annsepstein@att.net

Great Book Launch for The Great Stork Derby

Thank you to Booksweet Bookstore in Ann Arbor for hosting the launch of The Great Stork Derby on November 5, 2021. I was one of four authors who read from their work to a capacity but socially-distanced and masked audience. People were intrigued by the novel’s bizarre but true premise, and asked thoughtful questions about the book and the writing life. Read more about the “bad dad” in The Great Stork Derby in NOVELS. Next up is a virtual reading at Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, open to all, on December 1, 2021. See NEWS for details about this and other upcoming events.

Launching The Great Stork Derby at Booksweet Bookstore

Four authors hosted at Booksweet Bookstore in Ann Arbor

A bizarre but true tale of having babies to win a large cash prize

Praise for The Great Stork Derby in Historical Novel Review

The Great Stork Derby received a laudatory write-up in the latest issue of Historical Novel Review. Here’s an excerpt from the review: “Based on a true event, this is a touching and poignant look at family life and how it is never too late to effect change.” Read the full review in the November 2021 issue of Historical Novel Review. Read more about The Great Stork Derby in NOVELS and buy it at your favorite bookstore or order the book online. If you enjoyed this book, and my other novels, I’d be grateful if you wrote your own review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. Thanks so much!

A timeless historical novel about complex family relationships

Short Story “Housewidow” Online at The Woven Tale Press

My short story “Housewidow” is now online at The Woven Tale Press, 2021, Volume IX, No. 9. Set during the post-WWII housing shortage, “Housewidow” portrays how a third-grader’s world is upended when her family is evicted after her father’s uncharacteristic outburst against their demanding landlady. Read more in SHORT STORIES.

A beautifully produced journal of art and literature

Why writers write: “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” – Anne Frank

Learn History Through Fiction: Halloween “Jollification” Banned During 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic

When Spanish flu cases spiked in 1918, then as now, revelers were warned not to trade their health-saving masks for Halloween masks. Street celebrations and indoor parties were prohibited. People were reminded that dancing was nonessential and that blowing horns spread germs and disrupted the sleep of the sick. State and city bans may have curtailed those seeking treats, but the number of tricks rose. Dallas police, for example, reported overturned bread boxes, an absconded horse, and a stolen piano. Read more about the deadly Spanish flu pandemic a century ago in On the Shore (1917-1925), a tale of conflict between generations in a Lower East Side immigrant family during WWI (see NOVELS).

Revelers defied Halloween prohibitions during 1918 Spanish flu pandemic

Generations of immigrant family in conflict during WWI

An In-Depth Interview About My Writing

I’m thrilled by this thoughtful interview about my writing in general, and my newest novel The Great Stork Derby, by author and blogger Roz Morris. Read the interview to learn how I became a writer and how my fiction is connected to my work as a developmental psychologist and visual artist. Read more about The Great Stork Derby in NOVELS.

**Based on a bizarre but true event in Toronto history**

The Great Stork Derby is Delivered

The Great Stork Derby is delivered (released) today. A tale of obsession and forgiveness, based on real events. Toronto, 1926. A husband pressures his wife to have many babies to win a large cash prize. Now old and widowed, can a bad father redeem himself with his grown children? More at NOVELS. Order online or at your favorite bookstore. Goodreads and Amazon reviews appreciated. Many thanks.

What I’m Reading: Tender Cuts by Jayne Martin

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Tender Cuts by Jayne Martin (Rating 5) – An Astonishing Range of Subjects and Emotions. The collected vignettes in Tender Cuts by Jane Martin cover an astonishing range of subjects and emotions. Many are mournful, depicting lives filled with bitter regret. In others, protagonists exact sweet revenge against those who have hurt or disappointed them. Tales that flow with melancholy break your heart, while quick jabs break the rhythm of your breathing. Each vignette is economical without being skimpy. After reading one, you never want more or wish for less. For example, in “Stepping Out,” Martin animates a coat rack and sums up a woman’s life in one finely observed paragraph. The success of brevity lies in finding a single word or phrase that captures a larger truth. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I appreciated Martin’s skill at finding le mot juste or succinct combination of words that manage to encapsulate multitudes. Together, the short pieces in this compact book comprise a full and satisfying meal. Readers won’t go away hungry after consuming these tender cuts, and the satisfactions of dining on a memorable meal will endure.

