Sarah Crossan, HERE IS THE BEEHIVE

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Sarah. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Sarah Crossan: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Zibby: Here Is the Beehive is so good. I love how you did it in a poetic style. It's almost like one big long poem. I want you to tell listeners what it's about. Then tell me about your decision to make it styled in this way, please.

Sarah: It opens with Ana Kelly who's a solicitor, an estate lawyer, getting a call from a woman to say that her husband has died and that she took care of the last will and testament. Ana realizes very quickly in this conversation that the woman is referring to her lover and a man that she had been having an affair with. This is how the book opens. We learn straight away that her lover is dead. It's how she deals with this grief. The book takes place in -- it's sort of a parallel text. You have the past where you see how she met Connor and how that relationship blossomed. Then you also have the present tense. We see how she copes with the loss of this person who she cannot tell anybody about. She has to grieve alone because of the secret nature of that relationship. She has things about her life that come out through the book. I think the reader is, on occasion, surprised by things that we find out about her life. Writing in verse, it wasn't a decision at all. It just happened that way. I've written lots of YA novels, children's novels in verse. I started to do that when I read the wonderful Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse which won the Newbery Medal in the eighties. I was teaching that to a sixth-grade class in New Jersey. I thought, my goodness, what is this way of writing? It's amazing. I started to write that way at that time. I haven't been able to let it go. I have written some prose novels. This is my first adult novel. I felt it had to be written in verse, really.

Zibby: There you go. I loved, actually, in the first few pages, trying to figure out who everybody was. I read a couple passages again. I was like, no way, is this really what's happening? I couldn't believe it, the way you had it set up and just sitting there, this lawyer with the run in her stockings getting this horrific news and then the devastation that followed. It's the combination of horrible secrets with affair and love. You got all the ingredients. I was reading it this morning as my kids were crazy. I grabbed a little scratch paper and wrote this by hand, a quote from your book. You wrote, "We plan for death, make sensible decisions while gorging on life, but no one intends to die." I loved that quote. Tell me about that thought behind that and all of it.

Sarah: I think that we always believe we're promised a tomorrow. I don't know that we are. This book was written before COVID, but I think COVID has made that perfectly clear to all of us. What house have you chosen to live in or apartment have you chosen to live in? Who have you chosen to live in that space with you? Those things become glaring and have become glaring in the last six months. I just wanted to imagine a world where something was taken away suddenly and then the collapse, the aftermath of that. For me, it is absolutely a book about grief and who is eligible to grieve. I think that a lot of people come to the book really disliking this character because the setup is sort of exposing for them. A lot of readers have reacted quite violently and said, well, she was having an affair. Who cares how she feels? I think that's a really interesting reaction. Women particularly have had very, very strong reactions to the book; young women, perhaps stronger reactions than older women who have scars and know that life is complicated. That's been really interesting for me, that it has polarized people. I have people saying they love the book and then people hating the book. [laughs] It's been a good one for book groups. I've chatted to a few book groups. In the nicest possible way, people say they don't particularly enjoy the character. As I say, I think that's because it's kind of exposing for the reader. It's not really about the character. I think it's about the reader and what the reader is bringing to that story.

Zibby: Your book already came out in the UK. Is that where you had the book groups?

Sarah: Yeah. The UK and Ireland have had some book groups. It came out on August 20th over here.

Zibby: It's like ESP. You get a little glimpse forward of what's going to happen over here, a little test marketing run. Not really a test market. It's an enormous market. Where did writing from grief come from? Have you gone through something yourself? Is this something that you just wanted to tackle? Tell me where the feelings of this came from.

Sarah: I've experienced grief, not in the same way that the character, Ana, has experienced grief. I wanted to also write about secrecy in grief. I think there are a lot of things that for a lot of people, they grieve silently, whether that's that they have -- doing the research and speaking to lots and lots of women, I didn't just speak to women who had affairs. I spoke to women who were going through grief. Then I just tried to talk to women generally about, what is a secret that you keep? In terms of the relationships that women have had in their lives, the secret the women have kept, having an affair with a coworker, a relationship with someone of the same sex, someone of a different religion, a family member, a teacher or a professor, a huge number of women that I spoke to were in secret relationships. Then also just other types of secret grief, so speaking to a woman who had a child who was not neurotypical and how that felt for her on a day-to-day basis. She didn't really want to talk about it because she felt so bad about that. She felt so bad that she was even upset in the first place that she had a child who was a challenge to her. That's what I meant at the beginning, is legitimacy of grief. Who is entitled to grieve? For what are we entitled to grieve?

