Featured Interview With Jennifer Briggs

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I grew up in Philadelphia, PA, in Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill. For the second half of my
growing up, I was also in Wilmington, DE. My parents got a divorce when I was eleven. Each
parent remarried, and it was all extremely amicable. I split my time evenly between my two
homes. I’ve lived in Pittsburgh, PA since I graduated from Swarthmore College in 1999. My
husband and I came to Pittsburgh so he could attend graduate school at Carnegie Mellon
University. By the time he was done, we loved Pittsburgh, and my massage therapy practice
was thriving. Now Pittsburgh feels like home. I have one cat who is very catlike in that she sits
on any new item left on the floor or sofa. She also likes baked goods so we have to be wary of
leaving any food unattended, even when we think it shouldn’t appeal to cats.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books as soon as my mom read them to me, which was
probably when I was five or six. In first or second grade I was reading them by myself, enjoying
the coziness and adventures of Laura’s childhood.

In kindergarten I remember having a journal that I pretended to fill, wanting to emulate my
mom and her journaling. In first grade, we began our school day by writing a few sentences
and drawing a picture. For weeks I wrote the same story basically every day. It was about a girl
going outside. I think I liked drawing the house and the girl. I’m glad my parents and teachers
allowed me to write what I wanted, without pushing me to change my theme until I was ready.
As I got more accomplished and our stories turned into short books, I remember using the word
“suddenly” quite often to make my stories seem exciting.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I really love kids’ books that have profound life lessons and truths conveyed with warmth and
humor. I adore Mo Willems and his Elephant and Piggie books, Pigeon books, and Knuffle Bunny
books, and I get teary every single time I read City Dog, Country Frog. The Frog and Toad books
by Arnold Lobel are similar masterpieces. My husband and I say that I am like Toad (getting

frustrated and upset more easily) and he is Frog (calmer). Sarah also likes to be Toad, especially
when he is feeling “blah” or sad, so then I pretend to be Frog, and we sit on our porch swing
waiting for the mail.

I love the warmth of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books and LM Montgomery’s Anne of
Green Gables series. I have thoroughly enjoyed everything by Caroline Carlson, most especially
Wicked Marigold, and by Jonathan Auxier, especially Sweep.

Glennon Doyle, Amor Towles, Maya Shanbhag Lang, Andrea Gibson, and Brian Doyle are the
writers who somehow put things so beautifully into words that I want to eat their sentences. A
Gentleman in Moscow by Towles is one of my favorite books of all time, both because of the
story that kept surprising me, and the writing full of warmth and wit. Whether fiction or non-
fiction, I am most interested in people sharing their full, real, emotional experiences as humans,
especially if they are able to transform those experiences through learning, love, and growth. If
they can do this with love and humor, all the better.

I love everything Glennon Doyle has written, and I love the We Can Do Hard Things podcast.
What I appreciate and find the most inspiring is how Glennon’s books and the podcast delve
into sharing the messiness of being human. It isn’t just sharing the polished ending, it is sharing
the emotional middle and the process of figuring things out. That is what I aim to do in my blog
and my book. It is so easy to be inspired by someone else’s journey but if they don’t put in the
messy parts then I can put them on a pedestal and somehow assume they didn’t ever struggle
along the way. Not that one has to struggle, but I certainly did and do. In that same vein, Maya
Shanbhag Lang’s book What We Carry was one of the most beautifully written memoirs I have
ever read. She shared the tough moments and the beautiful moments, all tied together so
elegantly I was in awe.

