Amy Blumenfeld, Author of THE CAST

Totally Booked with Zibby

Zibby Owens

Connection, Inspiration, Moms, Entertainment, Arts, Reading, Books, Parenting, Literary

4.4 • 602 Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2018

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amy Blumenfeld talks about surviving childhood cancer and turning her experience into a novel, THE CAST, to help others. While this beautiful story is mostly about issues facing women and men in the 40s, the childhood cancer element frames the story and adds a poignant twist to an otherwise smart beach read. Our talk was personal, meaningful, and definitely worth listening to.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books, the podcast that features conversations with writers of all types.
0:17.5	Today's episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books has been sponsored by the craft studio. With locations in New York City on the Upper East Side and in Tribeca, the craft studio is a perfect place to bring your kids for some crafting fun. Craft Studio, NYC.com. I'm very excited to be talking to Amy Blumenfeld today. Amy is a first-time novelist, the author of The Cast, and she's written for The New York Times, HuffPost, O, the Oprah Magazine, Prevention, and People.
0:41.8	She has contributed to two nonfiction books and has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News, and other media outlets.
0:47.3	Graduate of Barnard and Columbia University School of Journalism, Queens-born Amy now lives on Long Island with her husband and daughter. The cast was the
0:55.3	gold winner of the 2018 Ippy Awards, which is independent publisher book awards in popular fiction.
1:02.1	So I'm thrilled to welcome Amy. So welcome Amy. Thanks so much for being on. Momsone have time to read books.
1:08.4	Thank you for having me. Amy and I were just chatting about how frazzled I was, but anyway, now we're all calm and ready to go. All good. Sometimes happens. Okay, so you're the author of the cast, which was beautiful and amazing. I really, really enjoyed reading it. I brought it on my trip to Greece, which was like on my
1:27.7	wish list forever. So to have this book, like in all my pictures with me, it was like, no,
1:31.7	I feel like it was like a guest on my trip, which is one of my fondest memories. So tell listeners,
1:37.9	if you don't mind, what the cast is about and how you came up with the idea for your book.
1:42.7	The cast is about a group of childhood friends
1:45.1	who rally around one of their friends.
1:47.5	They were in ninth grade when she gets sick.
1:50.0	She has cancer.
1:51.4	And they realize that they're not doctors.
1:54.1	They cannot heal her with medicine,
1:55.8	but they can certainly make her laugh.
1:57.9	So they create this Saturday Night Live- style videotape called Becca Night Live,
2:02.9	and it's 90 minutes full of skits and line dances and Ola Moore and silliness, and they just,
2:09.5	they bring it to her in the hospital and they keep her laughing. And then 25 years later,
2:14.3	she recovers, she's fine. Twenty-five years later, they reunite over the course of a July 4th weekend at a house in the
2:20.2	Berkshires and, you know, nothing goes according to plan.
	...

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