I was listening to Brené Brown speak on her podcast recently about COVID and how we say to ourselves on a daily basis, well, I shouldn't get too upset because I have a house. I have food on the table. My home is warm. She said there's no hierarchy here. We're all allowed to have our feelings. Just because a person might be going -- externally, it appears to be something that's much more difficult. Doesn't mean you don't have your cross. We're all bearing something. When we have empathy for ourselves, we're much better at having empathy with other people. When people do say they don't like the character of Ana, I think, I wonder how hard you are on yourself, the fact that you can't empathize with this character who is grieving in this book. Are you particularly hard on yourself? From the friends that I know who read the book, it does seem that those who dislike the characters have things about themselves as well that they're not coping with too well. That was a challenge for me to like this character. As a writer, it was a real stretch. Can I give her nothing that makes her sympathetic and yet can I as a writer, by the end, be devastated for her and feel for her and cry for her and want her to be okay? That was work. That was me having to do a lot of emotional work myself to get there, to feel for this person who if you told me her story, I wouldn't like her either.

Zibby: Wow. There is that universal human compassion. Whenever anybody has someone ripped away from them, you also immediately kind of put yourself in their shoes and think about the things that have been ripped from you and then have that compassion. I think it's hard to limit it based on circumstance.

Sarah: I think that says a lot about you, actually. I don't think that's a general feeling. That hasn’t been the general reaction. I think that says a lot about the person who is listening, not necessarily about the story that's being told or a general compassion that we have. I think it says something quite nice about you. [laughs]

Zibby: Thank you. It's just in the same way that no matter how terrible a person is, I don't want anything bad to happen to them. There's all this stuff in the news now. Everybody's hoping for terrible things to happen to people who can be terrible. I don't think anything justifies -- I don't know.

Sarah: I know. I think it's Scott Turow, the writer, who said you judge a society not on the way that we treat people who are loved, but on the way we treat people who are hated. How do we treat the people who are most hated? That shows a lot about who we are. I think you're right. There's a lot of sending ill wishes towards particular people at the moment hoping for their downfall.

Zibby: I think you also, in your book, captured some of the immediate aftermath, that shock value of grief and how Ana stops eating and lets her hair go. Everybody notices, but no one can pinpoint it. The fact that she can't reveal it, it just makes it all the worse. Those first days or weeks when you're integrated that information with everyday life are so challenging. I feel like you got to the heart of that particular time.

Sarah: Thank you. It was watching, observing, having gone through things myself, but also -- spoiler. It's a spoiler. I don't know what page it comes out on, but she's a mother as well. She finds that difficult. That's something that readers have judged her for as well. She's just this terrible mother. Have we all not had moments where we have not been our best selves? I can think of many. I'll write you a list. It will be pages and pages where I know I could've done better. That's the one thing that's leveled at Ana which bothers me. I think if the protagonist had been a male, that wouldn't be leveled at him, that he's a terrible father, he's disconnected from his children. Of course she's disconnected from her children. She's disconnected from herself. She's disconnected from her whole life.

Zibby: Having kids makes everything more complicated. I was on Instagram debating if I should admit how not proud of my mom behavior I was the other day. I was like, nope, I think I'm going to delete this. Nobody needs to know. They can imagine. Everyone's been there. Still, I don't necessarily need to put it on display. Everybody slips, not in a lifelong-damage way, but it's a lot having kids. When you throw on extra emotion over it, it's a lot. Then they take on your emotion too. Kids are like sponges. You can't hide it, necessarily.

Sarah: They're a reflection, aren't they?

Zibby: How old is your daughter? Do you have other kids? It's just your daughter?

