Featured Author: Leanne Lieberman

Bibliography at Orca

Gravity: Ellie Gold is an orthodox Jewish teenager living in Toronto in the late eighties. Ellie has no doubts about her strict religious upbringing until she falls in love with another girl at her grandmother's cottage. Aware that homosexuality clashes with Jewish observance, Ellie feels forced to either alter her sexuality or leave her community. She is afraid there is no way to be both gay and Jewish, but her mother and sister offer alternative concepts of God that help Ellie find a place for herself as a queer Jew.

Interview

What kind of research do you do before you write? I usually do research as I write a book. I’ll come to something I don’t know, then I’ll go out and find out. I always buy a new CD before I start, as a lot of my writing is inspired by music. I bought a Shlomo Carlebach CD before I wrote Gravity. It was the most overpriced CD I’ve ever bought, but it put me in the right frame of mind to write some of my important scenes. 

Do you put your family and friends in your books? I don’t. All my characters are original. I think of them as my imaginary friends. I once tried to slip my husband in as a sexy math teacher, but in the end I had to cut that scene.

What is your favourite children's book? I love Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. I especially loved acting it out with my students when I taught kindergarten. We made masks and got to be wild things. When I was a teenager I read a lot of Chaim Potok. I especially loved My Name is Asher Lev. Its about a Hasidic boy who has an usual talent for painting.I don’t think it’s a YA book, but I loved it. I still do.

What is your favourite (or funniest) childhood/teenage memory? I have a memory of sitting on my bed when I was about ten and trying to make these very intricate origami boxes. It was fall and the light faded in my room in these gorgeous orange colours. My boxes weren’t very successful, but it was the first time I experienced what it was to concentrate very deeply and fully on a task. It was immensely satisfying.

What are the best and wors things about writing books? The best thing for me is creating a page of dialogue that brings characters to life. I get a lot of satisfaction in knowing I’ve written a conversation that is both interesting and funny. The hardest things is the many, many, many rejection letters I continually receive.

Biography

Leanne Lieberman grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her work has previously been published in The Windsor Review, The New Quarterly, The Antigonish Review and other magazines. Leanne's novel Gravity was her master's thesis at the University of Windsor. Leanne works as a teacher in Kingston, Ontario, where she lives with her husband and two sons.