TBR: Voices in the Air by Kasia Jaronczyk

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

On April 30, 1982, two women and their families hijack a Polish passenger plane flying from Breslau to Warsaw in a bold attempt to escape Martial Law in Communist Poland and find safety in West Berlin. Inspired by real events, Voices in the Air is told from the point of view of four women hijackers: a cotton spinner, whose husband wants to avoid a long prison sentence, a schoolteacher with a sick daughter, a pregnant fourteen-year-old who has visions of the Virgin Mary, an ambitious young filmmaker, and a stewardess in love with the married pilot. Will they find happiness beyond the Iron Curtain or was the hijacking not worth the risk?

 

Which character did you most enjoy creating? Why?

 

I had the most fun creating the character of Ania, the flight attendant. I immediately loved her irreverent, provocative voice, especially in her interactions with her inhibited and rural cousin, but underneath that bravado was a woman desperately in love with a married man and willing to do anything to be with him. After the hijacking I felt great sympathy for her stubborn belief, in spite of everyone, that her daughter will one day be able to respond to her and communicate.

 

And which character gave you the most trouble, and why?

 

I struggled with writing about Julia (the filmmaker) the most. I knew that she would be a witness to the hijacking, and that years later she would interview the women involved, but I didn’t know what her story would be. I felt that I already had all the perspectives I needed in the other female characters, until I realized that Julia would have a daughter Zuza who was, in a way, “hijacked” by her grandmother who acted like she was her mother. Julia would have to decide between Zuza and her chance to stay in the West. Julia’s story also required the most research, as the movie industry in Communist Poland was an involved process, complicated by the many levels of censorship involved. The themes of ambiguous morality,  censorship and self-censorship became very important in the novel.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

Before I wrote Voices in the Air I had published a short story collection Lemons (Mansfield Press, 2017), edited an anthology of Polish-Canadian short stories, Polish(ed): Poland Rooted in Canadian Fiction (Guernica Editions, 2017), and wrote another novel, which remains unpublished. I spent a long time querying that first novel, and after receiving no offers, I gave up on it. In the meantime, I wrote Voices in the Air, and again, I had a few full requests from agents, but ultimately it was rejected. I was growing very frustrated and depressed because nobody seemed to want my novels. I switched gears and queried small presses in Canada and some in the US, which one can do without an agent, and with which I’ve had good luck before. I eventually received two offers of publication and accepted one. Palimpsest Press publishes great poetry and stylistically innovative novels, and Aimee Parent Dunn is an amazing editor. A big positive of publishing with a small press is that the author has more influence on the book design, cover and interior, which I appreciate very much.

 

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Write first, edit later - the first draft is a bad draft. This lets you actually finish your work without letting the inner critic sabotage the process.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

   

Sometimes during writing your mind spontaneously comes up with an unexpected and yet perfect solution to a problem, or a connection, or something that happens that you know is just right. It is a magical moment and feels amazing. The creative process is hard work; you are consciously inventing characters or a plot, choosing between different possibilities, following different paths that might lead nowhere. And then, all of a sudden, you receive this surprising revelation like a gift from the writing gods.

 

How did you find the title of your book?

 

Titles can be so difficult – they need to indicate what the book is about, the tone of the work, the genre, but at the same time they can’t be too obvious, too obscure, or misleading. The choice becomes even more complicated when the novel in question is written about a different time and culture and the title needs to be more explanatory that it would have been if it were published in the same country and language. Certain phrases and words can have different connotations and be less obvious to a different audience.

 

I had a running list of titles, including Escape to the West; Flight over the Iron Curtain; Escape to Western Paradise; Hijacked to the West, but they all seemed too obvious and too general, plus they implied an action/adventure/thriller genre, which might attract readers who would be disappointed to find out it is a literary novel told from a female perspective.

 

I then came up with Women Hijackers, (which actually would have worked better in Polish, as a single word Hijackers in the feminine form), and finally, The Wives of Hijackers, which seemed an intriguing, sellable title, but perhaps a too gaudy. Air Partisans was too mysterious.

 

It was my writer friends who suggested Voices in the Air. I feel like this title indicates a literary novel, it may be too subtle, but it encompasses the female voices, the plot, the themes of the novel, as well as its unconventional structure which includes documentary film-style interviews with the hijackers. It also evokes a feeling of loss, an echo, and regret, which reflect the mood of the novel.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Voices in the Air is a nostalgic book for me, as it takes place in Poland, where I was born and lived until I was 14 years old, so of course I mention Polish dishes that I particularly love. One of them is pickle soup, made with kosher pickles and cream, and bigos, a thick sauerkraut and cabbage stew with meat, sausages and wild mushrooms. I recommend them both; they are delicious and not that difficult to make. Here are the recipes:

 

https://www.thekitchn.com/polish-pickle-soup-recipe-23628556

 

https://www.polishyourkitchen.com/polish-hunters-stew-bigos/

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: https://kasiajaronczyk.weebly.com

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS PUBLISHER: https://palimpsestpress.ca

 

ORDER A COPY OF THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/voices-in-the-air-kasia-jaronczyk/

 

 

 

 

TBR: Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop by Paula Whyman

Established in 2018, TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books.

