordinarily powerful about representation, I think the more representation we all get, the more all of us benefits. Not just those of us who see ourselves on screen finally and feel that mirror confirmation, right? But all of us, I think everyone benefits when we have a…myriad group of faces, myriad group of heroes… and heroines available to us, and I think that that’s beneficial to absolutely everyone.”

We need to train future physicians and nurses and healthcare practitioners to not just read an x-ray, but to read the story of another human being suffering.

We human beings may not be powerful or magical, but the stories we tell our children can be.

Having worked with horses throughout most her life gave Anstandig a profound understanding of how animal herds functioned. The idea for the title came from recognizing that humans are also considered herd animals. “As I studied human psychology over the years, I was always drawn to the animal mammal part of us and to looking at the primitive things that drive us as humans. I was really interested in the early psychological writings of Freud and then looking at the neuroscience that came out in the early 2000’s and really understanding the organism of the animal of us and how it drives our psychology and the more I put those pieces together, I was thinking, ‘we’re herd animals and we are not really learning how to act like herd animals’…We haven’t really studied other herd animals to understand what do they do to have these mostly peaceful, stable groups that allow them to survive, and thrive, and evolve. What are the lessons there that we could be capturing?”

In the final chapter of the book, titled Herd, Andstandig summed it up by saying, “…This is about what it’s like to really lean in to being a herd animal, and what it really takes to be a fully supported mammal, and what it means to share needs and share resources.” Sharing needs also includes tending to our own needs and seeking help from our “herd,” or community of support. She added, “…Safety in numbers is the main rule of the horse herd….it’s like, better together. They’re very, very quick to want to befriend and partner and so their motivation is to partner with us as quickly as possible, to be part of the herd, and to share resources. It is self-serving. I watch them gift each other all day, they’re always sharing needs… and I think we’re the same. I do believe that. We’re just not tapped into it.”

We learn through relationship and story. We’ve been learning that way for all of time.

If we want to support each other’s inner lives, we must remember a simple truth. The human soul does not want to be fixed, it wants simply to be seen and heard.

Learning how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and brotherhood with all men and women, of whatever description, is a moving and fascinating adventure.

When readers first meet Mei, she is a 15-year old, self-absorbed teenager with dreams of a life better than the one she’s always known. After leaving for Beijing and joining the dance troupe, the complexities of her character emerge and her actions can be seen as either heroic or villainous. As Mei spends more time with the Chairman, truths are unraveled and she realizes that the illustrious, new world that she becomes a part of is not quite as it seems. To further complicate matters, rivalries transpire and Hua takes readers into the dynamics that arise when oppositions occur and people compete for the same thing. She explained, “In a patriarchy where they don’t have much power, there’s limits to their power, what power they have they might use to turn on each other.”

Along with historical fiction, Hua, who is a columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle, has also written in a variety of other genres, including short story, contemporary fiction, and journalism. For her, having experience in one genre has been beneficial when working within another. “I think each genre helps me excel at the other. My journalism taught me to write daily and on a deadline and be able to work with editors, so that’s great for fiction. With journalism, my fiction experience has taught me how to think about character, and setting, and narrative arc. Whereas my earliest attempts at journalism read like court transcripts. It was just a series of quotes and then it ended. Now, I’m much more likely to think about arc and to go at things more artfully. I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to work in all these genres.”

I believe that research should be the floor, and not the ceiling, to my fiction.

People turned against each other cannot turn against those responsible.

The idea for this book came from Baker’s fascination with the concept of God and his questions of faith. He explained, “For this book, literally, I wanted to tell a Bible story. I wanted to retell a Bible story, and the story I picked was Cain and Abel. That was the original thought, ‘I’m going to retell Cain and Abel in a modern setting.’ It’s been done before in other writers but, my version. I couldn’t have brothers but I wanted to create…a version of the Garden of Eden and that’s Florida in the 1800’s…instead of having brothers, well, let’s make them cousins…rich and poor but they both fall in love with the same woman, but she marries the poor cousin. Now, when you hear Cain and Abel, you know…there’s gonna be some murder involved, but it’s not the murder from the Bible, it’s a different murder that one of the cousin’s commits…out of that comes all the other characters.”

Something that fans may have noticed from reading Baker’s novels is his frequent use of Florida as the setting of his stories. He remarked, “Florida is a lot more interesting than most other states. One, it’s not like other states. It’s not really southern. It’s the environment that makes Florida different. Florida used to be totally unlike every other state in America. It was a jungle; it had wildlife like no other place. So old Florida is almost mythic, and it creates these mythical situations… but it has these really weird characters in it and that appeals to me and so I keep writing about it.”

Pay attention to how you end your essay because you’re likely to have ended different than how you started because writing is this process that reveals to you what you’re trying to say.

Don’t dig up in doubt what you planted in faith.

In her son’s early years, Swenson created a blog called Finding Cooper’s Voice , which became her place to find solace and to write about the raw emotions she felt while raising a child with special needs. As time went on, it transitioned into a refuge for parents going through a similar situation to seek guidance, comfort, and community. While Forever Boy includes many topics from her blog, it’s also filled with new content, such as her divorce, her subsequent remarriage to her husband, the sibling dynamics between her children, and advice for parents with newly diagnosed kids. What did she find difficult about writing this memoir? “What I did struggle with was reliving all the hard parts… the nights where I would just feel like I feel like I ran a marathon today. I talked about aggression or self injuring… I had shoved a lot of those parts way down deep to never be seen or heard again.” The process of remembering those tough days, months and years turned out to be a very healing process for her. She said, “A lot of the older moms that are reading my book are, like, ‘you’re helping me heal things I had PTSD over.'” For her, that acknowledgement and praise has been fulfilling, rewarding, and something she is extremely thankful for.

