Michelle Levander is director of the California Endowment Health Journalism fellowships, editor of ReportingonHealth.org, and co-editor of Boyle Heights Beat. Before moderating a panel in Fresno on the future of rural healthcare, she spent her time in the green room demonstrating the fist clench that accompanies her most frequently used expression (“Yes!”) and talking about John Coltrane, Gary Shteyngart, and her recipe for something called nail soup.
Q. What vegetable best describes you?
A. Eggplant. It’s quite a lovely purple-which happens to be my favorite color-and it’s an oddity but appealing in its own way.
Q. Where do you go to be alone?
A. A challenging question as the mother of twins. Fresno?
Q. Whose talent would you most like to have?
A. Writer Gary Shteyngart’s irreverence.
Q. What word or phrase do you use most often?
A. Yes! [Poses with clenched fist.]
Q. What music do you like to listen to?
A. Coltrane.
Q. What’s your specialty in the kitchen?
A. Nail soup, where you take a random series of ingredients and turn it into something appealing.
Q. What do you wake up to?
A. My cat.
Q. Where would we find you at 9:00 on a typical Friday night?
A. At my mother’s house with my family, celebrating Shabbat.
Q. How do you take your coffee?
A. With milk.
Q. What comforts you?
A. My kids.
*Photo by Esteban Cortez.