1–What is the title of your latest release? EDGE OF THE KNOWN WORLD 2–What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book? Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests – like 23And me, or Ancestry.com – make it impossible to hide a secret identity. 3–How did you decide where your book was going to take place? The story was always international in scope. I was an economic geography major in college, which gave me a lifelong fascination with the great upheavals and migrations in history, and the impact of those global forces on private lives. The novel puts a very appealing human face on a diaspora and Cold War in a realistic near future. While the story is grounded where I grew up, in San Francisco, it was huge fun to draw on my travels and misadventures in Asia, the (then) Soviet Union, and Russia, as basis for Alex’s journey. 4–Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life? Absolutely! We’d laugh all night, cry a little, and definitely get in some trouble. Alex Tashen (23) is a comic and prankster; also empathetic,…