Love, Ruthie follows a woman who receives a letter from her lifelong friend that leads her to reflect on the experiences that have brought her to where she is today. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

These days people often keep in touch through quick quips, or, worse, emojis. Letters can tell stories or ask for stories indicating an interest in another person that is real.

Ruthie wades through the memories of her life growing up and finding who she is. Was there anything from your own life that you put into the characters in your novel?

A technique I use is what I’ve named the sausage technique. Every sausage has a casing, and that casing can hold different fillings. In writing, the casing is an event that may once have held autobiographical material that the author has taken out and re-filled with fictional material. So, yes, for instance: I got my Ph.D. at Columbia University, and so know the campus well, but I never went to Barnard, and my experiences at Columbia are not anything like Ruthie’s experiences as an undergraduate student at Barnard.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

I’m interested in religious labels that people carry though they did not choose those labels. I like the writings of Jung, so the exploration of knowing what one projects and the awareness of a shadow come from an interest in his writings.

What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?

The novel I wrote after Love, Ruthie, is named Those Who Lived. It is complete and not complete, so I have gone back to it to add to it, and to revise some of it. I should be ready to show it to a potential publisher this spring.

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