Category: Author Interviews

An Interview with Tamara Hundorova, Author of The Post-Chornobyl Library

An Interview with Tamara Hundorova, Author of The Post-Chornobyl Library

April 26, 2020

On this day in 1986, the No. 4 reactor at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukraine exploded.

Tamara Hundorova, author of The Post-Chornobyl Library: Ukrainian Postmodernism of the 1990s, argues that the Chornobyl disaster forever changed Ukrainian literature and cultural consciousness, turning Ukrainian postmodernism apocalyptic and into a writing of trauma.

In this interview, Dr. Hundorova discusses Chornobyl’s impact on Ukraine and the world, apocalyptic themes in her work, and the disturbing sight of an abandoned library at the site of the disaster.

An Interview with Galina Rylkova, Author of Breaking Free from Death: The Art of Being a Successful Russian Writer

An Interview with Galina Rylkova, Author of Breaking Free from Death: The Art of Being a Successful Russian Writer

April 7, 2020

“People are discussing developing courses about death and dying right now. Many students are coming to terms with the idea of their own mortality for the first time. They are scared. We have reached a turning point at which society is going to have to rethink its attitude to life and death. Death (in the form of the Coronavirus) has reminded about itself in a very stark way. I don’t believe we’re likely to quickly forget about it.” Galina Rylkova discusses her new book, Breaking Free from Death: The Art of Being a Successful Russian Writer.

An Interview with Ainsley Morse and Philip Redko, Editors & Translators of Permanent Evolution

An Interview with Ainsley Morse and Philip Redko, Editors & Translators of Permanent Evolution

February 19, 2020

Yuri Tynianov was a key figure of Russian Formalism, an intellectual movement in early 20th century Russia that also included Viktor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson. Tynianov developed a groundbreaking conceptualization of literature as a system within—and in constant interaction with—other cultural and social systems. Ainsley Morse and Philip Redko, editor/translators of Permanent Evolution, a collection of Tynianov’s critical works, discuss in this interview the translation and compilation processes, Tynianov’s impact on literary and film criticism, and more.

An Interview with Luba Jurgenson and Meredith Sopher, Author and Translator of Where There Is Danger

An Interview with Luba Jurgenson and Meredith Sopher, Author and Translator of Where There Is Danger

September 20, 2019

In Where There Is Danger (originally published Au lieu du péril, Verdier, 2014), Jurgenson meditates on what it means to live between two languages—in this case, her native Russian and adopted French. Earlier this month, we released a Fall 2019 Literature in Translation Sampler featuring an excerpt from Where There Is Danger (download it here). Today we bring you an interview with Luba Jurgenson and Meredith Sopher exploring the ins and outs of bilingualism, the process of translating the book, and more!

An Interview with Perry Giuseppe Rizopoulos, author of Wheat Songs: A Greek-American Journey

An Interview with Perry Giuseppe Rizopoulos, author of Wheat Songs: A Greek-American Journey

February 1, 2019

Wheat Songs is a memoir of two interconnected Greek-American journeys—an actual physical journey for the grandfather, Pericles Rizopoulos, and a philosophical quest by the author, Perry Giuseppe Rizopoulos. When the grandfather, Pericles Rizopoulos, a proud old man, tells his fascinating, tragic and true stories of the Nazi occupation of Greece during World War II and the following Greek Civil War, to his twenty-something grandson, Perry Giuseppe Rizopoulos, Perry’s philosophical reflections on his grandfather’s stories along with his own memories of growing up in his extended Greek/Italian/American family in the Bronx combine to create an enduring story about the strength created by a tightly-knit family and the powerful values passed down from generation to generation.

An Interview with Judith Saunders, Author of American Classics: Evolutionary Perspectives

An Interview with Judith Saunders, Author of American Classics: Evolutionary Perspectives

November 2, 2018

The inaugural book in ASP’s new Evolution, Cognition, and the Arts series, American Classics: Evolutionary Perspectives examines selected works in the American literary tradition from an evolutionary perspective. Using an interdisciplinary framework to pose new questions about long admired, much discussed texts, the collection as a whole provides an introduction to Darwinian literary critical methodology. Individual essays feature a variety of figures—Benjamin Franklin to Billy Collins—targeting fitness-related issues ranging from sexual strategies and parental investment to cheating and deception. Attention is paid to the physical and social environments in which fictional characters are placed, including the influence of cultural–historical conditions on resource acquisition, status-building, competition, and reciprocity. Discussion throughout the volume makes connections to existing secondary comment, suggesting how Darwinian scrutiny can generate unexpected insights into long familiar works.

