Interview with Annie Brody

Rachael Ray visits Camp Unleashed in Becket, Massachusetts

Native New Yorker Annie Brody moved from the 22nd floor of a Manhattan apartment building to a cottage on a dirt road in northeast Columbia County, New York, six years ago, after she adopted her first dog. The relaxing effect that living in nature had on them both inspired her to create Camp Unleashed, a getaway for dogs to unwind and "unleash" their true canine spirits together with their human guardians.

The Berkshires are off-leash dog heaven. Goose and I hike most weekends, often with Annie and her dogs, Rocky and Mandy. It's super fun.

Gina: Is that wonderful photo on your website you as a child? Where was the photo taken, how old were you, and is that a stuffed animal?

Annie: Yes, that's me with the only dog I had has a child. I named him Asta after the dog in The Thin Man television show. I think I was about five. He wasn't really a stuffed animal -- he was a rigid dog mannequin from a shoe store. My dad was the controller for a small chain of shoe stores and he brought it home for me because he knew how much I wanted a dog of my own. I recently found this old photo of me and realized that I just had to include it on the camp website -- I hadn't realized that the dog in my camp logo was a wire haired terrier, just like my little Asta!

Gina: When you adopted your first dog, did you have any inkling then that dogs would become so central to your life?

Annie: For as long as I can remember, I always loved dogs but couldn't have one because I lived in apartment rentals that didn't allow them. I also liked big dogs and didn't think it would be fair to have one if it didn't have any place to run. But then the NYC Parks Dept. opened a dog run in the park in my neighborhood...and one afternoon, as I walked away from petting someone else's golden retriever puppy, I realized that my mood had changed in just a few minutes from being kind of down and depressed to being elated and excited about life. And I knew at that moment that dogs had always had that effect on me and that I had always known that too, but had never taken action to actually bring a dog into my life.

Within two weeks I found myself at the NYC ASPCA where I found, much to my delight, a one-year-old scrawny looking Golden Retriever, who had recently been picked up from wandering in a parking lot in the Bronx, and he didn't have any identification tags! I was scared to death because I didn't really know anything about caring for a dog, but I just acted on impulse. I figured my life would have to change somewhat but I had NO idea that I would end up a) moving from the 22nd floor in Manhattan to a dirt road in Columbia County, NY and b) that I would end up wanting and creating a life of dogs 24/7.

Gina: I was nervous about off-leash hiking when Goose was a puppy, but of course he took right to it and now it's the activity that makes both him and me happiest. It's such a joyful experience to see him run and splash and scale boulders and romp with other dogs. Is it hard for the city dogs and their caretakers who experience off-leash freedom at camp to return to leashed life in the city?

Annie: Once people have the experience of seeing their dog free and independent at camp, yet connected to them, they just naturally want to create more opportunities like that. Although daily life in the city may require leashes, there are plenty of places to go for off leash hiking if one looks for them. My attitude is that dogs deserve vacations, too! And if you love your dog, it's central to his/her well-being to be allowed to be a dog every now and then, run free with the pack, and not have to live by the human rules 24/7.

Gina: Please tell me about the dog music book and CD. When I first heard about it, frankly I thought: My dog is a dog. He does not need spa music. But after he got freaked out in the thunder storm the other night, I did wonder if the music might help. What is the science behind it?

Annie: Through A Dog's Ear really works! The testimonials we get from people who were at their wits end before trying the music because their dogs' suffered so much -- particularly with thunder phobia, but really with any kind of noise phobia, are simply astounding! The music was psychoacoustically designed by composer/producer Joshua Leeds, author of The Power of Sound and clinically tested by veterinary neurologist Sue Wagner with 150 dogs in shelters, homes, and kennels. It's all based on the science of biology and sound waves -- there's a lot about their research and how to use the music to help de-stress dogs with various problem behaviors, injuries, etc. on their website. It's like aromatherapy, but this time the sense is through hearing -- something dogs are finely attuned to!

Gina: How did Rachael Ray hear about Camp Unleashed?

Annie: Her producers were researching canine nutrition for a Rachael Ray special on pets and food for The Food Network and they found two presentations we offer at Camp -- one from a holistic vet about how to feed your dog a healthy diet of high quality nutrition and a workshop on "Preparing A Raw Diet for Your Dog at Home" by local food advocate Gianni Ortiz. I'm a big believer that a high quality diet is essential to a dog's health, energy, and vitality and holistic health care is always a focus at at camp.

Gina: What’s up next for you?

Annie: In February Camp Unleashed is offering a Winter Wonderland Weekend which features cross country skiing and snowshoeing, a wine tasting and lodging at a quaint dog-friendly B&B in the Berkshires. Dogs, as well as humans apparently suffer from S.A.D. (seasonal affected disorder) and the best way to beat the cabin fever blues is to get out and enjoy the beautiful snow with them!

Photo by Trix Rosen

Interview with Anne Bramley

Anne Bramley is a food scholar, university lecturer, writer, cook, and host of the internationally acclaimed podcast, Eat Feed. She was born in a Midwestern blizzard and has thrived on all the best things cold weather provides, from her grandmother's "snow ice cream" to deep-winter snowshoeing. She has also traveled the world, living in England, Germany, and United States and learning from each new food culture she encounters.

Eat Feed Autumn Winter: 30 Ways to Celebrate when the Mercury Drops is her first cookbook. Epicurious.com just named it one of the Best Cookbooks of 2008. She lives with her husband, daughter, two cats, and two dogs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where they eagerly await the next snow day.

