Beth Kander’s recipe for a national bestseller includes a monster from Jewish folklore and a dash of spice.

Her debut novel “I Made It out of Clay” hit the USA Today Booklist, which tracks the Top 150 books in America, just in time for an early Hanukkah celebration.

Kander is a graduate of Mississippi University for Women’s low residency Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing and has several award-winning plays under her belt, as well as books for children and young adults.

“I Made It out of Clay” is a charming romantic dramedy taking on multiple life milestones in one fell swoop: turning 40, losing a parent and facing downsizing at work, all while a younger sibling is getting married before main character Eve. To deal with the onslaught of bad news, Eve fashions a golem from Jewish mythology that comes to life and bears an uncanny resemblance to Hollywood heartthrob Paul Rudd. It’s just who she needs for a wedding date, or is it?

“I wanted it to be fun and funny and just something you can enjoy reading,” Kander told The Dispatch in an interview. “Dropping a monster into the midst of it also just makes some of those hard things a little easier to talk about.”

Kander maintains a strong network in Mississippi after more than 10 years in nonprofits, theater and marketing – not to mention marrying a Gulf Coast native. Kander recently returned to The W as an adjunct faculty member and appeared at the Possumtown Book Fest in Columbus this summer.

“My connections to Mississippi have only continued to increase after leaving it,” Kander said. “I think that’s one of the most unique things about Mississippi as a state – when she claims you, you are claimed for life.”

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

How did this idea come to you?

I was working on a different book project two plus years ago, and a friend texted me to say, “Hey, there’s this competition for the best idea for a Hanukkah Hallmark film.” I was like, “Well, I don’t know that I have a go-to idea for that, but maybe I could come up with something. When’s the deadline?” It was the next day.

I just let my mind go wherever it was going to go and came up with this “Broad City” meets “Shaun of the Dead” pitch that was not very traditional Hallmark, but was a new spin on a Hanukkah movie. It turned out that my pitch won this movie pitch competition.

I totally put aside the other project that I’d already been procrastinating on and just dove in in late 2022 to writing the story.

The W has a great low residency MFA program and you were one of the first people in it. Can you talk about your experience?

I feel so lucky that I got to get in early in this program, and it was because I already had plenty of Mississippi roots. I had been living in Jackson for more than a decade, and I had just recently moved up to Chicago when my husband got a job up here. Peppy Biddy, who was a theater professor at The W, reached out to me when they were starting to put together this program, and was like, “Hey, I know you’re not in Jackson anymore, but this is going to be a low residency program, and I think it should be on your radar.”

I wound up applying to the MFA program because it was low residency. It made sense for my life. I kept my day job. I had a baby during the program, so I brought my thesis project and my child into the world in the same year.

What brought you to Mississippi in the first place?

I often joke that my family is largely southern or Jewish, and I was the first person that bridged that gap and became southern and Jewish. When I was finishing up undergrad, I was looking at all sorts of different job opportunities mostly in the arts and culture space, and I applied [to] the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, now the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life. It was a new two-year education fellowship. I was running Hanukkah programs and doing interfaith conversations at schools and spent two years on the road traveling through Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

You also write plays – would you say primarily plays, or do you consider it 50-50?

Prior to the pandemic, I was majority a playwright and dabbling in fiction. Then all the theaters closed for two years, and I had a whole slew of canceled productions, right when I was finally hitting a good stride as a playwright. I shifted much more to books, and I would say I am now 80-90% books and dabbling in playwriting.

How do you decide if a story is a book or a play, and do you think there is crossover?

For me, the number one way that I determine whether a story wants to be on the stage or wants to be on the page is how much involvement do I want with other artists versus how much of a direct line to the reader do I want.

If I’m writing a play, I am inviting in all sorts of designers, directors, actors – all these other creatives who are going to leave their fingerprint and make it a little different each time it’s brought to life and deliver a different experience to the audience. … But for some stories, I want that more direct line to the reader.

So that’s really it for me: Is this a sort of story that I want to work on with other people and then entrust with other artists to shape and change in important ways every time it goes up? Or is this something where I’m really trying to convey something in a way that I need it to be in my voice shared in this way?

Emily Liner is the owner of Friendly City Books, an independent bookstore and press in Columbus.

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