A interview with Twelfth and Race author Eric Goodman posted on Cincinnati.com yesterday, and the setting of the book likely will sound familiar to most Cincinnatians.

Goodman takes  familiar “events that form the backdrop for the interracial love story at the heart of it – riots that erupt after the police shooting of a young African-American man in April 2001– and many of the names of people and places” to explore the complicated emotions about racism.

Lauren Bishop of Cincinnati.com spoke with Goodman about the novel's setting, which is a fictional city with elements of both Cincinnati and Kansas City called Calhoun City, Mo.

Goodman told Bishop that “somehow, taking it out of Cincinnati and moving it gave me a little more imaginative space to create a world that brought the issues I was trying to write about completely to the foreground.”

Read the full article here.

And if you are in Cincinnati tonight, Goodman will be at the Mercantile Library for a reading and signing at 6 p.m.