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Gina: Your book is filled with lots of wonderful historical recipes. On election night, I had a good time reading your accounts of Lincoln's Inaugural Chicken Salad, Washington's Favorite Corn Cakes, and Jefferson's Peanut Sundaes. Where did you track down these gems? Also, what did you end up serving at your own election night get-together?

Anne: As an academic, I've always got my head in some archive or other and tend to collect bits and bobs of culinary history since you never know when you'll want them. And as a former Chicagoan (and Hyde Park resident) my election night was inspired by some of our favorite foods from the city and neighborhood.

Gina: In your acknowledgments, you mention that novelist Katharine Weber gave you an early boost. How did you meet her and how did she help you?

I met Katharine through Readerville. She is always there with ready and willing advice about the writing life -- agents, pitching, publicity, and more -- and she's always generous in lending an ear as well as a hand to a new writer. Plus she has sent me some of my best podcast topics and guests.

Gina: I'm charged with bringing cranberries to Thanksgiving dinner at my mother-in-law's house this year. I know you love the topic of cranberries. Please tell me how should I cook them and share with my readers why you think they're so interesting.

Anne: Every way and in everything! I love that they are really one of the few remaining foods that have a season that you can't industrialize your way around. At least as far as I've seen, they aren't shipped in from the southern hemisphere as with things like raspberries. Instead, I long for the October harvest each year and then try to do as much as possible before they're all gone from the shelves in January or February.

When I have the ability to cook just cranberries and not have something else in the oven, I love to do low temp, slow cook with a bit of spirit at the end. I don't really have a recipe and tweak it every time, but do something like a pound of cranberries with 1/2 to 1 cup of brown sugar for 1 to 2 hours at 200 to 225 degrees. Add a splash of alcohol in the final 15 minutes -- brandy if you're going for a Jeffersonian French inspiration, rum for something a bit more middle-brow colonial. The key thing about the low temp for a long time is that the berries don't pop and go mushy like in a stovetop sauce. Instead they just gently warm and soften. Mmmm. (Also, I know it's a big range on the sugar, but people have wildly different sweetness desires when it comes to cranberries and I prefer mine a bit tart, vaguely reminiscent of the kind of tart sauces that historically accompanied meat like verjuice in the Renaissance or a 19th-century gooseberry or rhubarb sauce.)

Gina: What is your favorite winter cocktail?

Anne: When I'm looking for some vitamins with my vice, it's a Bloody Mary made with Scandinavian aquavit (like the Bloody Sigrid in the book). But oftentimes I just want something really warm, creamy, sweet and possibly nutty, so I wrap myself around whatever boozy milk punch is on offer.

Gina: What's next on your proverbial plate?

Anne: Getting a position in the new administration as the local seasonal food czar. If that doesn't work out, endless meals with great cold weather foods and a little bit more time with my husband and toddling daughter and our menagerie of 4 animals who are often lounging in front of the warmth of the oven waiting to see what experiment pops out next.

Interview with James Collins

James Collins is the author of Beginners Greek, which the New York Times dubbed "a great big sunny lemon chiffon pie of a novel." His beautifully crafted, literate romantic comedy was a New York Times bestseller and published in the U.K., as well as translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Israeli, Hungarian, and Dutch.

James was formerly an editor at Time and Spy and has contributed to The New Yorker and other magazines. He grew up in New York City and now lives in Virginia with his family. Beginner's Greek was his first novel.

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Gina: I know this is your first published novel, but had you written other fiction? How long did you think about writing this book before you finally sat down to write it?

James: About twenty years ago, when I was in my late twenties, I was encouraged by a friend to write a short story, really just for fun, which I did. (I can still remember the first line: “On a clear day in early spring, the buildings in New York, seen from a distance, seem oddly still, flat and unreal.”) Other than that, though, I had written no fiction since twelfth grade before starting work on the novel.

I guess you would say that I had been thinking about writing a novel since I was seven years old. As for this novel specifically, there were a couple of germs of ideas that I was turning over in my mind for a couple of years, but I didn’t really concentrate on the book or start thinking it through until I actually started writing it.

Gina: How did your background as a journalist and editor impact your approach to the novel?

James: I think my experience as a journalist and editor was important in a variety of ways. Most simply, the training of writing on deadlines helped me to force myself to get the words down, even if I was struggling. Then, I had had a lot of practice cutting and rewriting pieces quite dramatically, heartlessly and quickly, and having those muscles, I think I was able to work over the manuscript of the book much more effectively. I think too that it was good to have written a lot of expository prose. That was especially useful in my case, since the novel is in the third person and it has fairly long expository passages, but in almost any novel except the most impressionistic the writer is presenting information or making an argument at certain points, so being able to write expository prose well is a good skill to have, even if you use it only to make the skeleton of the passage.

Also, I think working in journalism helped my sentences. Poets are supposed to be the most precise writers and journalists are supposed to be the loosest, but I am astonished how often I read lines in poems that are far vaguer and poorly written than would be allowed in a good piece of journalism. In journalism, you have to be pithy, you have to be precise about details, and you have to dump the images that are just too awkward and wordy—all good habits for a novelist.

