I loved Nora Ephron. I loved her long before she got sick, and long before I'd actually met her. Like many, many women my age, I wanted to be her, and everything from her essays (even the ones about having small breasts–not, I admit, my problem) to her seminal novel, Heartburn, did nothing to change that. I didn’t meet Nora until about 2006, when, at an event for her then-current book, I Feel Bad About My Neck, she threw her arms around me–me! Her eternal fan, whom I thought she had no reason to know–and said "You’re such a star. I'm so proud of you."

I had written to Nora Ephron, asking her to blurb my book, So Many Books, So Little Time. I had gotten her address from her longtime friend Joni Evans, who said, "What the hell? Let’s give it a try!" Ephron refused to blurb the book, but she did it in the nicest, most hilarious way. The letter she sent me–hand-written, to my home address, how she got that I don't know–was delightful, all about how she'd given up blurbing when her veterinarian threatened to kill her cat if she didn't blurb his book. (I assumed then, and now, that she–or he–was kidding.) I was ambitious enough to ask if I could use her funny letter as a quote. She said no.

More recently, I got to know Nora a very little bit through her sister Delia, whom I met at a book party under circumstances so weird I will save them for another time. Delia and Nora were close–they wrote You’ve Got Mail together, among other things, including the delightful, Love, Loss, and What I Wore–but Delia never traded on her relationships. But when Delia's book was published, it was Nora's house to which I went as a dinner companion and celebrant: say what you will about Nora's ambition, that night was all about her wonderful younger sister.

Over the last few years, I've been sent a number of writers from Nora. When Nora sent you somebody she thought was great, you listened. As I said to one of these women, who had been counseled by Nora to write the story of her unusual childhood: "I’ve learned a few things… One is that when Nora or Delia tells you to do something, you should do it." 

I always wanted to write a book like Heartburn. (Nora said to me, when I told her I wanted to write a book about MY divorce, but I didn’t think I had the distance to be mean enough, "It doesn’t have to be that mean, Sara. It just has to be funny!") Hell, I would have been happy writing one essay that had the verve and humor and style and honesty of anything in Scribble, Scribble or Crazy Salad.

Dear Nora. I hardly knew you. But you were everything to me, and to so many of us who dared to think that being a funny, observant woman could make us writers.

–Sara Nelson

I've waxed enthusiastic on here before about Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret's sharply funny new story collection, Suddenly, a Knock on the Door. Between tour stops in California and Chicago, the very busy Keret kindly paid a visit to our Seattle offices to chat about storytelling, moviemaking, cake baking, serial killers, and trusting your instincts.

He also humored our request to read a piece aloud from the collection—look for the video at the end of this interview, and prepare to be charmed by his accent (warning for delicate ears: a couple of four-letter words are used).

Mia Lipman: You just came from the L.A. Times Book Festival. Were short-story writers well represented there?

Etgar Keret: Yeah, in my panel. It was very much like an AA meeting. “My name is this and this, and I write short stories. I don’t care! They tell me to write a novel, but I like writing short stories!” Then we all hug.

You’re one of those rare writers, like Raymond Carver and Grace Paley, who has stuck with stories throughout your career.

“Stuck” is pretty judgmental.

[Laughing] I didn’t mean stuck in a bad way, I meant that you’ve stayed with stories.

If your boyfriend would have said, “I’m stuck with you, but not in a bad way. In a nice kind of way…”

I love short stories, I’m a champion of them around here. Why does the short form work so well for you? What are you drawn to in that length?

When I sit down and I write something, I don’t say, “I want to write a short story” or “I want to write a three-page story”—I want to write something that is on my mind. Many times when I begin writing a story, I say to myself, “This is going to be my first novel.” And I think about the protagonist meeting his grandchildren in the park. And while I do that, a truck comes and runs him over after two pages. So it’s not intentional. For me, it’s very strange when people say, “Why don’t you write longer stuff?” The bottom line: You have something that you want to say or you want to write. And when it ends, it ends.

