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Erik Michielsen: What makes your work meaningful?
Yoav Gonen: When it's helping somebody. Sometimes I feel like I should be doing something a
little bit more altruistic than writing stories, but I do often get a chance to help people,
to change things, to inform people, to shine a light on things that should be changed,
so I would say those occasions when I get to make a difference.
Erik Michielsen: Could you give me an example?
Yoav Gonen: I got to write a story about marine who's stationed in Iraq who couldn't come
home for the holidays and it was coincidentally his little sister's birthday who idolized
him, and what he did was he actually commissioned an ice sculpture of himself and sent it to
his family on Staten Island and it was kind of like his substitute but, you know, it was
kind of a gift, kind of a substitute for his not being able to come home for the holidays
and also for his sister's birthday. And I felt really good about that story, A, because
a lot of people kind of, you know, we're touched by it emotionally, but it was a very small
gesture of thanks to the military people who are fighting in wars for us. I feel like we
do very little to sacrifice for them, so it was, it felt good to show, you know, a small
piece of appreciation for what they're doing.