Why writers read: “What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world.” – Anne Lamott

Book Launch: The Great Stork Derby

I’ll be launching my new novel, The Great Stork Derby at Booksweet Bookstore, 1729 Plymouth Road, Ann Arbor, Michigan on Friday, November 5, 2021 at 7:30 PM Eastern Time. Visit the event website to learn about my reading and the three other authors who will join me. The event is free but registration is required and capacity is limited due to COVID-19 restrictions. To attend, please register ASAP at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/making-worlds-an-evening-with-local-authors-booksweet-tickets-190624913247?aff=ebdssbdestsearch. The Great Stork Derby, based on a bizarre chapter in Toronto’s history, asks whether an overbearing father deserves the chance to make amends with his alienated offspring. Widower Emm Benbow, who 50 years ago pressured his late wife to win a contest by having many babies, must now move in with one of his many children or go to a dreaded old age home. As he lives with each child in turn, Emm discovers that the true value of fatherhood is not measured in big prizes, but in small rewards. Read more about the book in NOVELS.

The Great Stork Derby will be delivered on October 19, 2021; launch event November 5, 2021

What I’m Reading: Wayward by Dana Spiotta

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Wayward: A Novel by Dana Spiotta (Rating 4) – A Wayward Woman Finds a Way Forward. Samantha (Sam) Raymond, the protagonist of Dana Spiotta’s novel Wayward, is a well-to-do white woman whose reaction to going through menopause is extreme and yet entirely natural and predictable. Rarely do novels feature women in their fifties going through “the change,” and more rarely do they receive the attention Spiotta lavishes on Sam: ferocious and gentle, serious and funny, perplexed and insightful. Set in the aftermath of Trumps’ election, Sam’s own upheaval is contemporaneous with the country’s dislocation. She responds by impulsively buying a crumbling old house in a questionable area of downtown Syracuse, and leaving her kind husband and distancing teenage daughter in the suburbs. Sam fixes it up the house while seeking to repair herself and the world. Sam’s thoughts often dwell on her dying mother and growing daughter. As an author myself, who often writes about complex family relationships (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I was impressed by Spiotta’s ability to capture the push-pull of the mother-daughter bond. My only criticism of the book is that the social commentaries — the “smart” ruminations Spiotta is known for — sometimes became trite and tedious. I was eager to get back to Sam’s story. Likewise, the few sections written from her daughter’s point of view were distracting. What resonated was the honesty of Sam’s position, a middle-aged white woman looking for meaning in her own life and the national psyche. She doesn’t find a pathway to the latter, but in the continuity of women, from grandmother to mother to daughter, the wayward Sam finds a way forward for herself.

Portrait of an arty type as a middle-aged woman

Why writers read: “Our favorite book is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular stage in our lives. And our lives change.” – Lloyd Alexander

Rereading (“The”) A Book

Simchat Torah, “Rejoicing with the Torah,” is a one-day Jewish holiday which this year begins at sundown on 28 September 2021 (23 Tishrei 5782). The celebration marks the conclusion of the annual cycle of reading Torah (the Five Books of Moses in the Old Testament) and the beginning of a new cycle. In one breath, we read of the death of the great prophet Moses at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy. The Torah scroll is rewound, often held aloft and danced with, and in the next breath, we read how the world is born in the creation story that opens the Book of Genesis. The holiday falls days after the Jewish High Holy Days, when Jews, after repenting and “returning” to acts of goodness, begin a new year with a clean slate. Simchat Torah, both literally and symbolically, marks this new start. As the weeks unfold, we read — as if for the first time — the story of Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, the arrival of the patriarchs and matriarchs in The Land, the Exodus of The People from Egypt following 430 years of slavery, receiving the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai, and the perilous forty-year journey through the desert as we return to The Land. Moses again dies, but earth, sky, and sea are created anew. Children love to have their favorite books reread to them. Some adults reread books. Not me. I read a book once, reflect on it, and later recall characters and events that left an impression. But with so many other books on my reading list, and new ones added all the time, I don’t pick it up again. Torah is the exception. I am about to embark on my thirty-second reading of “The Book.” With each cycle, a story I’ve never read before awaits me, evoking different reactions and insights. For the first time, I am reassessing the wisdom of those who reread other books. Might I follow their example? Books don’t change, but readers do. Now in my mid-seventies, what would I make of the novels I read in my twenties? Surely, the story would not be the same. More thoughts about reading and writing at REFLECTIONS.