You’re also a filmmaker. Do you have a different creative approach to making films than you do to writing fiction? Is it a different state of mind?

I beg more when I make films. [Laughs.] Filmmaking is a collaborative project…when you write a screenplay, you should be able to know exactly what you’re doing, to be able to defend it, to be able to explain it to people. Because if a story is a cake, then a screenplay is just a recipe for a cake. If I make a cake and I don’t know exactly what ingredients I put in, but it comes out tasty, it’s OK. But if I have to write it on a page and somebody else has to make this cake, I have to be much more conscious.

So there is something about screenplay writing—it’s more conscious effort, more rational effort. I feel like I need another scene here, I need to establish that. But when I write [fiction], I really just sit down and write. I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, and it’s completely an act of letting go and losing control.

Short stories are a famously hard sell for publishers and, I’d say, for the average reader. Do you think that’s changing at all as a result of social media? Do you think people appreciate short pieces more because our attention spans are getting shorter?

You know, it’s funny because I’m saying it here at Amazon, but there’s something about the publishing world that finds it very difficult to deal with changes. And many times you feel there is something very petrified there. It’s like being in the ditches, you know, and kind of shaking in fear.

The idea is that traditionally, short stories were not a big seller because for printed media, you have to sell something that is 400 pages long, and it’s more natural to have a novel. But if you think about, let’s say, the difference between records that you used to have and a song that you can download on iTunes, then today you can read stories individually. If I’m on my way to work on the subway, and I have eight stops and I want to read something, it makes much more sense to read a story.

So I think the world is changing, and these changes can actually improve the situation of the short story. But I don’t think that publishers have internalized it. You know, people just love stories. When you meet somebody, you tell him a story, you don’t tell him a novel.

Right. It’s a bedtime story, not a bedtime novel.

There is something very distinctive about this. When you meet your parents and you say to them, “You know what happened? I met this guy, and he told me this.” All the time, we’re telling stories. And the thing that put short stories in the shadow was very physical and pragmatic, it had to do with the way texts were being packaged. And I truly believe that this could change.

What is the literary landscape like in Israel right now? Are readers different there than here?

Well, for good or for bad, it’s a small country. And it’s very warm people, so everybody knows you, or dated your sister, or beat up your brother. I once wrote this sketch for a comedy show about the fact that in Israel, you can’t be a serial killer because when you come randomly into a building and you want to kill somebody—

You know the doorman.

You know the doorman, you’ve been to high school with the guy. So there is something about this kind of intimacy in Israel that makes readers very different. When I go overseas, there is something kind of mysterious: Who is this guy? And I think that the stories are being read differently because they tell the story of a different place, maybe a strange place. You don’t have this feeling of familiarity that I bet many Israeli readers have.

What are you reading these days? Do you have different taste on the road than you do when you’re at home?

I must say that on book tours like this, if I had time to read I would shower.

Yeah, that’s fair. A different city every day.

But I've recently finished reading Nathan Englander’s collection of short stories—of course, I’m biased because he’s a friend and he translated some of the stories in my collection—but I think it’s an amazing collection.

In addition to everything else, you also teach at the university level. What’s the first thing you say to new writers, or the most important thing? Where should they start?

What I say is that when you choose a style, then the best thing would be not to imitate something that is successful, something that you like. Because the thing that you can ultimately be best at is being yourself. So if you write stories and they come from the way that you perceive the world, and you write them in the way that is most instinctive to you, then you’re kind of the world champion in being you. Nobody could be you more than you can. So basically the moment that you believe that what you are is interesting, you are halfway there.

This spring, I became captivated by The Land of Decoration, a debut that made our list of the Top 10 Best Books of April. Grace McCleen’s visionary novel (widely compared to Emma Donoghue’s Room) grapples with immortal questions, especially for children raised in religious doctrines at odds with mainstream belief: how do you feel your way to the truth when faith blurs with madness, when pious parents may be oblivious to your pain, when your sense of Divine control dissolves? As I’ve watched the customer reviews roll in, it’s been fascinating to see how the book resonates with readers on different levels, depending on their own childhood experience and beliefs.

