I realized I just needed to focus on that for a while, and I’m really glad I made that decision. So I think that going to get an MFA was a way for me to just take two years to really focus on trying to write a piece of long fiction, which was kind of an enormous undertaking for me. Then at a certain point I realized that I really wanted to write this novel. LH: Well, I always wrote fiction, and for pretty much the entire time when I was an “academic,” I wrote short stories and poems. What made you want to transition into writing and getting an MFA? WRBH: You started mainly looking at academic issues. LH: Yeah! So far it’s really felt like people do appreciate what I was trying to do with the book. WRBH: That’s good! You know it’s out of your control all the time so all you can hope for is comfort in the reactions. People have seemed to respond to it in a way that I’m comfortable with, I’ll say. I mean, it’s actually been very good so far.
So even just reading reviews of it is pretty interesting. Ladee Hubbard: Yeah, I think all reactions are interesting to me because it’s such a solitary undertaking to write it. WRBH’s David Benedetto: Being your debut novel, is it interesting for you to kind of gauge people’s reactions to the book in person? This interview has been shortened and edited for clarity. WRBH’s David Benedetto sat down last November with Tulane professor and 2016 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award-winning author Ladee Hubbard to talk about her new novel, The Talented Ribkins, in which an African-American family from Florida reckons with their superhero-esque talents and their history.
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