Questions for Katherine Ayres and Christopher Bakken: January 21, 2014

For Kathy Ayres on Bear Season:

1) How does the research process work for you? Do you have a particular aspect of the bear’s habits or life that you are interested in and work from there? Or do you learn about the bear’s habits through research and move outward to further understand its real life actions based on new knowledge? How do you get "to know" the bear? How do you so seamlessly connect your research with your narrative?

2) You create quite clearly the contrast between your “busy” Pittsburgh, academia-filled, bustling life with the quieter, more reflective, perhaps, life that you have created at your home in Massachusetts. When you leave Massachusetts and return to Pittsburgh, how does that affect your understanding or ruminations on the bear? Did your Pittsburgh mentality help to illuminate aspects about the bear or did it in some ways staunch reflection on the life of the bear? How did place, in essence, affect your creative work and mind while writing this piece of work?

For Christopher Bakken on Honey, Olives, Octopus:

 1) How did you decide on the structure of the book—the eight staples of the Greek table? Did that develop out of your experiences or did you decide to actively pursue, from the outset, these eight foods and the processes, histories and stories that surround them?

2) I am wondering about the relationship between the native Greek people in the book and the writing of the book itself. Did they know you were writing about them specifically for this piece of work? If yes, what were their reactions? They seem, in general, like very generous, sharing people, but I am wondering about the relationship between “subject” and the art, the writing. Did knowing you were going to be writing about them, if you did know that, affect how you interacted with them or how you presented yourself to them? If they knew you would be writing about them, do you think it affected how the responded to you?