I’m following up on my December 5, 2024 curation of quotes, links, and book information drawn from my regular social media posts about the Deborah Kalb book/author Q&As, now updating for the first half of 2025.
You will find a wide range of authors (fiction and nonfiction) with interesting and useful things to say about their books, writing, and overall creative process.
Now is a good time to repeat what I have written about previous curations of Deborah’s work, because it remains true: Continued kudos to Deborah for the many high quality author interviews she publishes each week about both fiction and nonfiction books. They provide a valuable window into the writing process, and demonstrate that while there are commonalities among authors and books, each publishing experience is unique.
Author: Lee Adams
Book: Love On Tour
Author quote: “I’ve spent decades going to Nashville, gaining inspiration and knowledge.”
Author: Stephanie Anderson
Book: Women in Independent Publishing: A History of Unsung Innovators, 1953-1989
Author quote: “…the idea of the project was seeded and supported by my conversations with poets, publishers, and – crucially – librarians.”
Author: Jenn Bregman
Book: The Last Hamilton
Author quote: “At one point, it became clear how the story was going to end and then I wrote the last chapter and started working backward.”
Author: Dana Caspersen
Book: Conflict Is an Opportunity: 20 Fundamental Decisions for Navigating Difficult Times
Author quote: “Our fundamental beliefs about conflict shape what we imagine is possible within it.”
Author: Robert L. Dilenschneider
Book: Character: Life Lessons in Courage, Integrity, and Leadership
Author quote: “Character, to me, is the mental and moral foundation that shapes a person’s actions and decisions.”
Author: J.T. Ellison
Book: Last Seen
Author quote: “I had a crazy dream two summers ago, incredibly detailed, about a writer attending a retreat in a town called Brockville.”
Author: Virginia Evans
Book: The Correspondent
Author quote: “I like the idea of returning to books yearly, seasonally, almost like liturgies.”
Author: David Wright Faladé
Book: The New Internationals
Author quote: “Cecile, the main character in The New Internationals, who is based on my mom, was born about a decade before the Nazi occupation of France, in a very wealthy Jewish family.”
Author: Harry Freedman
Book: Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soil
Author quote: “Dylan spent years putting forward fanciful backstories about himself.”
Author: Jennifer Hamady
Author quote: “While of course every person is unique, I discovered that about 90 percent of seemingly technical issues were caused or exacerbated by emotional ones.”
Author: John Lee Hooker Jr.
Book: From the Shadow of the Blues: My Story of Music, Addiction and Redemption
Author quote: “Everyone including my family and closest associates counted me out. They thought that I’d be dead before I turned 23 years old.”
Author: Natalie Jenner
Book: Austen at Sea
Author quote: “2025 is the 250th anniversary of the year of Jane Austen’s birth, and the last significant milestone anniversary that I will be lucky enough to celebrate alongside “Janeites” throughout the world.”
Author: Samuel Jay Keyser
Book: Play It Again, Sam: Repetition in the Arts
Author quote: “At Oxford I was a student of Old and Middle English language and literature. I attended lectures by J.R.R. Tolkien.”
Author: Neil Mathison
Book: Airstream Country: A Geologic Journey Across the American West
Author quote: “Airstream Country is a travel book, a natural history book, a cultural exploration, and a personal memoir.”
Author: Rue Matthiessen
Book: Woman with Eyes Closed
Author quote: “What do artists do, and why do they do it? What is it worth, and to whom? The fiction just grew from there.”
Author: Alexander Morpheigh
Book: The Pythagorean
Author quote: “I wanted to shine a light on thought-provoking scientific and philosophical perspectives not yet accepted into the mainstream.”
Author: Jenny Morris
Book: An Ethical Guide to Murder
Author quote: “As a psychologist, I’m obsessed with asking questions.”
Author: Adam Oyebanji
Book: Esperance
Author quote: “On one particularly rainy day, I stumbled across a shipping case from the 18th century that was such a stunning mix of incompetence and cruelty that it’s been at the back of my mind ever since.”
Author: Nick Owchar
Book: A Walker in the Evening
Author quote: “There’s no better research than eating and sleeping in the place you’re writing about.”
Author: Will Parks
Book: Graceful Leadership: Inspiring Hope, Creativity, and Resilience in Times of Peace and Crisis
Author quote: “As far as I’m aware, this is one of only a few books that particularly addresses the topic of leading with grace in the context of humanitarian and international development.”
Author: Laura Brooke Robson
Book: A Curse for the Homesick
Author quote: “I’ve always been of the school of thought that the best works of speculative fiction are the ones that use their fantastical premises to make the metaphorical more literal.”
Author: Elizabeth Rosner
Book: Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening
Author quote: “I think of myself as more of a collage or mosaic maker than a conventional memoirist, in that I love weaving together disparate fragments to construct something that I hope is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Author: Laurie Sheck
Book: Cyborg Fever
Author quote: “I found the 20th century physicists to be fascinating people who often said very striking and memorable things.”
Author: Catriona Silvey
Book: Love and Other Paradoxes
Author quote: “But I also hope the story makes readers think about how our dreams of a specific future, or our fixation on the past, can stop us from making the most of our life as it is in the present.”
Author: Nancy W. Sindelar
Book: Hemingway’s Passions: His Women, His Wars, and His Writing
Author quote: “I believed Ernest gained a good education in Oak Park, developed the old-fashioned Midwest work ethic there, and learned other traits that enabled him to become a great writer.”
Author: Janet Todd
Book: Living with Jane Austen
Author quote: “It was also fun to revisit my younger self reading Austen at very different moments from the mid 20th-century until now.”
Author: Martha Anne Toll
Book: Duet for One
Author quote: “I was active in the amateur chamber music scene in Boston during law school, and for about 15 years after I moved to Washington, D.C.”
Author: Judith Valente
Book: The Italian Soul: How to Savor the Full Joys of Life
Author quote: “The revelation Italy gave me is that I can do the work I love, and still take care of myself.”