David Regenspan
David Regenspan spent most of his adult life in Upstate New York, USA, and its landscape informs his stories. He is a retired rabbi with a now secular outlook, but Jewish people and themes tend to pop up in his fiction. He enjoys playing piano and serious music listening, being married to a brilliant scholar and poet, and being a father to two fine adults and well as a new grandfather.
David started writing poetry and stories at an early age, but did not become serious about it until he was in his thirties and forties. He learned a good deal about writing craft from the Bread Loaf and Colgate writers’ conferences. He has self-published a novel, has written an as yet unpublished novel, and has published short stories in Amarillo Bay, JewishFiction.net, The Jewish Literary Journal and Potato Soup Journal.
Q: If you could travel back in time, which of the great writers would you like to meet and why?
A: The Bronte sisters and George Eliot to experience their fascinating minds. Also Herman Melville, if only to tell him that Moby Dick would eventually become a great success.
Q: Do you have a favourite quote? (From a book, film, song, speech…)
A: From the Jewish sage Hillel from ‘Sayings of the Fathers’: ‘If am not for me who will be for me? But being for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?’
Q: Is there a book that you keep going back to, and if so, how many times have you read it?
A: The Torah (Five Books of Moses) because I follow its cycle of readings each year. I have no idea how many times I have read it.
Q: What superpower would you like to have and why?
A: The ability to be absolutely calm.