Judith, a bright 10-year-old in a poor Welsh valley, gets bullied for her faith in the impending End Times, and her life with her devout widower father feels oppressively quiet. So (almost as an act of creative self-defense) she makes an intricate replica of her town within her room, expanding and populating a world made from candy wrappers, shoe laces, sticks, and other cast-off bits. Then she discovers that her actions in her miniature world give her miraculous abilities (to save or destroy) in the real one, and what seemed like the voice of God may be something more sinister.

McCleen’s writing felt so visceral that I believed it must spring from an intensely imaginative spirit or the power of personal experience. Now I know it’s the result of some miraculous combination of the two–and a rare talent.

Her website offered clues into the remarkable scope of her creativity, including beautiful paintings and sculpture, and a village of 140 little people she made “when I wasn’t well and awake at night a lot.” Her bio says she’s “interested in sound, in the spiritual dimension, in miniature, and the natural world,” all forces she unleashes in this book. I also found myself beguiled by her songs, amazed by her note that at the time she recorded them, “I thought I was going to lose my speech,” a circumstance that makes her vocal poise all the more remarkable. The haunting “Preacher’s Daughter” thematically overlaps The Land of Decoration.

I reached out to Grace to find out more about her experience with writing the book, and how her art and music inspire her writing, and vice versa. Here are the highlights.

 How did you first hear Judith’s voice—or did her story arise in part from your own life?

 The passage opening The Land of Decoration came from a long unworkable novel, out of the blue one day, and I asked myself who would be speaking, what their environment might be. I was very ill at the time, and every paragraph and page was a feat in itself. I think that struggle reveals itself in the depth of the emotion in places (which perhaps verges on the melodramatic), and the pedestrian, ‘numb’ prose in others, as I was feeling either numb or very great emotion.

 At its core, Judith’s story is about the power of belief. What do you believe in? Have you experienced what you’d call miracles?

 I don’t believe in anything at the moment except emotional patterns laid down in childhood (and perhaps before that), which are very hard to shift. I have never experienced what I would call a miracle.

 You’re intensely creative. Are you one of those people who believe you’re a conduit for a creative spirit, or do you have to work to stay inspired? Which medium is most important to you?

 I am addicted to work, so a lot of the time I don’t think I’m channelling anything valuable at all; in fact my work obsession gets in the way of it. But sometimes - often when I am feeling great emotion – things come easily. The medium of music makes me most happy, words least happy, that is why I am giving writing up.

[Note: The last piece of this answer made me very sad until I saw on her website that she already has two more novels done and intends to finish her fourth this summer--so at least this won't be the end of her writing for us (yet).]

 You recorded the songs on your website in your bedroom, at a time you thought you were going to lose your speech. What was that experience of almost losing your voice like for you?

 The experience of almost losing my speech was deeply traumatic. But I was losing other bits of my body at the time, my balance, and feeling in my hands and feet for example. It was like being in a waking nightmare.

 How does your songwriting overlap with writing stories, and vice versa?

 I often write rhythm first for prose rather than words, and with music the words often come along at the same time – at the very first instant – as the notes.

This fall it will be exactly 60 years since Charlotte's Web was first published–more on that below–and E.B. White's story of friendship, love, and life is as as important in 2012 as it was in 1952.  As a kid, Charlotte's Web was my first real introduction to the cycle of life and death and while it broke my heart in some places, I would read it again and again.  As an adult, this is a book I think everyone should read, and I always feel good about giving or recommending it to young readers.  To celebrate Charlotte's sixtieth year, Newbery-medalist Kate DiCamillo has written a beautiful foreword that is included in the anniversary editions. DiCamillo also talks about her love for Charlotte's Web in a wonderful new video about the book and author that you can see below or on this page.