Sarah: I just have one, yeah. She's eight. She's back at school now after six months. She's not happy. I thought she would be delighted to go back, but she's not enjoying it massively. I think she feeds off my anxiety. I feed off hers. I need to be better at hiding my feelings. [laughs] I don't know that a psychologist would say that was a good thing. I suppose because she's been at home so much, I end up revealing things to her or she ends up overhearing conversations that I'm having. There was an illness in my family. I was trying to deal with that. There was nowhere for me to go. I'm on the phone. I have to take the phone call. I keep talking about the pandemic. During the pandemic, I think parenting has been particularly difficult. We spend so much time protecting our children from things, and then they're face to face with it. There's nowhere to hide.

Zibby: It's true. My mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law both had COVID and both passed away during this summer within six weeks. My husband, Kyle, and I, were in charge of her care. It has to be remote. She was in Charlotte, North Carolina. Anyway, I have four kids myself. As all the calls were coming in, and the nurses, I tried to be like, everything's good, let's go on the trampoline. It seeps in. Then it comes out of them in other places too. Then all of a sudden, they're having separation anxiety, which they haven't had in years. Even if you put on a happy face and don't talk about it, they feel it. It's one of these things that nobody really warns you about. You can't actually hide your feelings. You have to change your feelings if you don't want your kids to feel them.

Sarah: I completely agree. I was speaking to a psychiatrist not that long ago who was saying one of the worst things for children is a house where there's silence because they know there's some kind of danger, silence in terms of tension, silence in terms of a house where people are not getting on very well, but they're not shouting at each other. A child senses it. They know. They feel that energy. They attach that danger elsewhere. I notice something's not quite right, but everything looks right, so you know what? I'm going to suddenly be scared of buttons. I'm going to suddenly be scared of ice cream or whatever, not likely.

Zibby: It's just like a dog approaches a situation. You don't hear anything, necessarily. They pick up everything. They just freeze, and they're looking around.

Sarah: With my dog, it's howling in the middle of the night. [laughs] Be quiet, Hilda. Be quiet.

Zibby: So tell me more about the process of writing. What's your writing process? Do you work there at a shared space? How long does each of your books take? What made you switch to adult fiction versus younger children's fiction?

Sarah: I used to work in a cowriting space in the Writers Room in New York City, actually, when I lived in Jersey City. I used to go in every day. Then my daughter was born, and I stopped doing that and then eventually relocated to the UK. Then I had a writing space built at the end of my garden. Actually, that stopped working. That kind of isolation in my own studio didn't really benefit me creatively, I don't think. I was a schoolteacher for ten years. I need people. I need relationships. I need noise. I, half the time, ended up going out to a library or to a coffee shop anyway. I'm now relocated again. I'm still in the UK, but I've moved two hours away from where I previously lived. I found this amazing coworking space where I'm allowed to bring my dog. They have little rooms for Zooms. They have desks that you can book out and tea and coffee. It's lovely. I'm trying to not come as much because I'm trying to stay as distant from people as possible, but it's great. There's hand sanitizer everywhere. You have to spray all your desk down. People stay away from one another.

Just the noise, it's quite nice to have this noise in the background of other people living and working. There's all different types of people working here, which is quite nice as well. You might chat to an architect one day and a web designer another day. That's quite interesting because writers tend to talk to writers, and that it. We forget all these other amazing jobs that exist. That's how I'm working at the moment. In terms of writing for adults, it was not a conscious decision at all. It was just that I had this idea, this hook that I imagined. What would it be like if a woman was to lose somebody and she couldn't tell the world about it? Then I had a conversation with some friends when we were out in the pub one night and asked, "Have you ever been in a relationship with a secret?" Slowly but surely, every single person around the table revealed a secret. I thought, gosh, this is a really universal experience. I wanted to write about it. I couldn't write about it within children's fiction. I couldn't find a way into that story.

Zibby: Oh, yeah, that's probably better.

Sarah: I gave it a go.