What I have said above relates to the mechanics of writing, but I’m sure the reason you asked was because you were interested in the broader and deeper ways in which working in journalism affected my writing of the novel. That’s harder to describe. I guess the simplest thing to say was that journalism reinforced the bias I already had toward narrative and realism. In journalism you go out and find out stuff about the real world and then you use that material to tell a story. I enjoyed doing that and I suppose that over the years I became more convinced that in novel writing, too, it was important to tell a story and to bring in aspects of the real world, or at least for the author to show some knowledge of the real world. I am not dogmatic about this, and Beginner’s Greek is by no means totally realistic, but overall, I prefer novels in the realistic, narrative tradition.

Gina: What were your models/inspirations for the structure of this book?

James: My inspirations for the structure were Shakespeare, Wilde, Wodehouse, Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, and any number of others. Really, I just took what I thought was the basic structure of comedies: two young people in love; perhaps another couple that serves as a contrast to the first; complications and twists and surprises.

Gina: I find the cover of the hardback to be singularly appealing and I'm not entirely sure why. Retro, yet not and the surprising green hair. Did you have a hand in the design?

James: I agree that it is a wonderful image: sort of pop and bold but also elegant. I can’t take any credit at all for it, though.

Gina: Have the movie rights sold?

James: There have been discussions but nothing has happened.

Gina: What's next?

James: I have just begun work on what I think is a promising reported story for the New Yorker, and I hope that works out because I definitely want to continue to do journalism. Then I have a lot of ideas for fiction and have started working on a couple of things, one which would probably be a story and the other a shortish novel. They are set in New York among the same kind of people as the characters in Beginner’s Greek, but they aren’t comic—to the contrary, in fact. One reason people seemed to like Beginner’s Greek was that it was so optimistic, and I worry about alienating my legions of fans by revealing my true pessimistic self, but for the moment I’m carrying on.

A Taste of My Own Medicine

Me performing in Camille Roy's Bye Bye Brunhilde at New Langton Arts
in San Francisco circa 1990.

My old [edit: longtime, dear] friend Robin Tremblay-McGaw interviewed me about growing up in San Francisco and acting in experimental theater for the new poetry blog, X Poetics.

Interview with Nani Power

Photo by Marion Ettlinger

Nani Power grew up in a small town in Virginia. She studied fine arts/painting in her youth, at Bennington College, and later at Nadia Boulanger’s Ecole des Beaux-Artes Americaines in Fontainebleau, France. In her late thirties, she took a writing class at Georgetown University with Liam Callanan and went on to publish Crawling at Night (Grove/Atlantic Monthly, 2001), a New York Times Notable Book of The Year and a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Award, as well as the British Orange Award. It has been translated into seven languages and is in film production.

Her first novel was inspired by a brief stint working as a chef at a Japanese restaurant. She felt haunted by the cultural difficulties an old chef encountered. She explains, “Although he had been educated so well in the art of sushi, because of his faulty English he was treated like an old fool and I could see the pain in his eyes.” From this emerged a powerful tale of urban alienation and love set in a Manhattan cityscape. She adds, “I was deeply affected by the respectful Japanese attitude towards food as a cultural icon. The intense dedication and perfection amazed me. And the chefs were mindful of my respect, teaching me as much as I wanted to learn.”

Her second novel, The Good Remains (Grove/Atlantic Monthly, 2002), was also a New York Times Notable Book of The Year, and a finalist for The Virginia Library Award. “In this book,” she explains, “I strove to paint an entirely different landscape than Crawling at Night. While Crawling at Night was about urban alienation, The Good Remains was about the connectedness of a small town. I also wished to pay tribute to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.”

The Sea of Tears, her third novel, was published in January 2005 by Counterpoint Press. “I felt a need to explore the only still ‘forbidden’ territory in writing—exploring the realm of true sentiment and feeling, without being hackneyed. A certain cynicism has been lauded in our culture as intellectualism, and I reject that concept. I also wanted to humanize characters from the Middle East, who I felt were being pigeonholed and overlooked culturally in the post 9/11 era.”

Her newest book is a travel/food memoir titled Feed the Hungry. It was published this summer by Simon and Schuster.

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Gina: What inspired you to write a memoir after three novels?

Nani: I started thinking about family recipes and what they meant to me, which led me to remembering lots of things surrounding those recipes. And I’ve been really interested in all my writing in how food creates and fosters memory. That even a bad recipe can be as loved as something good, because it’s churned in nostalgia and love. I had a friend who loved burned food because his mother couldn’t cook. I kind of like the taste of an unmelted slice of butter on cold toast because my grandmother made it that way. Makes you wonder whether we actually "fall" in love or create love around reality.

I also love reading books with recipes because somehow you become involved in the world of the book even more. And then, lastly, I found myself looking at my family’s methods of coping and wanting to understand it more closely. I don't know if I understood more, but I saw my family more three dimensionally, and therefore with more compassion.

Gina: What is a Yellow Bird cocktail?

Nani: Well, it’s this luscious tropical yellow salve my family gulped down by the gallons when we would go to the Bahamas. It has lots of fruit juices, Galliano, and banana liqueur and as kids we loved to suck down the last bit left in my parent’s glasses. Plus, it always had a maraschino cherry in it, which, I’ve learned as a parent, produces some kind of ineffable food euphoria in kids.

Gina: Please share with my blog readers some of your thoughts about rice.