Now, about that original publication–books are ordered for store shelves (virtual and otherwise) many months in advance of when they actually go to print, and the previewing is done through catalogs. The catalog page for each book gives a description/summary and basic information like author and price.  HarperCollins still has those old catalogs, and below is a scanned image of the pages that first introduced E.B. White's Charlotte's Web to book store buyers. What do you think? Would you have bought Charlotte's Web for your book store? –Seira

Click the image to see larger view and check out the 60th anniversary video below

Before moving to Seattle I had spent six years in the mountains of western North Carolina, in a hippie-artsy-literary town that Rolling Stone once called Freakville, U.S.A. So it's been a treat to read two great books published this month that happen to have strong ties to my former home town of Asheville, N.C.*

Ron Rash's The Cove, selected as our top Best Books of the Month pick for May, is set during World War I in Mars Hill, just north of Asheville. It's a taut and hanting story about trust and small-town mistrust, and an unlikely love story. And then there's former Ashevillian Wiley Cash's debut, A Land More Kind Than Home, one of our top 10 fiction picks. It takes place in Marshall, another town north of Asheville, where a young boy and his brother must cope with a dangerous secret.

Both books give off a musky scent of dread and darkness, which is what I love about the best of southern writing. The past is always ghosting in the shadows–the Civil War, slavery, moonshine. But at the core of each book is love of family, love of the land, a clear sense of home.

I reached out to both authors to ask a handful questions. Ron's answers are below, and we'll post Wiley's answers this weekend.

In The Cove, the land is very much a character. How/why is the land and its history important to your writing?

Landscape is always a major character in my work because such an emphasis allows the reader to enter the fictional world more fully and, also, understand how the locale affects the characters’ lives both physically and psychologically. In The Cove I hoped to do more–to depict landscape as destiny. Laurel Shelton’s attempts to transcend her dark place in the world, if not literally then through her imagination, is what makes her heroic. 

There’s both a timelessness and a timeliness to The Cove (xenophobia, patriotism, fear of the “enemy”)? Was that intentional?

Yes, I wanted to The Cove to resonate with contemporary concerns. “Tell the truth but tell it slant,” Emily Dickenson says, and that is something I wanted to do, for the reader to be reading along and suddenly, or perhaps not so suddenly, realize the connection. I wanted to address who is and who is not a patriot, in 1918 as well as in 2012, especially in light of those who advocate wars and those who end up doing the actual killing and dying. In the past as in the present, an inordinate number of those who end up doing the fighting are from Appalachia. 

Favorite writer? Favorite book?

Picking a favorite writer is always a challenge. As far as novelists, I would have to choose Dostoyevsky because of the impact of Crime and Punishment. I first read the novel when I was fifteen and it was as intense as any reading experience I’ve ever had. For the first time in my life, I felt that I had not entered a book but instead the book had entered me. I go back to Crime and Punishment often, and it greatly influenced my first novel, One Foot in Eden. 

What’s next for you?

I’m finishing up a new story collection titled Nothing Gold Can Stay. The book will be published in March, 2013. It’s been nice to be writing short stories again. It is my favorite form, and I believe the most challenging to do well. A great short story, such as Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” is a miraculous synthesis of poetry and novel–every word is perfectly placed and the narrative feels as complete as a full novel. I have a black-and-white photograph above my writing desk of O’Connor. She stares down at me and my writerly efforts disdainfully, as she should.

>See all of Ron Rash's books.

>Read the first fourteen pages of The Cove (Prologue and Chapter 1) or download an excerpt.

*On a personal note: a shout-out to my friends at Asheville's phenomenal, author-friendly Malaprops Bookstore/Cafe, which host readings by Ron (this Friday) and Wiley (May 19).

Turkish author Perihan Magden's new novel, Ali and Ramazan, is based on a tragic and beautiful true story tracing the lives of two boys from very different backgrounds who land in the same Istanbul orphanage. Read why she chooses to write in Turkey despite her run-ins with the law, which character she relates to most in her story, and which books she would recommend to her readers, below.

