admin Kantika comes out on April 18th! I’ll have my launch reading at the wonderful Newtonville Books and do other events throughout New England, as well as online. I’m so looking forward to getting to be in conversation with other writers whose work I love, including Tova Mirvis, Aaron Hamburger (whose new novel, Hotel Cuba, is … Read more
THE WONDERFUL PEOPLE at Henry Holt & Co. have designed a set of images that pair photos from Kantika with quotes from the book; they will post them on social media as the April 18th publication date draws near. See below for a sneak peek. Using family photographs in this novel was very important to … Read more
I fly out later today for an artists’ residency at the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France, where I’ll mess around with some new writing, read, hang out with my fellow resident artists—American-living-in-Berlin writer and disability rights activist Kenny Fries and Irish filmmaker Mary McGuckian—walk in the Provence countryside, and speak French. Running away to … Read more
Tell me about this novel – what is Kantika about? Who are the characters? Kantika is a story of migration, motherhood, blended families, disability and finding joy amidst tumult, as well as a homage to a vanishing culture. Inspired by my maternal grandmother, Kantika’s central protagonist shares her real name, Rebecca née Cohen Baruch Levy. … Read more
I just finished reading a wonderful book, One Hundred Saturdays, by Michael Frank. The author spent seven years of Saturdays interviewing a woman named Stella Levi, who grew up in the Sephardic community of Rhodes before it was obliterated by the Nazis. Stella was among the ten percent of people who survived. She’s an extraordinary … Read more
I have some writer friends who get up each day at dawn to write, no matter what else is happening in their lives. While I admire their discipline, this has never been my way. Not that I’m not always percolating when I’m deep inside a book—I “write” as I drive, walk, swim across Walden Pond … Read more
A German edition of Kantika is forthcoming from Mareverlag, the house that published The End of the Point (called Die Sommer der Porters in German). Kantika will be translated by Julianne Zaubitzer, who did such a great job with my last book. I’ve recently returned from a week in Berlin where I glimpsed the vibrant … Read more
In 1985, when I was twenty-one, I taped my grandmother Rebecca telling stories. My grandmother—a vibrant, shape-shifting, endlessly creative person whose life journey brought many challenges—inspired my writing in oblique ways over the years, but it wasn’t until decades later, long after her death in 1991, that I felt ready to turn to her story. … Read more
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