I've been a journalist covering news for organizations such as The Associated Press, New York Times and Washington Post for 20 years, though I started writing short fiction long before. My family—like many Jewish families—was deeply affected by the Holocaust, with my mother being forced to leave the place she was born, Antwerp, Belgium, when she was only 6 weeks old. The rest of the family, which lived all over the continent, were scattered. Some ended up in Cuba, some in what was then British-mandated Palestine and some—like my mom—in the United States. Some of my family died in the concentration camps along with nearly six million others. It might have been the coincidence of my mother's death from cancer and my interview with a remarkable Holocaust survivor, Martin Spett, that led me to finally sit down and write a story that took the 42 years of my life so far to develop. As for the rest of my life? I live in New York City where I was born. I have a lovely wife and son, and I kvell when I tell people he goes to Bronx Science.