Interviews - Late Last Night Books

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Author interview: John O’Hern, Sweetspot, Confessions of a Golfaholic

4/20/14 INTERVIEW WITH JOHN O’HERN, COMEDIAN, PLAYWRIGHT, AND AUTHOR OF THE LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY NOVEL SWEETSPOT, CONFESSIONS OF A GOLFAHOLIC

The International Network of Golf named Sweetspot its 2013 Outstanding Achiever, and the New England Golf Monthly said, “If you’re crazy about golf or you’re a golf widow, then you have to put the book Sweetspot, Confessions of a Golfaholic by John O’Hern on your must-read list.” Or if you just plain like to laugh, I say.

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Remembering the Holocaust

4/17/2014

On My Own: Decoding the Conspiracy of Silence, by Erika Schulhof Rybeck and published last year by Summit Crossroads Press, is just one of the increasing number of Holocaust memoirs from survivors who want to tell their stories.

Rybeck escaped the Holocaust by traveling via the Kinder Transport train to Scotland in 1938. She grew up there in a Catholic boarding school, protected from the horrors of the war and the fate of her parents by a “conspiracy of silence.” As an adult, she spent years seeking the truth of the Holocaust and how it claimed her family.

That is just one story. On my desk are two recent memoirs from Gihon River Press,

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New Hope, PA, Farley’s Bookshop, Interview

3/20/14 INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM HASTINGS, FARLEY’S BOOKSHOP, NEW HOPE, PA

Last Thanksgiving I was in New Hope, PA and happened by Farley’s Bookshop, on Main Street, full of after-dinner shoppers. I was struck by the store, by its bustling prosperity and by the fact that I found one of my recent favorite books, Ron Cooper’s Purple Jesus, displayed there. I also saw displays arranged by small presses.

Q: Tell me about three or four of your favorite current novels from small presses. What percentage of your novel sales do small presses represent? Do you find small press novels any more or less reliable in quality than novels from mainstream presses? Do you find them any more or less to your taste?

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INTERVIEW WITH PEGGY PAYNE, AUTHOR OF COBALT BLUE

3/10/14 INTERVIEW WITH PEGGY PAYNE, AUTHOR OF COBALT BLUE

Throughout her career as a novelist, Peggy Payne has explored aspects of spiritual and supernatural phenomena. Her first novel, Revelation, deals with a Christian minister who hears God speak to him out loud. Her second, Sister India, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, follows an American woman as she seeks sanctuary in Varanasi (Benares), India, destination of the holiest Hindu pilgrimage. Payne’s latest novel, Cobalt Blue, as I said in my review last month, describes the turbulent experience of kundalini rising. Cobalt Blue earned the rare distinction of having been the book of the month on a Playboy Radio Network program and in the top 100 spiritual books for Kindle.

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Stoning the Devil, Garry Craig Powell, book review and interview

2/20/14 STONING THE DEVIL, GARRY CRAIG POWELL, BOOK REVIEW AND INTERVIEW

Time and fortune happen to everyone. Before my other half, Todd, read Garry Craig Powell’s Stoning the Devil, I told Todd that when he finished I would want him to tell me if he could see any difference between Stoning the Devil and the novels on the New York Times notable books lists over the years. Because I can’t see any difference, in quality of writing or in the relevance and significance of topic.

Todd couldn’t see any difference, either.

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Interview with author, publisher Eva Kapitan, A Few Good Books Publishing

1/20/13 INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR, PUBLISHER EVA KAPITAN, A FEW GOOD BOOKS PUBLISHING

Q: I’ve read and enjoyed two of your cozy mysteries, Lovers, Grapes and Crimes and the forthcoming Murder at the Wine Cask Inn. Plots and characters are madcap, like a ’30s movie—I think of Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby. Where do the ideas for your books and the people in them come from?

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BECOMING A POET IN MID-LIFE: PETER M. GORDON

1/4/14 – BECOMING A POET IN MID-LIFE: PETER M. GORDON, POET

For anyone who views a writing career as an impossible dream, poet Peter M. Gordon is an inspiration. After a 30-year career in creative work that has included theatre directing, writing, teaching, and television programming, Peter reinvented himself as a poet after the age of 50 – and very successfully so.

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Interview with Anton DiSclafani

12/10/13 – INTERVIEW WITH ANTON DiSCLAFANI, AUTHOR OF THE YONAHLOSSEE RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS

Last month, in my review of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, I talked about

what a fascinating character Thea Atwell is. She’s also a controversial character. The New York Times called her “an impetuous, headstrong heroine, who often seems like a 1930s version of Scarlett O’Hara.” NPR Books said she’s a “budding feminist,” and The Boston Globe suggested she’s “impossible to like.”

Given the complexity of this character, I couldn’t wait to interview Anton DiSclafani, the author who created her.

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Justin Kramon Thrills with The Preservationist

11-23-13 INTERVIEW WITH JUSTIN KRAMON, AUTHOR OF THE PRESERVATIONIST

Last month, I reviewed Justin Kramon’s new thriller The Preservationist. This time, I interview the author. When I first met Justin Kramon in 2010, he spoke to the Annapolis Chapter of Maryland Writers Association about his well-received first novel Finny. His vivid characters and confident writing style were impressive for an author still in his twenties. I interviewed him then for MWA’s Pen in Hand. He continues to be a thoughtful and engaging interviewee.

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Mystery Loves Company

11/17/13 MYSTERY LOVES COMPANY

Would you like to go where they really know your name? Better yet, if you read mysteries, they know what you want to read?