Omnivoracious: What inspired you to write this story?

Perihan Magden: Ali and Ramazan is based on a true story. I first met these boys as third page news in a rather short article. Then, three more short news items depicting their tragic ending followed. They were forgotten, nobody. Two orphan lovers–gay street-boys, a male hustler and a glue sniffer–who cares? I couldn’t forget them, but it took me many years to go back and read the papers again and write about them. No writer would dare to make up such a tragic end (unless you’re Shakespeare, but no one is).

Omni: Is there any character you most identify with? Why?

Magden: I take that restlessness within me and magnify for my character–namely Ramazan. The impatience, the aggression, the anger–I know about all those, though through association.

Omni: In 2008, the Turkish Writers Association awarded you the Grand Award of Freedom of Speech. As an outspoken writer in Turkey, what challenges have you met with? What keeps you in Istanbul, where writers may not be as free to express their views as in some other countries?

Magden: All through my column-writing years I was sued. Keeping you coming and going to and from the courts is the Chinese-torture-strategy of the Turkish "justice" system. Any court case takes years to resolve, and they threaten you with many at once–at least that’s what they did to me. I’ve received many prison sentences for my essays, but they have all been postponed or converted to fines.

I left my column three years ago, but wrote a couple of essays recently for a daily called "Taraf," and right away I was sued by Erdogan–our prime minister–for two articles. He accuses me of "Insult"–and mind you, Turkey offers prison sentences for that! Anything can be regarded as an insult by Turkish judges–for instance, a Jay Leno joke. Everything is open to interpretation and that is unnerving.

I still live in Turkey because I am scared of being the "foreigner." I’m already a foreigner in my own country and that much is enough for me to deal with. Also, I want to live where I excel in (my own) language, and where I can read people inside and out. When I was seriously threatened by the fascist mob after writing a column defending conscientious objection (I was tried and acquitted) I considered moving abroad to New York, a city I knew as a young woman. I looked at some homes on the internet, but I can’t now–it's too late to start over.

Omni: What books would you recommend to Amazon customers?

Magden: Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles–this is a pearl of a book–an all times favorite! My Sister, My Love: The Intimate Story of Skyler Rampike by Joyce Carol Oates, Waiting by Ha Jin, Last Evenings on Earth by Roberto Bolano, and Seduced by Madness by Carol Pogash. I am a true crime addict; rarely are they this well-written, or this enlightening–for the sociopaths are taking over. It’s an epidemic.

The author of Serena is back with this "murky and deliberate" novel that "solidifies Rash as master of modern Southern Gothic," as our reviewer Jon Foro puts it. Set in an Appalachian town during World War I, The Cove feels both timeless and timely, a story about patriotism run amok and fear of the outsider. It is also a bittersweet love story crossed with a mystery. Whose skull is that in the well? "Ron Rash washes this novel's languid spaces with bucketfuls of atmospheric dread, pushing his characters into the currents of their fate with determined empathy," Foro says.

Watch this space in the coming days for an exclusive interview with Rash, and other exclusive content–interviews, excerpts, and photos–from the authors of April's best books.

In the meantime, the rest of out Best Books of the Month are filled with unique characters, both real and fictional–a hospitalized mother and daughter (Afterwards), a civic leader with dark secrets, a man in pursuit of perfect health, as well as ex-presidents, ornithologists, and eccentric creators and artists (Magic Hours). But what really ties this list together is the compelling sense of place, from a dark and lonely Appalachian valley (The Cove) to New Orleans and then the Korean War (The Coldest Night) to Seattle during the 1962 World's Fair (Truth Like the Sun) to a miniaturized Promised Land in the bedroom of a magical little girl (The Land of Decoration).

Learn more about all of April's Best Books of the Month, including new paperback releases, top kids and teens picks, and Editors' picks in categories like Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction, and Romance.