Son-Rise: The Miracle Continues by Barry Neil Kaufman inspired me greatly. That, in addition to
his book, Happiness is a Choice, was what led me to sign up for an eight-week course at the
Option Institute when I was in college. Fourteen years after taking that course, I signed up for
the Son-Rise Program Start-Up training, which then changed my life and Sarah’s life so
profoundly. I continue to take courses through the Option Institute and the Autism Treatment
Center of America because they lovingly help people achieve incredible things, beyond the
realm of what some people may deem possible. The hope and freedom that they have helped
me find and create for myself have been and continue to be transformative. All of that is part of
why I was inspired to write Watching Sarah Rise, because I wanted to help other people know
that there are options and different approaches to autism, special needs, and life in general.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
My oldest daughter, Sarah, has special needs and was notably delayed in reaching her
milestones. She has also been diagnosed with autism. When she was 4 and still not speaking
aside from making the sounds for each letter of the alphabet, I went to the Autism Treatment
Center of America for a week-long training session on how to run a Son-Rise Program. As soon
as I got home and started interacting with Sarah differently, her language started to increase.
With help from friends and several volunteers that I found in a variety of ways, I ran a Son-Rise
Program for Sarah for five years. I called it Sarah-Rise, and it was by far the most impactful thing
that I ever did to help Sarah – and believe me, I felt like I tried everything! Not only did Sarah’s
language seem to explode into being, but her eye contact and overall ability to connect with
others increased dramatically. She learned to play games, to play imaginatively, to use the
toilet, to eat healthily, to read, and to write. Our home was host to an incredible community of
volunteers who brought their love and creativity to help Sarah thrive. Our whole family
benefited tremendously, and I became more of the parent I wanted to be. If I could go back in
time and change anything, it would be to start my Son-Rise Program training sooner, because it
helped me feel empowered and helped me let go of the parental guilt I had been toting around
for years. In Watching Sarah Rise I describe the early years of Sarah’s life and the struggles to
get her to eat enough and reach any milestone. I then share how I started Sarah-Rise, how I
found volunteers, and how the program evolved over time. I include my struggles and
celebrations because parenting anyone is a journey and parenting a child with special needs can
feel like an even more challenging journey. I want to help other people feel less alone with their
struggles by voicing my own and how I moved through them. I also want to help other parents
know that the Son-Rise Program exists because it was so monumentally life-changing for my
whole family, and most especially for Sarah. The book is inspiring and heart-warming, as is
Sarah.

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Jennifer Briggs’s Website

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Featured Interview With Janet Constantino

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Omaha, Nebraska, which I remember very little about, outside of peering into and falling down storm cellar stairs and watching my grandmother, my mother, and my namesake, Aunt Janet, peeling vegetables – onions, which made my mother cry – in a large, old-fashioned kitchen.
We moved when I was four, from Omaha to Southern California, and then to San Jose, California, where I lived until I graduated from college, at 21. From there I’ve moved progressively north, and now I live in Sonoma California with my husband, my sweet labradoodle, Cassie, and a prankster tuxedo cat named Willow.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
The feel and smell of opening a new library book was very thrilling to me, as a child. I read at a very young age, and memorized the alphabet forwards and backwards because I had pictures on the wall of my room with the alphabet around the borders. And I had a small chair in my room, where I would sit and read. That’s where the world was exciting, inside books!

I started writing in high school, after a highly esteemed teacher, Mr. Bloom, wrote on one of my papers that I had the makings of a writer. Especially, if I would learn to link my observations of people into a story, or a scene. His praise awakened something in me I hadn’t seen about myself.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite genre is literary fiction, although I do like a good mystery. My favorite authors include Louise Erdrich, John Banville, Elena Ferrante (her Brilliant Friend series set mostly in Naples really inspired me), William Faulkner, Hemingway, Ian Mc Ewan, Ann Tyler, Henry James, particularly Portrait of a Lady. Two of my all-time favorites are Middlemarch, by George Eliot, and The City of Your Final Destination, by Peter Cameron. Jane Austen, of course, and one of the most beautifully written books in the English language is The Great Fire, by Shirley Hazzard. Still Life, by Sarah Winman was inspiring and wonderfully written. I’m inspired by books where the characters come to know themselves and struggle to live true to that knowledge.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
A friend asked me, “If you could write about anything you wanted, what would that be?” I thought immediately of Sicily, (I’m half-Sicilian, and have relatives there), and then of a young Sicilian woman trying to break free from her overbearing mother, and from a culture that has historically kept women in traditional roles of housewife, cook, and mother, even if they’re educated and have or aspire to careers. So Mariella is such a young woman, and with the help of her Nonna, her grandmother, she escapes to San Francisco., where her struggle to live her own life continues. One can leave the culture, but does the culture ever leave you?

I also took inspiration for Becoming Mariella from my psychotherapy clients who have dared to follow their own paths, and from my own challenges along the way.

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Janet Constantino’s Website

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Featured Interview With Eliot Pattison

