Category Archives: Interview

“Nature Red in Tooth and Claw” ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Posted on by
14

Interview with Paul Pepper, KBIA

Dear friends,

Before you read my new post, take a look at this YouTube video — my interview with Paul Pepper (a KBIA show “Radio Friends with Paul Pepper“).

Also,

A digital-only version of  my memoir, The Education of a Traitor, will be also released at smashwords.com (it’s already at Amazon) on July 19 — for Apple iBooks, iTunes, Kobo, Kindle, Nook, Sony, and PDF.  It is available to pre-order at Barnes and Noble, and it will be free at smashwords.com July 19-25th with a coupon PZ85H.

And now,

“Nature Red in Tooth and Claw”

“It’s raining cats and dogs,” my husband said.

“It sure is,” I said, still – after all my 25 years in America — trying to envision what raining animals would look like.

Pouring rain is common in Missouri, and some years, mowing a lawn once a week no longer cuts it (excuse my pun :)). Yet this summer the grass hasn’t seemed to grow like crazy, while the rest of our plants have.

One day, after work, I walked around the house and realized that our property has turned into a jungle: the trees have spread their branches as if trying to swallow our house, the plants beside our walk have oozed onto it for about a foot, and our deck appears much shadier than I ever remembered it.

The result looks spooky, reminding me of a book I read some time ago–The World Without Us–which postulates that plants could cover all traces of human existence within about a hundred years or so. Continue reading →

Advertisement

Caroline Leavitt featured me on her blog!

Posted on by
14

I am honored that Caroline Leavitt, an American novelist and the New York Times bestselling author, interviewed me for her blog. Here is her entry:

THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2015

Svetlana Grobman talks about growing up in Cold War Russia, writing, and so much more

I love discovering great small presses. Musings Publishing is based in Missouri, and they sent me a book with the provocative title, THE EDUCATION OF A TRAITOR, complete with a haunting cover photo.  Kirkus Reviews calls this “an intimate look at a young woman’s struggle to find her own truth in a repressive society.” Midwest Book Review calls the memoir, “Hard-hitting and involving.” I’pm honored to have Svetlana, who grew up in Moscow during the Cold War, on my blog. Thank you, Svetlana.

I always want to know what sparked a book. Why write a memoir now?

It was my American husband who “sparked” my book. It happened five years ago. At the time, I was working on a book describing my coming to Columbia, Missouri, which for me, then a 39-year-old Jewish immigrant with no English and no knowledge of American life, was as disorienting as if I had landed on the Moon. I had a good time writing that book, because the most difficult period of my immigration was already over, and I could have fun describing my learning English — mixing up words “desert” and “dessert,” “hair” and “hare,” and getting puzzled by expressions like “keep me posted” when no postage stamps were in sight.

My husband, however, thought that my life in Russia was a more important subject to write about, and, eventually, I agreed with him — not because I believed my past life to be exceptional, but because it was representative of other lives spent under an oppressive regime.

Why now? For one thing, it took me a long time to improve my English, and it took me even longer to feel strong enough to relive my past. This does not mean that everything in my Russian life was painful. Some things were so absurd that they were actually funny. Continue reading →