I have people in my family with bipolar disorder, and for years I’ve watched them struggle with the disorder’s extreme moods and often devastating consequences. – Jenna Blum
My dad, Bob Blum, used to dash across Grand Central’s main terminal catwalk several times daily as a young CBS correspondent, running copy from newsroom to studio and back – because CBS’ first broadcasts were from Grand Central Terminal. The pictures on people’s television sets used to shake when the trains came in! – Jenna Blum
‘The Lucky One’ features a young concentration camp survivor named Peter Rashkin – who’s about the age my dad was when he started at CBS – working at the Oyster Bar, trying to acclimate to his new country and outrun the memories of the daily he left behind. – Jenna Blum
When I lived in Minneapolis in my twenties, and my mom lived there, too, I used to take her ‘storm chasing’ – by which I mean I’d see a pulsing blob of radar on The Weather Channel and make her drive us toward the storm. – Jenna Blum
Grub Street Writers is the reason I’ve stayed in Boston. I started teaching for Grub back in 1997, when founder Eve Bridburg, a Boston University M.A. alumna, as I am, kindly gave me my first job out of grad school. – Jenna Blum
My novella, ‘The Lucky One,’ is inspired in part by my dad and also by a Holocaust survivor I interviewed for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Foundation. – Jenna Blum
I’ve been fascinated with severe weather since I was four, when I saw a tornado at night in my mom and grandmother’s southeast Minnesota hometown while everyone else was asleep – an experience I encoded in ‘The Stormchasers.’ – Jenna Blum
