Trivia / There's Magic in Bread

• Write What You Know: In an interview with Fantasy Magazine, author Effie Sieberg describes how her own experiences with the Covid-19 pandemic and family history informed the plot of the story.
  "My whole family had to deal with the Holocaust in different ways. Most were able to flee from Eastern Europe. But my grandmother was only eight when she went into hiding with a Christian family in Poland, and the rest of her family was murdered by the Nazis. For as long as I can remember, my family has had the attitude of, “if she can survive that, you can survive this smaller thing that’s happening to you now.” So when I was feeling a lot of despair about the pandemic situation, especially as a person whose disability will very likely be made permanently worse (with very poor quality of life) if I get COVID and especially feeling scared when hospitals were talking about rationing care for disabled folks, I would always remember my grandmother’s story. I was in good shape in comparison—nobody was actively hunting me down to try to give me COVID, and I had the privilege of being able to stay home. I could figure out how to do this. So eventually, in my head, the two events became very intertwined. This story is loosely about my grandmother, who gave me great perspective (by phone, from Israel, just like in the story) early in the pandemic, and who had a family pharmacy (not a bakery) in Poland back in the day."

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