When did you start writing? 

In high school, I would write poetry, essays… some were required, some were for pure pleasure. But my best friend Stephanie was “the writer” and I was just the joker. It stayed like that for many years until she passed away. In her memory, with her celestial coaching, I felt like I could allow myself to be a writer as well a psychologist. The truth is, I have loved to read and write since I remember myself. Eventually, I had a short career as a journalist, and as for books, that started 40 years ago. I had ideas, I wrote drafts, and I spent decades perfecting them. Not all of them are ready for publication yet; some are on hold. But in the last ten years, I’ve come out with a number of books I’m proud of.

You have authored 5 other books that have centered on your professional career working with addiction and mental health. Yet “Finding Phoebe” is a novel about a new freshman in college who is faced with overcoming her stutter. What made you decide to write a work of fiction? Does your background as a mental health practitioner come into the narrative? 

I can’t avoid seeing things from a psychological perspective, but Phoebe came to me in a dream, and I was smitten. Initially, I could only try to get to know this figment of my imagination, to understand how she thought and reacted to the world. She was intriguing to me. As I gave her life, I saw her interacting with that life — and with other people — in much broader ways. She’s an invention, not based on anyone I ever met or heard about, but now she feels real to me, as if I was channelling this unique being, explaining her story.

I love the rich interplay of cultures in this book. The main character, Phoebe Carasso is from a Sephardic family, while her college roommate is from an Indian family raised in Australia, while others have a distinctly American-Ashkenazi culture. How does your Jewish identity show up in the story? Are there any hints to your own story in the narrative? 

No hints.  The two main characters here are Jewish because when I write, someone is always going to be Jewish. But here it’s in a completely different version than my ethnicity and background. I had a good time expanding on Phoebe and Ananda, gazing — not deeply, but somewhat — into the world of the Greek Jews. As for Ananda, aside from knowing some nifty Yiddish, she’d had a relatively small degree of Jewishness in her life, even though her mother is a born and raised Goldberg from Brooklyn. But writing her enlarged my understanding of the different possible archetypes for thinking and feeling Jewish. 

Walk us through your writing process. Where do you write – is there a special space that inspires you? A particular time of day? Is this a daily practice or when the moment strikes you? 

I write my books with my editor, Shani Sladowsky. We have four sessions scheduled every week. We sit on Zoom; I dictate, she writes what I say and reads it back to me. Either I “ooh” and “ooh” over my greatness, or it’s an “oy vey”, and I’m mortified by what I just said. Somehow, every session ends with hope and a smile, and I’m left to await the next one. It is unequivocally one of my favorite things to do.

Who do you see as the target readers of Finding Phoebe? Would you say this is a ‘Young Adult’ book or other? 

Shani tells me she doesn’t think it fits the Young Adult category. Not that young people can’t read and enjoy it —  my young teenage grandchildren wrote book reports in school about it! But seniors who’ve read it are also totally enamored. It’s about a young woman’s experiences, but I bring my 76-year-old hopeful spirit to the work.

I think that anyone with a brain and a soul will enjoy it. More than being a book for young people, it’s a book for those who like a good story; it’s for those who identify with a heroine who is coping with serious challenges, and who want to believe that it is possible to triumph. 

As an author of 5 books, with a successful career as a psychotherapist, plus having your own family, do you have advice for aspiring writers out there?  

Keep writing. Never give up. It took me decades to get out there. Never give up.