Try your local independent mystery bookstore. I drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge last week to the quiet shores of Oxford, Maryland, to drop in on Kathy Harig and the Mystery Loves Company Bookstore. An energetic woman with short white hair wearing a blue turtleneck and corduroy slacks, Harig greeted me with a smile as she waved good-bye to a woman bemoaning the fate of two handsome oak trees in town. The store is on the main street in a building dating from 1900—it’s on the Historic Register–and used as a bank and then a post office for 30 years each.

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INTERVIEW WITH MARIAN SZCZEPANSKI, AUTHOR OF PLAYING ST. BARBARA

11/4/13 – INTERVIEW WITH MARIAN SZCZEPANSKI, AUTHOR OF PLAYING ST. BARBARA

Novelist Marian Szczepanski and I met at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in the summer of 1993. We recently reconnected through a mutual Facebook friend who had just reviewed Marian’s new (and first!) novel, Playing St. Barbara. Marian was gracious enough to catch me up on the missing twenty years, including how she came to write this historical novel chronicling the brutal lives and enduring spirit of Depression-era immigrant coal-mining families in southwestern Pennsylvania.

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INTERVIEW WITH LITERARY TRANSLATOR LINDA MARIANIELLO

10/4/13 — INTERVIEW WITH LINDA MARIANIELLO, LITERARY TRANSLATOR

Life takes us funny places. Decades ago I played in the Yale Symphony Orchestra with Lind a Marianiello, who had transferred to Yale and had the reputation – more than well-deserved – as a phenomenal flautist. I recently learned that Linda has turned her musical training, liberal arts education, and other considerable skills to literary and book translation, a field that constitutes 3% of all book publishing in the US today. I grabbed the chance to catch up with Linda to find out not only how her life took this turn but also learn something about what exactly literary translation requires of a writer.

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Carolyn Sienkiewicz, Washington Independent Review of Books, guest blogs

Carolyn Sienkiewicz does the extraordinary. Last night I heard the Peabody-trained oboist play with the American Balalaika Symphony. I’ve read her articles in Cruising World, Living Aboard, Chesapeake Bay Magazine and SpinSheet about living with her husband, Mark, aboard a sailboat for eight years—although from talking with her I know that she and Mark both got seasick the first time they sailed. When you next visit the “Charm City” of Baltimore, if you treat yourself to a visit aboard the sailing ambassador, the Pride of Baltimore II, know that Carolyn was among the volunteers who worked over a recent winter to keep the swift clipper shipshape. And she is a reviewer, editor, and member of the editorial board of the Washington Independent Review of Books.

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Interview with Nancy Hartney, Author of Washed in the Water

9/17/13 — INTERVIEW WITH NANCY HARTNEY, AUTHOR OF WASHED IN THE WATER

In my review of Washed in the Water earlier this month, I suggested this debut collection of short stories made Nancy Hartney an important new voice of the South. That was very much on my mind when I got a chance to talk to Hartney about her roots, how her upbringing influenced her writing, and how she feels about the region she grew up in. Here is our interview, slightly edited and condensed:

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Interview: Amy Franklin-Willis, The Lost Saints of Tennessee

9/10/13 – INTERVIEW WITH AMY FRANKLIN-WILLIS, AUTHOR OF THE LOST SAINTS OF TENNESSEE

When Amy Franklin-Willis’s debut novel, The Lost Saints of Tennessee, was released, The New York Times Book Review noted “the main characters are agreeably imperfect, their stories sensitively told.” The Christian Science Monitor said, “…she excels at making readers care about her characters, especially the ones who have made the biggest mistakes.”

I couldn’t agree more that characters are the soul of The Lost Saints of Tennessee, although the sense of place is powerful, too.

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AUTHOR AUSTIN CAMACHO ON WRITING DAMAGED GOODS AND THE ICE WOMAN ASSIGNMENT

9/1/13 Austin Camacho interviewed by Sonia Linebaugh. What does the writer experience as the words flow onto the page? That’s what I wanted to find out when I interviewed Austin Camacho, author of five detective novels and four thrillers.

Q. Austin, what are your moments of ecstasy in writing?

A. There’s a kind of ecstatic moment when I find just the right line of dialog to express what a character needs to say, or write a bit of description that tugs at my heart when I read it the next day. In Damaged Goods [page 81], Hannibal asks the slave girl where her collar is: “For a frozen moment,

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THE BOOKS I MISSED READING LAST YEAR

9/1/13 – THE BOOKS I MISSED READING LAST YEAR

I’ve been so submerged in the process of writing a new novel that I’ve missed pretty much every one of my monthly book club meetings over the past year—and, alas, many of the books that went with them. When I finally came up for air, I found myself gasping for fresh reading material, and I figured the ladies of my longstanding book club could rescue me.

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Fantasy novel Juggler’s Blade, author Rob Ross interviewed

9/1/13 –INTERVIEW WITH ROB ROSS, AUTHOR OF JUGGLER’S BLADE

Rob Ross’s fantasy novel, Juggler’s Blade, was published during summer. I’ll review it on the 20^th of the month on this site. Meantime I met the author for coffee in downtown Washington to ask him about his writing roots and about his reading taste. I find one of the best ways to discover good books to read is to ask authors of books I like what they recommend.

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Talking Books With Washington Post Fiction Editor Ron Charles

9/1/13 — TALKING ABOUT BOOKS WITH THE WASHINGTON POST‘S RON CHARLES

Next time you feel overwhelmed by the number of books on your to-read list, think of Ron Charles, the fiction editor at the Washington Post. Charles and his colleagues at the newspaper get 150 books a day to choose from, with a lot careers depending on their decisions. I chatted with Ron recently about his job and how he approaches it. Here is the transcript of our phone conversation, edited and condensed.

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