Nani: It’s amazing the many coats that lil’ ol’ grain can wear. I discovered it's really important in sushi culture, maybe more so than even the fish, if that is possible. Sushi chefs initially suss out the quality of a sushi bar by the rice and the omelette (tamago) preparation. Perfect rice tossed with the right combo of vinegar, salt, and sugar really complements the right slice of toro, a mushy version degrades it. Then, later on, I discovered Persian cuisine and found a new style of rice—basmati rice melded with so many flavors—saffron, rosewater, barberries (think tiny cranberries), sour cherries...a typical Persian feast would include at least four different rice pilafs. I think rice has a soothing quality as well. Both of the above cultures eat a thin rice porridge when they are sick, and feed it to their children as their first food.

Gina: We met at the Sewanee Writers' Conference nine years ago. It's incredible to me how many people from that summer went on to publish books. In what ways did participating in that conference impact your life?

Nani: Basically, it kicked my ass energetically. I had kind of just started writing, had about 30 pages of a novel on my computer. When I saw the level of ambition there, I realized I had to get serious if I was going to do this. I kind of lost the amateur spirit and kicked into high gear. Everyone there seemed so driven and accomplished (including you, I remember that). Plus, I felt so at home. I loved that everyone there loved writing as much as I did.

I also learned that I really love air conditioning.

Gina: What are you writing now?

Nani: I’m working on a novel and also a book about Indian vegetarian cooking that I’ve learned from various Indian women in my neighborhood.

Interview with Liquid Chef Kim Haasarud

Kim Haasarud is the author of 101 Margaritas, 101 Martinis, 101 Sangrias & Pitcher Drinks, and 101 Champagne Cocktails.

In 2002, she founded Liquid Architecture, a beverage consulting firm that creates signature drinks and bar concepts for a wide variety of clients, including The Atlantic magazine, Mont Blanc, Fox Searchlight, Warner Brothers, HBO, Comedy Central, and the Tribeca Film Festival.

You won’t find the standard neon green Appletini on her ever-changing bar card. Instead, this Alice Waters of bartending might shake up an Appletini using fresh-pressed apple juice with a dash of clove or cinnamon.

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Gina: What is your creative process for concocting signature cocktails for events? On your website, I see that you designed drinks for Maxim's party with the Pussy Cat Dolls. Please describe the drinks and why and how your chose them. Did the event planner give any direction beyond "make sexy cocktails"?

Kim: I easily get inspired by taking trips to my local farmer's market. A lot of the inspiration from my 101 books came from those trips. I would see some fresh, seasonal ingredients--like cherries, watermelon, cantaloupe, etc. and build a cocktail around it. For events, I can get inspired by a particular theme. For example, at the Maxim Pussy Cat Dolls party, I wanted to use some "sexy" fruits and aphrodisiacs --chocolate, cherries, martinis, and tequila. (Yes, tequila can be very sexy.) Sometimes I will incorporate a sponsor into a cocktail. For example, one party I did, Garnier Fructis (the shampoo) was a major sponsor. I created a "Fructini" made with various citrus fruits used in the shampoo--grapefruit, lemon, and lime.

Gina: How many cocktail resource books do you own? What are a few of your favorites?

Kim: I own a ton. A few of my favorites include:
Dale DeGroff's Craft of the Cocktail
Ted Haigh's Vintage Cocktails
How to Mix Drinks by Jerry Thomas (the Godfather of Bartenders)
Savoy Cocktail Book by Harry Craddock
Drinks by Vincent Gasnier (he has a lot of great recipes for various syrups and punches)
Joy of Mixology by Gary Regan
Mr. Boston's Official Bartender's Guide by Anthony Giglio

Gina: My father-in-law passed away this week. Are there traditional drinks associated with funerals, wakes, or grieving?

Kim: Good question. I think the best tribute to someone who passed away would be to toast with a drink that was their favorite. Savor those flavors that he/she really loved. (And that doesn't necessarily mean it has to have alcohol.) I know at my funeral, I want people to be toasting with Margaritas made with a good silver tequila and fresh limes! (No salt.)

Gina: If you were a cocktail, what cocktail would you be?

Kim: I think I answered it above--a Margarita of course! It's a casual, non-pretentious drink that can be enjoyed year-round.

Interview with David Samuels

David Samuels is the author of The Runner: A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James Hogue. He is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, where sections of The Runner first appeared. A graduate of Harvard and Princeton, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and young son.

The Runner tells the story of a drifter and petty thief named James Hogue who woke up one cold winter morning in a storage shed in Utah and decided to start his life anew. Reimagining himself as a self-educated ranch hand named Alexi Indris-Santana who read Plato under the stars and could run a mile in under four minutes, Hogue applied and was accepted to Princeton University, where he got straight A’s, made the Princeton track team, dated a millionaire’s daughter, and was accepted into the elite Ivy Club before his deception was finally exposed.

Gina: The vagaries of higher education are on my mind a lot these days, as my daughter starts high school in the fall. I went to San Francisco State University. Through the course of my publishing career, I’ve known a lot of Ivy graduates and seen up close how that club functions...they do rule the world and favor their own and they’re not all as brilliant as they think they are.

I'm encouraging my daughter to aim high with her college ambitions even though we have little savings to pay for tuition and no legacy ties because I don't want her to be penalized for lack of access to power.

Who mentored you as a writer?

David: I learned how to write comedy as an editor of The Harvard Lampoon and found that the lessons I learned over time were applicable to writing fiction and narrative nonfiction. I am grateful to a number of very generous editors who gave me a chance to write good stuff when I was sleeping on my friends' couches in New York, particularly Lewis Lapham at Harper's Magazine and Anne Fadiman, the former editor of The American Scholar. I think I have learned the most about writing over the years from my friend Ben Metcalf, a fellow Lampoon editor who later became my editor at Harper's.