An Interview with Jeffrey Gurock, Editor of Conversations with Colleagues

An Interview with Jeffrey Gurock, Editor of Conversations with Colleagues

May 31, 2018

In Jeffrey S. Gurock’s new book, Conversations with Colleagues: On Becoming an American Jewish Historian, sixteen senior scholars of American Jewish history—among the men and women whose work and advocacy have moved their discipline into the mainstream of academia—converse on the intellectual and personal roads they have traveled in becoming leaders in their areas of expertise. Through their thoughtful and candid recollections of the challenges they faced in becoming accepted academics, they retell the story of how the study of the Jews and Judaism in the United States rose from being long dismissed as an amateurish enterprise not worthy of serious consideration in the world of ideas to its position today as a respected field in communication with all humanities scholars. They also imagine and chart the direction the writing on American Jews will take in the coming era.

An Interview with Beth Holmgren, Author of Warsaw is My Country

An Interview with Beth Holmgren, Author of Warsaw is My Country

May 21, 2018

Warsaw is My Country: The Story of Krystyna Bierzynska, 1928-1945 by Beth Holmgren tells the story of Krystyna Bierzyńska, an acculturated Polish Jew, from her birth in Warsaw in 1928 up to the war’s end in May 1945, when she was reunited with her brother, Dolek, an officer in the Polish II Corps. Bierzyńska not only survived the Holocaust due in large part to the extraordinary efforts of her parents, blood relatives, and surrogate Christian family, but also served as a 16-year-old orderly in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Hers is a Warsaw story, a biography that demonstrates how, in urban interwar Poland, the lives of liberal educated Catholics and acculturated,  unconverted Jews significantly overlapped. Co-creating the culture and developing the economy and industries of independent Poland,  acculturated Jews at last dared to believe that they qualified as Polish citizens and patriots. Bierzyńska’s story details her experience of two very different Warsaws: a cosmopolitan oasis of high culture, modern amenities, and tolerance, and an occupied capital intoxicated and united by conspiracy, where the residents joined together to overthrow a common enemy.

An Interview with Gabriel Laufer, Author of A Survivor’s Duty

An Interview with Gabriel Laufer, Author of A Survivor’s Duty

April 25, 2018

Our newest interview is with Gabriel Laufer, author of A Survivor’s Duty: Surviving the Holocaust and Fighting for Israel — A Story of Father and Son. 

The Holocaust and the birth and growth of Israel are strikingly different Jewish historical events. Yet they are related, just like the author, Gabriel Laufer and his father. With only a few hints in hand, Laufer researched the details of his father’s Holocaust survival in the Hungarian forced labor battalions near Stalingrad, as a slave building German bunkers for weapon factories, and later, his escape from Stalinist Hungary. In this book, Laufer shares the gripping stories of his father’s experiences juxtaposed with his own as an Israeli Defense Force officer in the Six Days War and the three wars that followed. Laufer leads the reader through his family’s personal history and its place in some of the momentous events of the twentieth century.

An Interview with Vera Schwarcz, Author of In the Crook of the Rock

An Interview with Vera Schwarcz, Author of In the Crook of the Rock

March 29, 2018

Our newest author interview is with Vera Schwarcz, author of In the Crook of the Rock: Jewish Refuge in a World Gone Mad — The Chaya Leah Walkin Story. 

Focusing upon the life of Chaya Walkin—one little girl from a distinguished Torah lineage in Poland—this book illustrates the inner resources of the refugee community that made possible survival with dignity. Based on a wide variety of sources and languages, this book is crafted around the voice of a child who was five years old when she was forced to flee her home in Poland and start the terrifying journey to Vilna, Kobe, and Shanghai. The Song of Songs is used to provide an unexpected and poetic angle of vision upon strategies for creating meaning in times of historical trauma.