 

 

Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?

 

Bad Naturalist is a memoir about my attempts to restore native meadows on a mountain in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, about the obstacles I encountered, the (many) mistakes I made, the failures—and a few successes—and the discoveries I made along the way.

 

What boundaries did you break in the writing of this memoir? Where does that sort of courage come from?

 

Hahaha, courage? Maybe it was foolishness! For me, writing a book-length memoir was something I hadn’t done before, and I was a bit of a reluctant memoirist in that I didn’t feel comfortable focusing on myself. The only way for me to do that was with humor, which is how I like to write anyway. I needed to feel free to make fun of myself. So if there is a “boundary” that I crossed, it’s that apparently it’s somewhat unusual for there to be humor in nature writing. And I wanted to bring nature, um, down to earth...for people like me.

 

Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s road to publication.

 

Well, for one thing, selling my book on proposal was an incredible high point and so different from the process I was used to, since my first book was fiction. I’ll also say that there has been a lot of interest in this book, which I really appreciate! I think the low point was when I was trying to figure out how to write the book, as if there was some special rule of approach, a key to writing memoir--and not exactly a traditional memoir, but one that tells a story not just about me, but about the natural world--a key that I didn’t possess because I hadn’t done it before. (There is no key, and every book is different. Heavy sigh.) But I guess it worked it out in the end?

  

What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?

 

Write about what you’re curious about -- that interest and passion will come through in the writing, and your enthusiasm is contagious. Don’t worry about writing what you “know”—but get to know it, so that your reader can get to know it, too.

 

My favorite writing advice is “write until something surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?

  

That I got it done! I was doing the work and the research on the mountain at the same time that I was writing about it. Both the project and the writing involved a lot of uncertainty, a lot of waiting, a lot of trial and error. I never knew what was going to happen on the mountain or if it would happen when I needed it to happen, so I hardly ever knew whether I’d be able to write about the aspect I was hoping to write about, particularly in time for my deadline. The exciting part for me was often the surprise of seeing what did happen—what grew in a place, what new interconnections I found. I took those surprises in the field and brought them to my writing desk, where I teased out further connections when I sat down to write. I was also intent on finding ways to describe plants and insects and birds that I hope are entertaining and accessible, to describe elements of the natural world so that an interested novice like me would be able to envision and connect with them, and I was often surprised by the ideas that occurred to me, like comparing a flower to a weird swim cap my grandmother used to wear. Where did that even come from?

 

Who is your ideal reader?

 

People who are curious and interested in reading about encounters with the natural world that are written with a sense of humor; armchair travelers who would enjoy reading about an adventurous endeavor that doesn’t always go right! I think the book will prove inspiring for those who are drawn to take on an ambitious project in an area that’s totally new to them; for those interested in trying something completely new in mid-life; and for readers who like the idea of reading about someone else’s foibles and failures, watching someone else mess up in what is still a hopeful story.

 

Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any food/s associated with your book? (Any recipes I might share?)

 

Oh gosh, there are actually a lot; there are a number of food plants that grow on the mountain that I mention in the book, including paw-paws, persimmon, cherries, blackberries, wineberries, and black raspberries. Starting in the 1830s, the apple was one of the most important crops grown in this part of Virginia, and, as I describe in the book, the mountaintop was covered with apple orchards for more than 100 years.

 

I’m always looking for apple pie recipes to impress the fam on Thanksgiving. This year, on a whim, I tried a new one, and it was a hit. This apple-cranberry-orange pie, which incorporates caramelized apples, was in the Food section of the Washington Post shortly before the holiday. I modified it a little to make it gluten-free, substituting cornstarch for flour when I made the filling, and I used a gluten-free crust. And, to keep it dairy-free, I used Earth Balance instead of butter and almond milk instead of cream. It won kudos all around (even without the butter)!

 

*****

 

READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR:

https://paulawhyman.com

 

ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR TBR STACK:

Politics & Prose Bookstore: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781643262178

Or

Bookshop.org:  https://bookshop.org/p/books/bad-naturalist-one-woman-s-ecological-education-on-a-wild-virginia-mountaintop-paula-whyman/21471113?ean=9781643262178

 READ AN EXCERPT, "Paradise in Progress: On Creating a Natural Refuge in the Blue Ridge Mountains": https://lithub.com/paradise-in-progress-on-creating-a-natural-refuge-in-the-blue-ridge-mountains

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