Gina: You seem to identify with James Hogue because you too were an outsider when you applied to Harvard. Where are you from and what was it about you at 18 that made you a winning candidate for admission?

David: I was born in Brooklyn and went to an orthodox Jewish day school in New York City. My grades in high school were quite uneven. I have no real clue as to why Harvard chose to admit me. I can only guess that my combination of indifferent grades, high test scores, and strong teacher recommendations appealed to someone who got bored of admitting kids from Jewish day schools with perfect grades, high test scores, and strong teacher recommendations.

Gina: You say that you think the Ivy League should be abolished. What do you propose replace it?

David: Nothing. If the Ivy League didn't exist I think that students and employers alike would be more alive to the range and specificity of particular educational and life experiences rather than simply looking for silly designer labels that promote a fraudulent pseudo-meritocracy that celebrates itself in a frequently nauseating, self-congratulatory fashion while bestowing a parcel of unfair and unearned advantages on their handpicked classes of entitled little snots. That said, I had a wonderful time at Harvard, and wouldn't be upset if my son was lucky enough to be admitted there. While the classroom education isn't that great, it is hard to beat the self-confidence that comes from being told at the age of 22 that you have been formally certified as a member of the American elite and can venture forth in the world and tell the suckers how to think and behave.

Gina: You are extremely critical of the practice of preferential admissions treatment of children of alumni, yet your son may well benefit from your status. What are your hopes for his education?

David: I hope he learns to read and write, and that he can connect in a deep and sustaining way with a particular body of knowledge, whether in the humanities or the sciences.

Gina: What are you working on now?

David: A multicultural Jewish-inflected novel about the coin-operated machine business.

Interview with Betsy McNair

This photo makes my heart beat fast. It's from Betsy McNair's recent My Mexico Tours e-newsletter. I met Betsy a decade or so ago when I was writing for Fodor's and she was managing one of my favorite inns, La Casa de Espíritus Alegres in Guanajuato. Now in addition to leading wonderful culinary and cultural tours, she is the author of Mexicocina: The Spirit and Style of the Mexican Kitchen.

Gina: What's the name of that fruit?

Betsy: Pitaya (sometimes spelled pitayha) -- fruit of a night-blooming cactus native to Central and South American, where it was called fruta escamosa, scaly fruit. It is now cultivated in Vietnam, Thailand, etc., where it's called dragon fruit. There are a few different types of the fruit, the most common one seems to be red-skinned, white on the inside, with black seeds. This one grows wild in Diana Kennedy's garden in Zitacuaro, Michoacán.You'll recognize the plant, I think, as there are many varieties (both fruiting and non-fruiting, but all with a great big flower) in gardens all all over Mexico. Long jagged-edged succulent-type leaves often hanging down over a wall.

Gina: What does it taste like?

Betsy: Wet and smooth, mostly, with crunch from the little seeds. Slightly sweet. Surprisingly bland in flavor given the outerspace color.

Gina: How does one eat it?

Betsy: DK just sliced it up as you see and we had it for a light refreshing dessert after one of our classes.

Interview with Jenny McNabb

Feb. 27, 2009 UPDATE: Click here to hear a podcast of Jenny talking about her film, new distribution deal, and upcoming plans.

Jenny McNabb is the director, writer, and producer of Cowboy, a short film about an unconventional young ranch hand who travels to the city to win back a forbidden love. Previously, she worked as a travel writer, editor, and photographer for Lonely Planet and Fodor’s, living in and writing about destinations as varied as Belize, London, and Finland. She and I became friends 11 years ago at the Book Passage Travel Writing Conference.

Jenny graduated cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Mass Communications, and began her writing career in New York City at the fashion magazine Mademoiselle.

Studying screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate School of Film and Television, Jenny distinguished herself as an able producer as well as writer. She received UCLA’s Graduate Screenwriting Fellowship, the William Morris Fellowship, and the Jack K. Sauter Scholarship.

Jenny's filmmaking draws on her passion for the absurd, her love of adventure, and her unique appreciation for and sensitivity to different cultures, the legacy of many years of living and working abroad.

Currently, Jenny is in pre-production on her next short film and finalizing the script for her debut feature.

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Gina: I've been hearing about Cowboy for at least a couple of years in your holiday letters. The credits for the film include dozens of people. It seems like an incredible amount of effort for a 5 minutes, 24 seconds-long film that very few people will likely ever see at film festivals. Are short films the marginalized poetry of Hollywood and/or were you thinking of it all along as an audition stepping stone to lead to full-length features?

Jenny: These are good questions. I made the short for two main reasons:

(1) to learn/gain or improve my skills as a director: directing actors, choosing and planning shots, moving the camera, editing, etc. are all things I've found I have to try for myself (and fail at) before I figure out how to do them successfully.

(2) to begin building a body of material that I can give to agents, managers, financiers, producers, etc. when I am shopping around a feature script of mine that shows my skills as a director.

Reason (3) -- to have fun! Which I had a ton of. I love producing and directing (I love writing and editing less, because they are much more challenging for me). I don't know how many people contributed in total, but that's the chief joy of being a writer/director -- being able to build a team (or family) of collaborators. I love doing that -- the good ones always bring so much more to whatever it is I've come up with.