Zibby: Did you? [laughs]

Sarah: I thought, could I write about a parent having a relationship and it being secret and what that does to the family? I decided to write an adult novel instead. I was interviewed by someone who said, "your apprenticeship in children's fiction." I was horrified because I absolutely don't see writing for adults as a step up in any way. In fact, to some extent, writing for adults has been a little easier because I don't have to watch every single word. I do in terms of making the language as good as it can be, but the swearing and being careful not to say something that may be interpreted by a child in a particularly way that is damaging or just not of my politics. With an adult reader, you can say what you want and let them do the hard work of dismantling it. I need to make my children's books palatable to teenagers. I don't have to do that for adults. I don't care about it being palatable. I just want it to be as real as possible. In a way, it was kind of freeing. Easier is not the right word, but definitely freeing and less painstaking in some ways, especially when it came to the edit. The edit was so joyous compared to editing a children's book.

Zibby: How long did the book take to write, the first draft?

Sarah: About three years. Probably, three years in total. I think it was kind of clean when it got to the publisher, which is always quite nice to not have a huge edit to do with your publisher. I will, probably, for the next book. For this one, it was kind of clean. That was nice.

Zibby: Tell me about your next book.

Sarah: I haven't started writing it yet. I'm actually meeting my editor in a couple of weeks so we can talk through some ideas. I had written some stuff and sent it to her. She said, "Do you really want to write this? It just doesn't seem to have the energy." I was like, "No, not really, but I'm on deadlines. That's what you're getting." [laughs] She said, "Hey, why don't we just wait and see what comes to you rather than forcing you to write something that you don't want to write?" In the meantime, I've written a YA, a young adult novel in verse again. That's going to come out in August, but I haven't edited that yet. I'm doing that at the moment.

Zibby: Excellent. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Sarah: Yeah, I guess. If you wanted to be a connoisseur of wine, you drink loads of wine. [laughs] That's what I would do. If you wanted to play tennis, you'd just pick up a tennis racket and you'd start banging a ball about. I think a lot of people have an idea of what it is to be a writer which is a fantasy and a romantic idea. Being a writer, there's a lot of drudgery involved in it. To write, you just got to sit down and get writing rather than have a fantasy about it. Also, it's so easy to think of publication as the holy grail. With publication, come other problems. Where I am on the best-seller lists? Have I won a prize? What are my reviews like? That idea that you will suddenly feel like a real writer once you get published, that's not true because there are always new mountains to climb and hurdles every day. I'm giving a lot of advice now, but another thing I tell people is it's not going to make you happy. I think a lot of people think that once they get an agent or once they get a publisher, it's going to make them happy, but your other life goes on. All the other stuff continues.

I won a big prize in the UK, a children's prize called the Carnegie Medal. I got a call from my publicist to say, "Are you sitting down?" I thought someone had died. I was like, "Yeah." She was like, "You've won the Carnegie Medal." I said, "Oh, my goodness." I'm screaming. I was like, "I'm so happy." Then I put the phone down. My daughter was basically saying I needed to wipe her bottom. [laughs] She was like, "I need you wipe my --" I was like, okay, there we go, back into reality, back into life. I was given four seconds to enjoy this moment. Then, right, you're a mom. Back to your real life. So it's not going to make you happy. It might add to it. It might take away from it. It's certainly not going to give you everything that you think you want in life. For me, it took winning the Carnegie to realize that my relationships had to be the thing that fed me and nourished me, which they do now.

Zibby: Although, I would say that phase of parenting is not always the most nourishing when you're in it. I wouldn't beat yourself up about that too much. [laughs] Sometimes you just have to get through certain things. That's great perspective to have. Thank you. Thank you for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I have a virtual book club called Zibby's Virtual Book Club. We have authors come on. We all read the book. Then there's Q&A with the author. If you have any interest, I think this would be a great book for my club. If you want to do it, I could work with your publicist and try to find a time.

Sarah: Yeah, I would love to. One thing, if the readers were reading it, my mom suggested that readers were one of three people. She suggested that the reader was either a person who had had an affair; a person who had had an affair done to them, they were the victim of it; or they were a person who was terrified it was going to happen to them. When I've spoken to book groups before, it's like, which of those people are you before you go into it? Know who you are when you're going in. It will tell you a lot about why you feel what you feel when you come out of it. I would love to. I would really love to.

