Jenna Blum

“I have to read once a day, or I become cranky.”

“Procrastination: as endemic to and dreaded by writers as writers' block.”

“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 firs...”

“I was a hostess, a waitress, a cafe manager, and a prep chef. For one job, I had to wear a hat shaped like a head of garlic.”

“Unlike writing a book, which can take several years, baking is instant gratification.”

“When I was reading 'The Underground Railroad,' I had to actually hold my hand over the right-hand page so I wouldn't see, by mistake, what was coming up next - it was so suspenseful. it's re...”

“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...”

“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' fir...”

“As a white, female, half-Jewish writer, when I read 'The Underground Railroad,' it reminded me that America isn't just the sort of Sesame Street that I grew up with that tolerated and embrac...”

“'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 h...”

“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 experien...”