I wish someone had told me that the feeling of possibly helping one single person’s life in some meaningful way through storytelling is worth all the thousands of hours that go into telling a story. The knowledge and experience of that kind of connection makes all the hours magical, in a way.
As part of my series about “authors who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Hobbs.
Jeff Hobbs is the New York Times bestselling author of Seeking Shelter, Children of the State, and the Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace which won an LA Times Book Prize and was adapted into the 2024 film, Rob Peace. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?
Most of my childhood took place in a very quiet, rural area of southeastern Pennsylvania. My siblings and I spent most of our free time playing sports, but I remember that while we were at whatever practice or game, our mom was always reading. With four kids each in some sports season year-round, she just read a vast amount and during the car rides in between, we would have such wonderful conversations about what she was reading — histories, mysteries, serious literature, really all genres. So, while I was watching my older brother and sister play, I started to emulate my mom with reading and that was how I started to see storytelling as this all-encompassing, generous act that I wanted to pursue.
When you were younger, was there a book that you read that inspired you to take action or changed your life? Can you share a story about that?
There were a great many that changed my perspective in small, vital ways. Reading is such a cumulative way of life. One title that very much stands out from childhood is Winterkill by Craig Lesley. I was probably in seventh or eighth grade. What a stunning and lasting depiction of the absolute importance of home and the existential torment of a home taken, couched in the big stuff of fathers and sons. This work sparked in me the empathy required in journalism to find presence not only in another person’s narrative, but in all of the vast context surrounding the narrative, and to do the work to find that presence.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Really, I did not know much about what I was doing at all during my first forays into journalism. The errors were at turns hilarious and dangerous. Sometimes, they were both. My first nonfiction book was about a close friend of mine who lived an extraordinary life and unfortunately died too soon. There were two relatively minor characters in this story named “Carl.” They were very different people in very different passages of the book. One was a lawyer, and one was a sometimes-criminal. When lawyer-Carl actually read the book, he failed to notice the language differentiating the two individuals, so he believed that I was making up stories about him living this double-life as a drug dealer. Outraged and without reaching out to me first, he was compelled to write a scorching letter to the New York Times describing how I had defamed him and all that. I eventually sorted the matter out with him, but clearly I had not been careful enough with the language in the book, and what this mistake taught me had to do with the true gravity of telling another person’s story — that the ink on the paper does represent the authoritative account of real people living real lives, and I owe every one of those people acute attention to every detail and every word to ensure truth.
Can you describe how you aim to make a significant social impact with your book?
My most recent book, Seeking Shelter, is the story of a working mother in Los Angeles striving to keep her children in the school where they are thriving even though she can’t afford housing for them. Her intentions and her struggle reflect the disparities that course through America and increasingly undergird life for all in this country. But the book itself is about the small moments of life on the margins, and what it feels like to want so badly to see your kid’s school talent show but know that if you are not on the phone with social services at exactly 5:01 PM, you won’t have a place to sleep that night. What it feels like to be a teenager who just wants to fit in with friends but can’t afford to do basic social activities. What it feels like to spend a wonderful day at the beach as a family and then sleep in a car that night. The intended social impact is not necessarily to “solve” a generational housing crisis but rather to make this crisis less numbing. My belief is that if a reader comes to feel more for a struggling family, then that reader will seek to know more about the struggle, and once they know more, they can do more.
Can you share with us the most interesting story that you shared in your book?
One of the most interesting stories from the book is also one of the saddest, and the story involves basically the first night without shelter for a mother and her children in Los Angeles. The family is forced to leave their home after an incident of severe domestic violence, and because they are new to the city and scared, they have nowhere to go except to an emergency family shelter, which the mother, Evelyn, actually finds on her Yelp app; the shelters are rated with stars the way restaurants and stores are. But what she finds upon checking in is that her twelve-year-old son is not permitted to stay in the same facility with her younger daughters because of gender rules in place for safety. So, they leave and search the city for a family shelter in which the family will be permitted to stay together. They can’t find one.
What was the “aha moment” or series of events that made you decide to bring your message to the greater world? Can you share a story about that?
