We chat with author Linda Kass about World News from Waverley High, which is a tale of identity, activism, and finding your voice in a world on fire, and this coming-of-age novel set at an urban high school captures a singular moment in American history—through the eyes of one unforgettable girl.
You can also check out her playlist for the novel here.
Hi, Linda! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I began my career as a magazine writer; at the time when I was in my MA program in journalism, we were studying the “new journalism” of Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese. So, even then, we were looking at incorporating fictional devices into our reporting. I wrote for regional and national publications in those early years, but wore many hats through the years, spending a good deal of time in public service focused on education and the arts. I began studying the craft of fiction in 2008, mostly short form fiction, and began writing my first novel, Tasa’s Song, in 2011, which was published in 2016. A Ritchie Boy came out in 2020, Bessie in 2023. And I founded and operate an independent bookstore in the Central Ohio area, Gramercy Books, now in its tenth year. My life is filled with family and friends, my work as a bookseller and my writing, music, and long distance road cycling, the latter I’ve been doing for the past eighteen years, raising money for cancer research.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve loved reading books from a young age—The Velveteen Rabbit, Charlotte’s Web, The Diary of Anne Frank, and the entire Nancy Drew series are at the top of my early reading. I always loved writing—I used to write a lot of letters back when there was no internet—but my formal writing began in graduate school at Ohio State University where I earned my Masters degree in 1978.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Green Eggs and Ham, The Velveteen Rabbit
- The one that made you want to become an author: There wasn’t one book that triggered my desire to be an author. It was a desire to revisit history by telling a human story, inspired by and curious about real life people or situations.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Your latest novel, World News from Waverley High, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Engaging, music-filled, reflective, relevant, hopeful.
What can readers expect?
Readers will be immersed in a consequential era, the late Sixties, from the lens of high school students trying to make sense of what one reader called “that astounding, magnetic, musical, and tumultuous time that changed American history forever.”
Where did the inspiration for World News from Waverley High come from?
The inspiration came from a time and a place that I experienced: Ohio. 1969 to 1970. An urban high school like the one I attended. I thought about the stark contrast between being a teenager and navigating those hallways back then and all that was pressing in on us from the outside—the Vietnam War, racial tension, environmental destruction.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved populating my fictional high school and then letting the students interact with each other and the world around them. I enjoyed inhabiting this significant moment in history and experiencing, as they did, a world without an internet or social media, a world when the media landscape was simpler and less fragmented, when people relied on three television networks, daily newspapers and a handful of national magazines. There were many moments in the writing that I enjoyed—just reliving teenage years with a wiser and deeper perspective was lots of fun.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
This story flowed once I began writing. I always begin with some initial idea that piques my curiosity. I begin to turn it over and over in my head, working out ways to structure it, considering the point of view telling the story. My previous novels were inspired by a real person living during a historical period. This novel was inspired by a time and a place so the initial challenge was who would tell the story and would it be told in the present or by someone looking back. Once I determined my narrator in her first person voice talking from a present place, I was on my way.
What do you hope readers might take away from World News from Waverley High?
I hope readers gain perspective from my novel, and hope. The era I wrote about was filled with anti-Vietnam anger in America. Protests over that war, movements for racial justice, and shifting social norms all collided. By looking back on this moment in our history, I hope readers can see parallels, those earthquakes in our culture, and that we got through them. Certainly the culture and technology are different today, but the novel reflects how cycles of protest, reform, and renewal continue.
What’s next for you?
Several ideas are brewing, but nothing I’m ready to commit to and talk about yet!
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I’m a bookseller so I read A LOT! Just in the last two months, among the books I’ve read I’ve really enjoyed Whistler by Ann Patchett, Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout, I See You Called in Dead by John Kenney, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, and Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead. I just picked up the latest Chris Bojalian novel, The Amateur and I also want to read Emma Cline’s just released novel, Switzy. My nightstand has two stacks of TBRs but there’s not enough time. The recent Emily Wilson translation of Homer’s The Odyssey is on the top of one of those piles.