So that's reason (4) to make one or more shorts: to find people I can take with me film to film, and develop our style of working together. For example, on this short, I had two composers score the film unsuccessfully before I found Joe Kraemer, who I love, and who did such a lovely score for the film.

Ideally, I'd like to work with the same cinematographer, editor, composer, from film to film, because it's really sweet when you can shorthand what you want and just say, "Hey, do that thing here that will be like that thing we did on the last one." (My actor and I got like that by the end of this shoot -- I'd just say "do that other thing like before" and he'd nail it.)

Myself, personally, I'm less interested in how many people see this film or where, for one because I've lived with the film for so long that by the time I'm done editing and mixing and whatnot, I'm fairly tired of it, and more preoccupied with the next one, and just want to send it out in the world, wish it all the best, and hope it finds its place.

That said, overall it's great to get a short into certain festivals, because these are great places to network. Another reason to play at festivals -- I'd like to see the film play on a big screen with at least one audience, so by their response I can learn where my pacing worked and where it didn't -- a film plays very, very differently with a room full of people watching together, vs. one or a couple of people watching on a TV at home. I am especially curious how this film will play on a big screen -- I am 99% sure I started one of the music cues in the wrong place, and it will be interesting to see if the audience reaction will bear that out.

Just an aside -- This short film took a particularly long time because I was kind of feeling my way through so many steps of the process. The next short, we can probably get done in about four months.

As well, the next short I make will be timed to go out on the festival circuit when I have my feature script ready to shop around, which is a strategy designed basically to get the feature script into the hands of people who can help me get it made.

It might be unfair to say that shorts are marginalized poetry in Hollywood -- for example, Sundance had over 6000 short film submissions this year for something like 50 slots, and the reason why so many people were competing for those slots is that a good short, shown at a top festival, can really help further your career -- IF you have a follow-up project, a feature, ready to go. This is the truth of the matter: If you have a great short, it shows at top festivals, and you have no follow-up project that's feature length, you're not going to get very far. Of course, there are always exceptions to that rule!

Gina: How does your experience as a travel writer and editor influence your approach to film?

Jenny: I find that my background as an editor helps as well as hurts when I'm writing. I have a very clean pared-down writing style when I'm working on a script, but sometimes that desire to sit and play with wording for a single sentence for an hour is counterproductive to just getting a fucking first draft done. In the early stages of writing, I fight hard to silence my inner editor so that my creativity can flow freely.

Some of the stories I'd eventually like to tell are drawn from having traveled, experiencing different cultures and being open to them. I guess the inquisitiveness that led me to become a travel writer is the same inquisitiveness I direct towards telling fiction stories on film.

Gina: There's a scene in your film with a cow in a house. Where did you find the cow and how did you get her in the house?

Jenny: I was originally going to have a friend who lives north of me in California cattle country, who I'd met at rodeo school the previous year (she was in saddle broncs, I was doing bareback broncs, and we were the only two girls in a group of about 80), borrow one from a neighbor's ranch. I went and pulled all the filming permits (a very long, complex procedure) and then the plan fell through -- when you pull a cow off an 80,000 acre ranch, it's pretty wild, and for the safety of the actors, equipment, crew, etc. we decided not to have her bring it down. We were days away from the start of the shoot, and everything else was set, so this was quite a panic!

Fortunately, when I was doing preproduction I'd called professional animal wranglers just in case I needed some sort of backup, so I got back in touch with the one I liked, and hired him. Spotty the cow came with her own trailer, two handlers, and her calf (who stayed in the trailer while she worked) and was a true pro. She was the most experienced actor on our set -- she's been in California Cheese commercials and a bunch of other stuff.

We shot with the cow one day, two locations, and we had been incredibly nervous about "cow day" -- because we had such a limited amount of time with her, and had to get everything we needed in terms of shots at both locations. For her scene in the kitchen (the house interiors/exteriors in the film are of my house), I had friends help me build a special ramp for her to walk up and stand on. It felt very "Waiting for Guffman" building our ramp and waiting for our cow.

Gina: You've been slogging away in Hollywood for a decade now. I know it's not easy. What keeps you going?

Jenny: It's true I've lived in LA for about a decade, but after I left film school I took a very, very long break from having anything to do with filmmaking -- it was personally a very painful time for me, and I felt creatively exhausted and like I needed to explore some of my other interests. I worked for a fashion designer, a yoga studio, and at a middle school for low income kids -- which were all deeply enriching life experiences. So in a way, right now I feel like in terms of filmmaking, I'm brand new and just starting out.

Gina: Do you have a website?

Jenny: I don't have a website currently, but plan to have one soon. The DVD of the film is available for $10, and I accept payment through Paypal. Contact cowboyalovestory@earthlink.net.

Interview with Melba Levick

I've published seven books. What most people don't know is that there have been an equal number of other book projects that almost worked out for me, but then didn't for a variety of heartbreaking-at-the-time reasons. The books I didn't write were on birds, Balinese décor, southwest spas, southwest colors, green housekeeping, Berkshire houses, a memoir, and...

Between Mexicasa and In a Mexican Garden, photographer Melba Levick and I were all set to collaborate on a book about Indian folk art, but we dropped it when suddenly it seemed India and Pakistan were on the verge of nuclear war. By the time things calmed down and the book was back on the table, my circumstances had shifted and I didn't want to be away from my family for more than a couple of weeks at a time, so Melba went forward (with my blessing) with another writer.

Melba's photography has been exhibited, published, and licensed internationally for over two decades. She has more than 45 photographic books to her credit, mostly about architecture, décor, travel, and gardens.

