Steph Cha answers 13 questions in a Booker's Dozen.
 |
TPQ: What are you currently reading?
SC: Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. A superb debut short story collection that focuses on the lives of Coloradan women, many of them with Mexican and indigenous roots that run deep in the land around them.”
TPQ: Best book you have ever read?
SC: Impossible question, but a recent addition to my all-time favorites list is The Known World by Edward P. Jones.
TPQ: A must-read before you die?
SC: The Remains of the Day, another favorite of mine, is probably a good book to read at some point in your life, preferably long before you die.
TPQ: A preference for fact or fiction?
SC: Fiction grounded in fact.
TPQ: Favourite female author?
SC: Hard to pick favorites, but these days, I'm kind of obsessed with Sara Gran.
TPQ: Favourite male author?
SC I have a complicated relationship with him, but I do have a special place in my heart for Raymond Chandler.
 |
A Berlin Book Tower in memory of the Nazi book burning.
|
TPQ: First book you ever read?
SC: The first book I remember reading, anyway, is Sayonara, Mrs. Kackleman, a fantastic picture book by Maira Kalman.
TPQ: Favourite childhood author?
SC: Norton Juster, not that I've read anything of his other than The Phantom Tollbooth.
TPQ: Any book you point blank refuse to read?
SC: Plenty of them. No Mein Kampf for me, and no books by living Nazi psychos either.
TPQ: Any author you point blank refuse to read?
SC: Only the Nazi psychos, really.
TPQ: Pick a book to give to somebody so that they would more fully understand you.
SC: Can't get more on the nose than my own books, especially the most recent one. As for books I didn't write, I connected powerfully with Forgotten Country by Catherine Chung and Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee.
TPQ: Last book you gave as a present?
SC: The last book I gave as a gift was a coffee table book about L.A. fashion. I'll mention a few books I think gift particularly well, though––The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang, Good Talk by Mira Jacob, and Ben Loory's short story collections.
TPQ: Book you would most like to see turned into a movie?
SC: I'd love to see the Highway 59 books by Attica Locke turned into movies. I also loved a book called The Which Way Tree by Elizabeth Crook that I think would be marvellous on screen.
 |
| Steph Cha is an novelist living in Los Angeles. |
