As the year begins to come to a close, the Thanksgiving holiday reminds me of how much light there is in my life. I live in a community that reads, celebrates books, and supports literary artists and libraries. Books are something I feel passionately about and I’m grateful to have made them my calling, my livelihood, in this chapter of my life. For her skills and talents as an editor, Jenna Goodman appears top of my gratitude list. The professionalism, support and enthusiasm Sharon Yntema, bookkeeper and blogger, brings to Swenson Book Development LLC is appreciated. I am tremendously grateful to Susan Tripp for the administrative and project support she gives to our clients and contacts. For two interns this year, Alanna Rieser and Samantha Kolb, I am fortunate. Chad Lieberman continues to provide excellent service in webhosting and website design/development for Swenson Book Development LLC and our clients. Bringing books into the world is tremendously satisfying and I owe everything to my extraordinary clients. Four new book releases this fall and three publishing contracts for clients in 2017. Several clients with tremendously promising projects to pitch this coming spring. And for all of you who have shared your writing and stories with me as work-in-progress, I am humbled by my luck in finding fascinating people doing honorable work with words. I am grateful to Linda J. Spielman, whose devotion to wildlife in upstate to New York I share. When she contacted me with an idea for a book—a book…

Diane Tober pulls back the clinical curtain on the multibillion-dollar global egg industry in her new book coming out in October. A medical anthropologist recently tenured at the University of Alabama, Tober has conducted the first study of egg donors and reveals the introduction of private equity into fertility medicine. The recent Alabama Supreme Court decision, which upended IVF procedures at the teaching hospital in Birmingham where Diane teaches, punted fertility medicine like a political football. And the rights of women who can afford the out-of-pocket medical expenses starting at $40K to harvest their own eggs and insert fertilized eggs into her own uterus, found quick defense in popular opinion. But what of egg donors who undergo the same medical procedure of hormonal stimulation and egg retrieval for intended parents whose fertility issues prevent them from conceiving a child without medical intervention? They too might get a pass from the public. But what of the women who sell their eggs? They might be called donors, but they receive financial compensation. What happens when women are reduced to the value of biomedical products? Tracing the journey of egg donors from recruitment, screening, medical procedures, and post-operative care, Tober lets these women speak about their role in supplying valuable commodities. Her fieldwork in the US and Spain explores the clinical spaces where egg donors’ bodies are tested, prodded, and poked for ever-increasing sums of profit. Technological innovations allowed the egg donation industry to grow with exponential profits attracting private equity investments in…

Our ideas about families have certainly undergone significant changes over the past couple decades, a shift that author, filmmaker, and anthropologist Diane Tober has been studying the past twenty years. Her new book Romancing the Sperm: Shifting Biopolitics and the Making of Modern Families chronicles the shifting landscape of modern families and Rutgers University Press will release it on November 5. “In Romancing the Sperm, Diane Tober explores the intersections between sperm donation and the broader social and political environment in which ‘modern families’ are created and regulated. Through intimate stories from her informants, this book provides a captivating read for anyone interested in family and kinship, genetics and eugenics, and how ever-expanding assisted reproductive technologies continue to redefine what it means to be human.” In light of her impending book launch, I am excited to share my interview with medical anthropologist Diane Tober. Audrey Arnold: You have a degree in anthropology and you research egg and sperm donation. What inspires your passion for this subject? Diane Tober: I first got into this research while I was a graduate student in Medical Anthropology at UCSF in the 1990s. I was working as a research assistant on Prof. Gay Becker’s study exploring “Gender Differences in Response to Infertility,” which focused solely on married, heterosexual couples. At the same time, single women and lesbian couples called up to volunteer for the study, but were rejected because they didn’t meet the study requirements. In the 1990s, “infertility” wasn’t considered to be an issue for unmarried…