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Gina: I remember that when the notion of doing an India book first came up, someone told us that "India makes Mexico look like Germany." Was that your experience?

Melba: Betsy McNair said India is like Mexico on steroids! In a way it is true. There are more surprises in India. More wacky, unexpected things...more animals all over in weird places, colors are psychedelic as is the way they are used. But in many ways, it is similar. I think it is more interesting to see the similarities...folk art, rugs, jewelry, etc.

Gina: How much time did you spend in India and how did you wrangle deals for two books with different publishers?

Melba: I went for one month the first year with a contract for IndiaColor from Chronicle Books. When I saw the palace hotels we were staying in, and others we visited, I realized that it was a separate book entirely from the one I was working on, and that the material could not be integrated into one book. It was a unique opportunity and I did not know if I would ever return to these places. It was a fascinating and unexpected aspect of India. I decided that two books were in order and I shot some of the palaces and brought them back on spec. There was a great deal of interest in the palaces book (eventually titled India Sublime), and Rizzoli was the publisher I went with on this. I returned the following year for a month and completed both halves of both books.

Gina: What sort of toiletries do the princely palace hotels stock?

Melba: Same as in upscale American hotels -- can't remember exactly, but very good products.

Gina: Of the 21 hotels profiled in the book, which was your favorite and why?

Melba: I loved different ones for different reasons. I loved Kuchaman Fort because it was old and they opened fabulous spaces for us (sheesh mahal, mirror room, painted rooms...there was an amazing view from the palace onto the town and countryside below). It was a palace fort with a lot of atmosphere. I loved Devi Garh Fort Palace because it was old and a very tasteful mixture of old and contemporary. I loved Udaivilas because it was completely new and so well done (to look like an old palace). I loved Samode Haveli for the amazing wall painting and decorative artwork.

Gina: I'm teaching a travel writing workshop in San Miguel de Allende in a few weeks and one of my students says she aspires to be a travel photographer. What's your advice for people wanting to break into the field?

Melba: Passion, luck, and perseverance! Also, think about marketing because the publishers always will, so if you don't, it's a waste of time (i.e. they will not accept a book that they do not think will sell at least 8,000 copies because books are so expensive to produce and, of course, they do not want to lose bucks).

Gina: What are you working on now?

Melba: A book about Venice Beach bungalows for Rizzoli.

Interview with Chandler Burr

Chandler Burr is The New York Times' perfume critic. His new book, The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York, tells two parallel stories--the first about a year Burr spent in Paris behind the scenes at Hermès watching legendary perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena create the Hermès scent, Un Jardin sur le Nil, and the second about a year inside Coty with Sarah Jessica Parker as she directed the making of her perfume, Lovely.

He speaks around the world on scent and perfume and hosts interactive master classes in gourmand scents; this series explains perfume for the lay person and shows fragrance's structure and artistry, with food-based scent raw materials (absolutes of cinnamon, clove, pepper) and gourmand perfumes like Angel (which uses the scent of cotton candy) and Shalimar (the scent of vanilla) reflected in a seven-course gourmet meal.

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Gina: The Perfect Scent is based on two magazine articles that you wrote for The New Yorker and T: The New York Times Style Magazine. In your acknowledgments, you say that you composed the book during one intensive October in Rome. How on earth did you do that? What sort of strategies did you employ to expand the articles? The book ends with the August 2007 launch of Sarah Jessica Parker's second perfume, Covet. Did you write the book in October 2007 for January 2008 publication? I've never heard of a book publisher being so nimble. Why the rush?

Chandler: I had done a huge amount of work on both of the two tracks in the book--Hermes and SJP-- by September 2006-- both The New Yorker and The Times pieces had been published, and I had big chunks of text finished and knew what my stories were--but I needed a quiet, remote place to work. I have a very good friend, Laura Tonatto, an Italian perfumer (with, and I say this with the pride of a friend, a terrific collection; I'm not able to review Laura in The Times for obvious reasons, but here I can say that you should definitely smell her creations), and she has an apartment in Rome opposite a terrific restaurant called Il Corallo. So she called and invited me to assemble the book in Rome, and I basically hung up and called Delta and got on a plane as fast as I could. It turned out to be the perfect place to create the first full draft of the book.

In a sense I suppose I "expanded" the articles, but in another sense I contracted them. I had a vast amount of material, and my editor, George Hodgman, was a taskmaster on cutting, shaping, pruning, cutting some more. I just got an email last night saying, "Wow, it's a page turner! Who knew the process could be so exciting!" and I'm of course very pleased that people perceive it this way-- and it was, in a real sense, a page-turner for us living it--but that sensation is a very carefully-crafted effect gotten from a lot of hard work writing and a lot of hard work editing.

The fact that the book ends with the August 2007 launch of Sarah Jessica's second, Covet, creates the illusion that the book is amazingly timely and the publisher amazingly nimble. Remember that the entire book was completed and in production. It's actually very easy to put in that last piece right before it goes to the printer.

Gina: You say that perfume as a true art form has only existed since 1881 with the first use of synthetics in a French perfume and you make a very strong case for the virtues of synthetics -- how they're actually safer and healthier than naturals. Your rationale makes sense to me, but it's so counter-intuitive in this era in which all things natural are considered to be best. Please talk about why you think synthetic scent molecules are great. And how do you feel about transfat and nitrates in food?