Regarding her memoir, Swenson said, “at a high level I think it is about autism in our family but really it’s for any person who is faced with something that causes them to pivot…know that this book is really about transformation and providing hope and figuring out how to get through something that isn’t what you originally planned.”

When you start writing or sharing, you really don’t think anyone’s going to care…It’ll be my mom and…my sister, and my words seemed to resonate with a lot of people.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, it just may not be the light that you imagined it or dreamed of, but it’s there.

Before writing her book, Ochu liked the idea of developing a story that was funny, uplifting and engaging for women and that became the motivation behind Campfire Confessions . “The world just kept getting more and more serious, you know COVID hitting and just…the things that we’ve had in our country and other countries around the world, and part of it was it was fun and entertaining that you could escape into a unique setting, but at the same time I really wanted these women to have these inner struggles that, I believe, women and men, struggle with such as learning how to embrace self love…learning how to forgive themselves and others and so I wanted to weave that within the story, and also put some action-adventure in there so it would be, you know, different.”

For many authors, incorporating comedy into novels can be quite challenging, but Ochu was able to include it seamlessly in her book. How was she able to accomplish this? “One, I think I have a good sense of humor… I can play off of someone else’s sentences and get some witty banter going…but I think because I had some really unique girlfriends in my life that were very funny and when we would get together we could… just play off each other and make fun of ourselves and tease each other. I also have three sisters so when we get together there’s a lot of teasing and nothing ever hurtful…I really think I took a lot of that.” Ochu also discussed the importance of female relationships and the benefits of fostering and nurturing those friendships. One of the ways she promotes this is by participating in and hosting virtual book clubs and other events where women can reach out to other women, find new friends, and learn how to build on those friendships. “I think every woman has a different experience at that and it’s kind of nice no matter where you might find it in your life, that maybe if you find it in your 50’s or 60’s or 70’s, it’s still so rewarding.”

One of the passions of writing the book…is to try to create a community in different ways for women to connect through this book.

I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.

During the interview, Caroline remarked on the great detail that was included in the memoir. Weintraub explained, “…I had kept some journals and you know when you’re on bed rest for five months, there’s not much going on, right? You have a lot of time to think and process and write things down and so when I started writing that first draft, it wasn’t fifteen years ago, it was, you know, it had been five years before, and so I was able to remember a lot of that.” One of the challenges for authors when writing memoirs is having to take private, sometimes painful, moments and presenting them out to the world in a way that is respectful to those involved. For her, she said, “This is so difficult and I really had to think about what my story was going to do to other people and how they were going to feel about it…you know, I gave it a lot of thought and what I decided is when I wrote a scene I said, ‘Is this necessary for the arc of the story? Did this give this story forward momentum? Can I leave it out?’…If I could leave out a painful scene, then I left it out because my intention is not to hurt anybody, it’s to tell a story.” In the end, she was able to leave out many parts she felt were not completely necessary while still being able to get her point across and tell her story authentically.

Since the release of her book, Weintraub has received positive feedback and made personal connections with many of her readers. She added that one of the reasons she wrote this book was to help release her trauma and connect with women so they could feel comfortable also releasing their trauma. She recalled a time recently in which she had come across an old acquaintance who confided in her and shared their own harrowing life experience and from that conversation, Weintraub felt, “This is what it’s about…right here…that was such a beautiful moment and so I felt like I had accomplished something with this book in that moment.”

The first draft I wrote for me. I got it all out. Subsequent drafts I wrote for my audience. That’s when you have to cut and cut and say, ‘Is this contributing to the arc of the story and the forward momentum?’

There is probably no family that can truthfully put a sign out that says ‘There is no trouble here.’

Berkovits also delved into the backstory of her distinctive book cover, which was designed by her brother, world-renowned architect, Daniel Libeskind. “He did the cover and he did it in his, I would say, typical enigmatic style. He’s very avant garde in his buildings and he’s avant garde in his cover, so readers might not immediately understand the symbolism of the cover, but once they read it, they certainly will.” She also elaborated on the reasoning behind the swastika on the cover, which, she clarified, is not the same swastika that Hitler decreed. Hers differs in that it is a white swastika, set on a black circle with a gray background, as opposed to Hitler’s black swastika, on a white circle with a red background. Its placement on the cover reflects the themes of antisemitism and fascism that run throughout her book. In addition, “…Many people don’t know that the swastika is a centuries old symbol and that it used to symbolize good and it has been perverted by the Nazis. So that’s the reason the swastika on this cover has to be understood within the entire context of the book, not just judging it by the cover. ”

The Corset Maker also includes an epilogue and prologue, which not only bookends the story but also contains rich content and important, modern issues. “I ask your listeners if they read the Corset Maker, don’t skip the prologue because it really will change your understanding of what I’m trying to say.”

We do need to learn from history, and my sense is that learning about history from novels is much more interesting and palatable than learning facts in school…reading a novel you could relate to individuals. You can’t relate to 6 million or 84 million killed, but you can relate to one person and that’s why I think novels are a good way of getting across the history.

Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.

Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero to me.