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I spent my childhood on a farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in what you might call chicken and crab country. We lived near a remote navy air base, and I used to lie down in the middle of our hayfield to watch the aircraft approaching the base, convinced that they had to be coming from the other side of the world and dreaming about all the exotic sights they had seen. It nurtured my imagination, and my appetite for travel. Today, after experiencing much of that world, I live on a colonial-era farm in the beautiful Appalachian foothills of Pennsylvania. Among our companions are many two and four-legged creatures, including Bernese Mountain Dogs, horses, and a guardian goose We are playing a small part in preserving an endangered breed of gentle giants, Shire horses.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I bonded with books at an early age. As a young boy, I spent three years on crutches with limited mobility and my beloved relatives, including a globe-trotting librarian aunt, kept sending me books. Many were beyond my years but I always eagerly paged through them and treasured them even more as I grew into them. I was seven when I discovered what seemed to be the very height of human civilization, the rural rolling library called the Bookmobile. I became an avid customer, often waiting first in line for its weekly arrival in the nearby village and always leaving with my arms filled with new knowledge and adventure. I was in high school—by then we had moved to Indiana– when my English teacher assigned us to write a short story. He really liked what I produced, and said “You should keep at it.” So I did.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Asking me to pick a favorite author is like asking me to pick a favorite color or food. There are so many great ones, offering up new hues and flavors to suit my varying appetites. I have very eclectic tastes, but overall my preferred genre is literary historical fiction, where British writers excel. My all-time favorite would be Patrick O’Brian, whose maritime novels have often transported me to the early 19th century. Close behind would be Hilary Mantel and C.J. Sansom, For pure escapism—think audiobooks on long drives—no one beats Bernard Cornwell, who opens doors leading as far back as the 11th century.

I had been writing reviews, essays, and nonfiction books for years before attempting a novel. Two books particularly informed that decision—Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park, two very different but very brilliant works. It is probably no coincidence that one was a historical mystery and the other a mystery set in a remote, somewhat exotic location. My Bone Rattler series is of course historical mystery and my Skull Mantra books have often been described as “faraway mysteries.”

Tell us a little about your latest book?
The novel, like the earlier entries in the Bone Rattler series, is driven by my belief that historical fiction can be an antidote to our historical apathy. We suffer greatly from being disconnected to our past. Part of the problem is that our history texts are sterile, presenting the characters that shaped our history as lifeless mannequins. But our past was not lifeless. The DNA that defines each of us was in living, breathing humans centuries ago, individuals who, despite differences in material goods and technology, had many of the same appetites, ambitions, frustrations and dilemmas that we experience today.

Like all the books in this series, Freedom’s Ghost builds on actual historical events and characters, bringing them to life by combining history with humanity. These figures include, John Hancock, John Adams, actual British officers, escaped slaves, and the enigmatic Crispus Attucks; their paths converge and become violently entangled, raising a startling question: was the Boston Massacre a military blunder or a murder plot? My protagonist Duncan McCallum painfully confronts that question. Ultimately the book is about the many dimensions, and perceptions, of freedom. The nature of beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but, as Duncan learns, the nature of freedom is in one’s heart.

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Eliot Pattison’s Website

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Featured Interview With Lori Wojtowicz

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Most of my life has been lived in classrooms. I taught in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for 35 years and now work as an Educational Facilitator in schools across the country. Recess from the classroom, allows me time with my family. I am the crazy grandma who loves a good adventure with her 8 grand children. Or you can find me in the woods on my horse or with my dogs.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I have always believed in the power of stories. My life as an educator was all about the literature that teaches and inspires. While I taught writing to my students, it is only in the last few years that I began writing. Now I see what I was asking of my students!!

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I love the classics, Melville and Hawthorne, but now I tend to read more non-fiction and memoir. My passion is equity in education, and I have learned a great deal from Ta-Nehisi Coates, Bettina Love, Bryan Stevenson, and so many others.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
Since equity is still elusive in our schools and country, I decided to turn to a new source for knowledge, my former students who are now adults, many with children and grandchildren of their own. They may not have prestigious titles or letters behind their names, but they are the experts of lived experience. I sought out 22 of my former students and their words are captured in my latest book, Listen to the Truth They Bring. Their words may not provide a new theory on race relations or closing the achievement gap; however, they do offer their insights with unabashed honesty. As an English teacher, I taught the literature that inspires and educates. Perhaps the stories of these former students will help heal our educational system and our country.

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Lori Wojtowicz Facebook Page

Featured Interview With Nijas N

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
My name is Nijas N. I born in kerala, India. I am a published author of amazon and google play books and now a verified author of goodreads. I write mainly in free verse and slef help contents. And i am a podcast host of “nijas n podcast ”

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
At the age of 13 to 14 i just started making friendship with books. And slowly it delevops and i search for more generes and read those i like.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Most propbably everyone. Every author try to say something through their works so its mainly based on readersview point. So i like everyones work.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest book was “stupid thoughts” and i wrote it after seeing my friend who was suffered in the pressure of career and boyfriend . So i just wrote it to eradicate the stupid thoughts that came to our mind which resist our forward move.

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Nijas N’s Website

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