For a comedy writer, Bess Kalb has an unlikely muse: her grandmother Bobby, who died in 2017. She was born on a dining room table in Brooklyn because Bess’s great-grandmother didn’t want to ruin the bed linens. She was also Bess’s font of wisdom, her purveyor of dire warnings, a master manipulator and her guide to living.

In Nobody Will Tell You This but Me: A True (as Told to Me) Story, Bess brings this acerbic, no-nonsense woman to life by serving as her literary ventriloquist, weaving together a long stream of voicemails, snippets of conversation and decades of a granddaughter-grandmother love story. The result is the compelling tale of four generations of Jewish women who made the leap from Belarus to Los Angeles.

Bess joins us to recount that simultaneously moving and hilarious story — one-part immigrant tale, another part the shtick so many of us were raised with — about the power of irrepressible women and unequivocal love of the toughest kind.

An Emmy-nominated writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live, Bess Kalb has also written for the Oscars, the Emmys and The New Yorker.

In conversation with Jordana Horn, co-host of Call Your Mother podcast on Kveller.com.