Wednesday, August 26 – Spencer Wolff Reads His Debut Novel

We were super lucky to snag a reading by Spencer Wolff of his debut novel “The Fire in His Wake.” Mr. Wolff is a renowned writer, attorney and filmmaker, born and bred in New York, and currently living in Paris where he teaches, writes and lawyers. He came back to the States for the national book tour, but the Pandemic put the kibosh on that plan. Consequently, through one of our regulars, we were able to persuade him to read for us. Mr. Wolff also produced a documentary in 2014 called “Stop” about the “stop & frisk” policy in New York City in the 1990s and the court case that resulted. As it’s currently streaming on Amazon I watched it before our talk, and I was amazed by how current much of the content is as the Black Lives Matter protests are very strongly informing our current conversation. The first half hour of our Zoom was about this most informative documentary, his experience making it in the city, the artistry of it, and his thoughts about the people whom he interviewed. The film is great to watch, visually interesting, and with a really good jazzy soundtrack and it certainly led to an interesting conversation. Then we had the reading, a colorful, entertaining, and very human passage from the book about a young American man’s first interview with a Congolese refugee for the UN in Morocco. The story is based loosely on Spencer’s experience working at the UN refugee agency in Rabat doing similar work just prior to a protest by Congolese refugees at the agency which turned violent. The story focuses on the friendships and humanity of people who have little in common but find connection and then share adventures. Mr. Wolff took our questions, and we talked about his experience, the politics of the refugee crisis, and the art and challenge of writing a book. It was a free flowing, exciting conversation. After we talked about the book we talked about everything else, like living under quarantine in Paris, and in Lisbon where he spent some months, and in our parts of the country, and where testing is there and here and what we’re all feeling about what’s next. We are all experiencing the same things, and our cities and countries are handling these same things a bit differently. Which is the better way is hard to say. This is a Global Pandemic indeed.