There was no single epiphany in terms of telling this story about disparity and homelessness for working families. This suffering is generational, pervasive, and leaders talk loudly about fixing it without actually doing the hard work to fix it. That’s the truth and it bears telling. But the “aha moment” of whose story to tell occurred when I first met Evelyn in the offices of a transitional family shelter where she and her kids were housed at the time. At this point she had been through years of housing instability, keeping her kids nurtured and in school through ingenuity and force of will. And during the hour or so that we first spoke, all she wanted to talk about was how wonderful her kids were. She told stories about their sports games, dance recitals, school projects, jokes, and kindness. She did not mention their homelessness once. She sounded like any parent who loves her kids so much. And there seemed to be something tender and profound in that normalcy.
Without sharing specific names, can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
An adjunct community college professor who has experienced homelessness with her daughter came to this transitional shelter as a result of a colleague reading Seeking Shelter and reaching out to her. That story was meaningful.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
Communities can understand that providing access to shelter housing and low-income housing for families in residential neighborhoods where they can work and go to school, as opposed to outlying neighborhoods with fewer opportunities, is absolutely essential to easing generational poverty. That involves some risk and discomfort for homeowners but the benefits are life-altering and actually, lifesaving. Society ultimately needs to stop conflating all poverty into a single vision of dangerous, drug-addled destitution, and to understand that parents who work very hard and love their children also are victims of widespread poverty. We need to stop judging people for being poor and start meeting them and providing service in the present tense. And politicians must begin focusing more on the granular, community specific policies of homelessness prevention for families facing homelessness right now over the grandiose, attention-grabbing but often empty promises of “solving” homelessness. Those are three ideas to start with that altogether could really ground the issue in the world we live in, rather than constantly passing it forward.
How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?
I’m a youth sports coach and so I’m constantly talking about leading with what we do and not what we say, staying grounded in the moment, and always supporting one another. Those messages, of course, as important as they are, can sound pat. Yet in the particular area of society in which I focus my work and tell stories, I believe they apply to leadership perhaps even more profoundly than they do on sports fields. As an example, I would put forward a social worker, whom I admire greatly, and who plays a prominent role in Seeking Shelter. Her name is Wendi and her job every day is to help shepherd the city’s most desperate families — who have suffered violence and all kinds of uncertainty — toward stable ground in both their housing situations and in their souls. She contends with all kinds of chaotic situations each day with a steady grace and a belief that all anyone needs to move forward is a plan. I can only wish that leaders with much more power over policy than Wendi has could be more like her, day to day.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why? Please share a story or example for each.
(1) I wish someone told me that first drafts of books are always pretty lousy, and that editing is an act of generosity, not of antagonism. I think I knew this innately, but I wish someone had said it out loud before I received red ink feedback on the first draft of my first book.
(2) I wish someone told me that politicians will almost always avoid thoughtful responses. Without naming names, I’ll just say that I worked very hard for my first interview with a household name elected official, and I came away from the interview with a few pages of canned adages.
(3) I wish someone told me that telling true stories can be stressful and takes an emotional toll, but is immensely powerful in connecting people with one another and the world we all share. Then I wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to write novels early on, including one that I published and still don’t recommend to anyone.
(4) As an educator who teaches journalism to very bright undergrads, I wish someone had told me that the very best teaching happens when the students are talking to one another. Then I wouldn’t have spent so much time thinking of what to say in class.
(5) I wish someone had told me that the feeling of possibly helping one single person’s life in some meaningful way through storytelling is worth all the thousands of hours that go into telling a story. The knowledge and experience of that kind of connection makes all the hours magical, in a way.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
An author I admire named Amanda Ridley, in her book called High Conflict, wrote that “Most people, when they appear to be listening, are actually just waiting for their turn to speak.” It’s admittedly more of an observation than a life lesson. But nonfiction authors often communicate with observations over advice. And this particular line helped me begin to reflect deeply on what listening means — truly listening, without becoming distracted with one’s own reactions and how those reactions will be perceived. This has not only strengthened the technical nature of my research conversations but actually my relationships with my kids and entire family. It’s helped me know everyone better and in a kinder, more generous way.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Well, you can tell from my above comment that this person would not necessarily be a politician. But someone whose stories, wisdom, and aspirations I would love just to sit and listen to for an hour is MacKenzie Scott. She seems like a deeply generous person, one who is genuinely interested in and devoted to the well-being of others, who continues to make a difference in millions of lives. And she happens to be a tremendous writer.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
jeffhobbsauthor.com is my website that is, most of the time, up to date. I’m on Instagram and Twitter as @jeffhobbswriter. I post there probably equally about the books I write and the sports teams I coach. Thank you so much for this. I’m very grateful.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Social Impact Authors: How & Why Author Jeff Hobbs Is Helping To Change Our World was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.