Chandler: The most important thing to point out is that perfume is not food. I'll repeat that: perfume and food are two different things. The difference is that perfume is made up of molecules that do not interact with our biochemistry except in the most superficial way--there is a small interaction with pH balance, for example--and if it's found that they do interact in any serious way, they're banned. There's a long and growing list of banned materials. Food, on the other hand, obviously goes directly into us, and the naturals argument is absolutely, indeed emphatically logical for food. Food by definition is something that must contain nutrients that evolution has designated necessary for our bodies, and you want it as natural and wholesome as possible. Perfume is art. Not food. And to demand nutrients and naturals in this art is about as logical as demanding them in the paintings we see or the music we listen to.

Gina: I was intrigued by your description of Jo Malone's fragrances as being "solidity shot through with light." Also, that you said her scents were sometimes criticized as being more aromatherapy than perfume. Why is it a criticism for something to be called aromatherapy? What's your favorite Malone fragrance?

Chandler: My personal favorite Malone is the French Lime Blossom. And "aromatherapy" is a criticism when it comes to perfume because aromatherapy is to perfume what John Grisham is to Ian McEwan; it is a much simpler, easier, more accessible form of the art, perfume in one case, literature in the other. I said this to Jo herself, and she sort of resisted it but on the other hand sort of accepted it. When you're putting out scents that you explicitly say can be mixed with each other, you are by definition saying that they are less "worked" works of art, less finished, less elaborate, less singularly conceived, than others. Take Paris, by Sophia Gojsman for YSL. It's an exquisite work, one meant to be shown off like a jewel. It's no more created so that you can "mix" another perfume with it any more than the painter Lucian Freud would intend you to "mix" one of his paintings with another of his paintings. Each painting is a work, complete in and on its own terms. So are perfumes. Malone does scents, and they're wonderful-- they really are-- but she's set out consciously to create a world of products different in kind from traditional perfume and has done a very good job of it.

Interview with Rebecca Walker

I'm going to introduce Rebecca Walker before her keynote address at the San Miguel Writers’ Conference in February. Here is a brief interview I conducted with her that was published in Atención San Miguel.



What's your writing schedule like? Do you have a favorite place to write or any creativity-inducing rituals?

Since having my son, I have had to throw a lot of my ideas about where and when to write out the window. I now write anywhere I can charge my laptop: the bed, the sofa, a chair in the backyard. I also write in hotels more lately, and try to build a few extra days for writing into my lecture schedule. My other trick is to wait until I really know what I want and need to say. Then I add a few months onto that until I can't contain it anymore. The urgency makes me write faster.

You've been extremely brave about delving into and revealing your complex personal truths in your memoirs and you've paid dearly for doing so. You wrote in Baby Love that your mother was so furious about what you wrote in Black, White, and Jewish that she disinherited you. Was it worth it? Is it worth it?

Well, it certainly wasn't the best financial decision I've ever made! Because my mother is such a powerhouse in the industry (think Oprah and many, many others) and people take sides, the estrangement has had a serious impact on my career and the resources available to me.

Access aside, as millions of people know, my mother is a tremendous human being and I love and respect her deeply. The rub is that, like her, I'm a writer: my life is my material. It's an issue all writers deal with: Is it possible to tell my story without hurting others? What happens to the world of letters if writers only write what is acceptable? What's the point of writing if you can't be truthful?

Some of my favorite memoirists, women like Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, Audre Lorde, Diane DiPrima, Marguerite Duras, Susanna Kaysen, bell hooks, Lucy Grealy, asha bandele and others, didn't write what made everyone comfortable. They wrote what they needed to write, and the truth of their expression stands the test of time. I hope my work does the same.

So I guess that's a yes. It is worth it. And the cost is tremendous. I often tell writers in my workshops that their biggest fear about telling their story can come true: you can lose the people you love the most. But, as many of those same writers like to tell me, the opposite is also true: you can become closer to the people you love; telling your story can be a cathartic place of healing. I thought that would be true for me and my family. So far, not so much. But there is still time. I'll never close the door.

You've edited three non-fiction anthologies and contributed to at least twenty others. Why do you think anthologies as a genre became so popular? What's your new anthology about? I hear there's a local author in it.

The first anthology I read was This Bridge Called My Back by the late Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldua, and my all-time favorite is We Are the Stories We Tell. The genre endures because it fulfills a human longing to see the world from different points of view, all at once. And then there is the fact that collections are like parties for introverts: you meet the most fascinating people without having to leave the house. It's the original virtual community.

My new anthology is about new family configurations. It's called Walk This Way: Introducing the New American Family. It's about all the ways people are living these days: from birthing at home without a midwife, living polyamorously, and inviting the nanny to be a full-fledged family member, to co-housing, transracial adoption, and intercultural ex-pat life. San Miguel de Allende resident Susan McKinney de Ortega is covering that last topic, and I'm thrilled to include her essay about moving to San Miguel, falling in love and starting what to some may seem like a non-traditional family.

Have you been in San Miguel de Allende before? If so, what is the first experience you look forward to having upon each return?

This will be my first trip to San Miguel de Allende, though my mother owns a house in Mexico and I've spent over two decades going back and forth: the country is in my blood. I'm looking forward to speaking Spanish, a language I love, and eating carne asada with beans and rice. I'm looking forward to the light, the warmth of the people, and the focus on family rather than consumerism. I'm looking forward to architectural beauty and diversity. And of course, I am looking forward to meeting some wonderful writers.