Features
Catching up with Mitchell James Kaplan
by Mitchell James Kaplan
This article originally appeared in the September 2010 Other Press newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Since the publication of his novel By Fire, By Water back in May, Mitchell James Kaplan has been busy visiting bookstores, guest blogging for sites like Passages to the Past and Historically Obsessed, and chatting with readers via e-mail and at book club discussions. We caught up with him before he embarks on another round of touring this fall.
I’d love to thank everyone who has done so much to spread the word about my novel, but where to start? The flood of good vibes has been overwhelming. I’ll always feel grateful to the bloggers, readers, fellow novelists, print reviewers, librarians, and book clubs who have expressed such passion – and of course to the booksellers who have been hand-selling By Fire, By Water so enthusiastically.
A few days after my novel came out, I went to New York City for the BEA. As I settled into my hotel room, the phone rang. “The internet is buzzing, Mitchell,” my wife told me. “A lot of people want signed copies.” I thought she was dreaming. As it turned out, the queue was so long that Other Press ran out of books. “This is unusual,” my editor, Katie Henderson, told me. “Especially for a first novel.”
So many thrills followed that initiation rite – the “First Author, First Book” program at the American Library Association’s annual convention; the First Annual Sephardic Book Fair in New York City; most recently, the review in Ha’aretz that called By Fire, By Water “one of the most important contemporary historical novels with a Jewish theme.”
I’m excited to have the opportunity to meet more readers and booksellers around the country this fall. In September, I’ll be speaking at the Harvard-Yale-Princeton Club lunch in Pittsburgh as well as the Jewish Book Council Twitter Book Club online. The latter will be an entirely new experience for me – chatting with readers around the country, all at once.
I’m thrilled that the “One Book, One Jewish Community” programs in Philadelphia, Delaware, and Houston have all selected By Fire, By Water as their 2010-2011 read, with kickoff events in those cities during the months of November and December. It will be fascinating to discuss my work with entire communities in such disparate places, and to see how local culture and history inform people’s reading. Also during November, I’ll be speaking at Books and Books in Coral Gables and Third Place Books in Seattle. I’ll be venturing further north to Bellingham, too, where Village Books is coordinating an event at Congregation Beth Israel.
The Jewish Book Council has been enormously helpful in setting up and promoting events at Jewish Community Centers in Sarasota, FL, Cherry Hill, NJ, and Rockville, MD. You can visit my website, www.mitchelljameskaplan.com, for dates and details. All these events are open to everyone (of all faiths!) and I can’t wait to meet you in person.
–Mitchell James Kaplan
Tags: author guest post, By Fire, By Water
