"New York Times" writer Nicholas Kristof and "Thirty Minutes Over Oregon"

In 1997, I saw this obituary in the New York Times:

In 2007, I began to write a picture book on Nobuo Fujita.

In 2014, after around 50 rejections, I sold the manuscript to Clarion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

In 2018, the book came out.

In 2019, I reached out to the man who wrote that obituary 22 years ago, Nicholas Kristof, by both tweet and email; he replied by both.

I sent him a copy of the book that he helped inspire.