Free By the Book by Pamela Paul Page A

Waldman and Robin Levi. It’s a book of oral histories from incarcerated women in the United States, and every story is shocking—women shackled to beds during childbirth, women given hysterectomies against their will, and the omnipresent sexual abuse at the hands of guards. Massive reform is needed immediately.
    What’s your favorite literary genre? Any guilty pleasures?
    Lately I’ve been reading ghost stories and have been having a blast. At a yard sale, I found a collection Hitchcock edited called Stories Not for the Nervous ; it’s solid all the way through.
    Take a moment to champion unheralded writers. Who do you think is egregiously overlooked or underrated?
    I don’t know if he’s unheralded, but there’s a writer named J. Malcolm Garcia who continually astounds me with his energy and empathy. He writes powerful and lyrical nonfiction from Afghanistan, from Buenos Aires, from Mississippi, all of it urgent and provocative. I’ve been following him wherever he goes.
    What were your most cherished books as a child? Do you have a favorite character or hero from children’s literature?
    When I was a kid, I drew a lot, so I gravitated to oversized books with a lot of artwork—books about giants, gnomes, Norse myths, and space travel. There was one called 21st Century Foss , full of incredible imaginings of spaceships and future cities, all with radical and organic shapes. I hadn’t seen it in thirty years and recently bought it on eBay. Looking at those pictures again was like reliving dreams I had when I was eight years old.
    You cofounded 826 National, an organization dedicated to motivating young people to write. Was there a particular book that motivated you? A book that you find often motivates the children you work with?
    The greatest motivator for a kid to write, I think, is having an encouraging and open-minded reader. At 826, we train our tutors to be encouraging of young writers, no matter how unusual the subject matter or where their writing skills are. The two things that stunt kids more than anything else are 1) the fear that whatever they want to write about won’t be acceptable, or 2) that their first drafts have to be perfect. Kids have to know, without a doubt, that writing about anything, even flatulent hamsters, is OK, and that writing can and should be fun at that age. But when you say, your paper has to be five paragraphs long, this many sentences per paragraph, and about “appropriate” subject matter, then you’re guaranteeing paralysis from young writers. You’ve got to remove the tethers to get them started. Then you can get at the grammar on the back end.
    Is there one book you wish all kids would read?
    For ten years I’ve been teaching a high school class that puts together the anthology The Best American Nonrequired Reading , and from these students I’ve learned that there’s no one book or kind of writing that works for everyone. I’m always surprised at the range of reactions to just about anything. But for reluctant readers, the rule of thumb is that you have to meet them where they live. You probably shouldn’t give a reluctant reader The Scarlet Letter or Middlemarch . You can work their way up to the canon, but start with something more immediately relevant to their lives.
    Any bad book habits? Do you tend not to finish books? Skim? Scribble in margins? Fall asleep while reading?
    All of the above. I put books down all the time. I mark them up, fold page corners. And I fall asleep, sure. Most of my books have gotten wet because I read in the tub.
    Of the books you’ve written, which is your favorite?
    I usually feel too close to whatever book I last wrote, but in this case I have to say that I like A Hologram for the King best. It’s different than the book I thought I was writing, so I can look at it with some distance.
    What’s the one book you wish someone else would write?
    I have to go