By Howard Lovy
Introduction
LK Gibson
Lois K. Gibson has written things all her life, from newspaper columns to sermons, but did not consider herself to be a real author until later in life, when she penned her first book at the age of seventy-five. That was sixteen years ago. Gibson is now ninety-one years old and is continuing her relatively newfound career as an author of mysteries. It’s not that she even set out, initially to become an author. It’s that the characters she invented began to take on lives of their own and she could not help but keep writing.
It all began when she was forced to take a break from her active life and battle cancer. “When I got lymphoma, the world changed. Everything changed,” Gibson says. “And that’s when these ideas came to me. At seventy-five, when I was recovering from lymphoma, my life changed and that’s when I became a writer. My first book was published when I was 85 and my second when I was 90.”
Chief Among Sinners was the book she wrote—in fact, almost wrote itself while she was recovering from lymphoma—a mystery published by Calumet Editions. She met Calumet Editions co-founder Ian Graham Leask at a writers’ workshop, where he agreed to take her on because, she said, she was the first author he met who did not claim she was writing the “great American novel.”
She recovered from cancer, but continued to write, including another book, Sinner’s Choice, and plenty of ideas for future projects. And, nothing against younger writers, but there’s nothing like an author with a deep well of life experience to draw upon. And, for Lois K. Gibson, the waters do indeed run deep. So, let’s get to know Lois a little better as she discusses her writing, her family, feminism, sex, religion, and other topics. Oh, and keep an eye out for a subtle, dry sense of humor. So, here is Lois K. Gibson.
The Interview
LOVY: On why she writes frankly about sex.
GIBSON: I don’t know where that came from. I really don’t. I’ve lead a very sheltered life. I was a virgin when I got married and I don’t know where all that came from. But there it is. Fiction should keep pace with changing activities regarding women, politics, drugs. teenagers; not necessarily reactive or proactive but “in the scene,” as they say in French. I suppose my characters could have been from Sunnybrook Farm, but they weren’t. They took me where they wanted to go.
LOVY: On new feminism
GIBSON: I’ve been a feminist all my life. My mother said I was a feminist in the womb. There are young women today who have no idea what we went through. I got hit in the head marching for freedom of choice in St. Paul. A guy hit me in the head with a placard. I said, “How many children have you had? I’ve had five. What are you hitting me for?”
I’ve tried to help young women understand who they are and what they can do. Now, with Harvey Weinstein and women calling out misogyny and sexual harassment in business and entertainment, let me put it this way. There is a heightened awareness. But it’s not going to last. Men are men and women are women and that has been the culture since the cave man.
In the Torah it says that God created man and woman equally. I think it was the intent of whoever was writing at that time that maybe we would balance it out and men and women would be equal. But it didn’t last. You can always hope, but it’s not a case of pessimism. It’s a case of reality, that these things tend to rise and fall. But, yet, I think it’s good that there’s a heightened awareness. Some women may try and keep it alive.
LOVY: On Judaism
GIBSON: I grew up in an anti-Semitic neighborhood in Albany, New York, where every day they called me “kike” or “Christ killer” as I walked to school. When I had my own children, we lived in a little town called Demaris, New Jersey, where they tried to bar us from building a house because we were Jewish. We conquered all their barriers, everything they threw in front of us, in order to have a house there. It turned out, there were only two other Jews in the town.
I was determined that my kids were not going to grow up ignorant, as I was. They were going to know something about Judaism. So, in order for them to learn, I had to learn. I studied with a rabbi in New Jersey. I was bat mitzvahed at age sixty-five. I thought it was time I learned how to read Hebrew. And Judaism has been a very important part of my life.
LOVY: On the rise of anti-Semitism in the Trump age
GIBSON: Oh, I’m scared shitless. Absolutely scared. I wrote on my Twitter and Facebook: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” These people don’t know what they’re doing. I think it’s a scary time. They don’t like people of color, they don’t like people who are different from you. I don’t care if his son-in-law is an Orthodox Jew. I don’t see anything Orthodox about him. And he’s had Jewish lawyers because he has to have Jewish lawyers. He didn’t have a Jewish doctor, unfortunately.
LOVY: On her health
GIBSON: Recovering from cancer was an act of will. It’s not a case of praying to God or whatever one prays to, it is a determination that you are not going to let all those people down. By people, I mean the cards, notes, flowers, calls of encouragement. All pulling for you. You can’t tell them, “Well, I just decided to give up.”
LOVY: On her family
GIBSON: I have raised five very exceptional children, including a successful lawyer, a rabbi, and a conductor who recently wrote a book published by Oxford University Press called The Beat Stops Here. My kids are an integral part of my life. This is part of who I am.
LOVY: On her careers and activities
GIBSON: I was president of an organization in New Jersey connected with a new synagogue. I was a piano teacher, a concert arranger, an advertising copywriter, a reporter for a small New York paper. I worked with Mondale and Humphrey in their presidential campaigns. I was president of five organizations in Minnesota. I’ve written more constitutions for more organizations than the Founding Fathers did.
LOVY: On writing
GIBSON: Characters take on lives of their own. You create them, and then they take over.
LOVY: On her plans for the future
GIBSON: I’m moving from my 2,400-square-foot apartment to a smaller place, with people I already know who also come from politics and the arts. That’s my big project now. When I do that, I’ll probably have a much more active social life. I don’t know what I’ll be doing, but I’ll be writing. I will be writing because at this point in my life I have to. When I was writing my first book, I couldn’t not. I couldn’t not write. I was compelled to write. If I don’t write, I get nervous.
HOWARD LOVY writes book reviews and conducts author interviews for Calumet Editions, LLC. Previously he was executive editor at Foreword Reviews and directed news coverage and analysis on Foreword’s website and Foreword’s Clarion book review service. Howard is a veteran journalist, spending the past 30 years working for newspapers, magazines, wire services, and websites as a reporter and editor.