Zibby: Your book is like a Rorschach test. I am divorced and remarried. This is years ago. When I would tell friends and sit down with them, I'm getting a divorce or whatever, their reaction had nothing to do with me. It just said everything about their own marriage. It was basically like, if you want to find about your friends' marriages, tell them you're getting a divorce. See how they react. Then be like, I'm kidding. [laughter] That's the way to get at the heart of -- I don't actually recommend that. I'm just joking. Sometimes when you put up a sort of mirror is when everything else comes pouring out in the same way as your book does.

Sarah: I had a friend who, when she told another friend that she was getting divorced, her friend said, "Who's going to do things like change the lightbulbs in your house?" She thought, that is literally the only use you can see for your husband. [laughs] He changes lightbulbs. That is it. That's the extent of what he adds to the marriage.

Zibby: Husband handyman. [laughs]

Sarah: It was so nice to speak to you. It's been really, really nice.

Zibby: You too. Have a great day. Thanks so much.

Sarah: You too, Zibby. Bye.

Clarissa Ward, ON ALL FRONTS

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Clarissa. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Clarissa Ward: Thank you so much for having me on.

Zibby: How great, we just made all these personal connections that we should've known each other ahead of time. We didn't, but anyway, here we are.

Clarissa: Now we're meeting.

Zibby: Now here we go. On All Fronts, your latest -- your memoir, not your latest, your memoir, it just came out. It details your incredible experiences as this award-winning, badass journalist. I cannot believe how much you've accomplished since graduating after me from Yale. It's amazing and humbling. I'm just totally impressed. Can you please tell listeners what your book is about? Then what inspired you to sit down and write the story of your life so far?

Clarissa: The book is really about my journey starting from my childhood -- it wasn't necessarily a childhood where it would've been an obvious trajectory for me to go on and become a war correspondent -- and then through 9/11 which for me was kind of an epiphany moment. I was studying comparative literature at Yale. I thought I wanted to be an actress. Suddenly, my world was turned upside down. I became consumed by this idea that I wanted to go out there and understand how this had happened and why this had happened and what was at the root of it. I really wanted to be at the tip of the spear. Then it basically goes through my career. I think the problem is when you're watching the news, you're only getting half of the story. You're only seeing what's happening in front of the camera. You're not seeing what's happening behind the camera. You're not seeing these beautiful moments of human connection, moments of laughter, acts of kindness, acts of bravery and sacrifice.

Those are moments, to be honest, that, first of all, make this the best job in the world. They're also the moments that really shape the way you see and understand the world or a culture or a conflict. I wanted to share that with a wider audience. I wanted people who are not slavishly following every development in Syria to be able to connect to people in Syria and see the conflict through their eyes and feel it, but do it in a way where it's more approachable. It's like going on a journey with me to some of these really exciting and interesting and often difficult and dangerous places. I only really decided that I wanted to write a book when I got pregnant with my first son. I was like, I really need to have some kind of a record for him because I'm probably not going to tell him a lot of these stories at the dinner table, but I want him to know about these things and to know who I am other than being Mom.

Zibby: I read your Glamour article about this. It's called "I work in some of the most dangerous places in the world. Motherhood hasn’t changed that." You talk, obviously, about having a newborn and a two-year-old and how it feels to still be the one juggling the playdates while you're at war on the battlefields, essentially, still dealing with playgroup. Your point, of course, in the article was much more complex than that, which is, a lot of people have thought you're going to give it up now that you have two kids. You must be staying home now. You're like, would a man in the same position professionally be asked the same thing? I was hoping you could talk about that because I thought it was such a powerful piece.

Clarissa: Thank you. It's a really tough one. On the one hand, yeah, I get a little bit like, come on, I know so many dads doing this job. I know they're not being asked every five minutes if they're going to keep doing this work now that they're fathers. On the other hand, I do get it. I get why people ask that. I do really take my security very seriously. I take my responsibility for midwifing these two young souls into the world really seriously as well. I think it's a fair question. I've given it a lot of thought. Really, what I come up with at the end of the day is there have to be boundaries and there have to be limits. There are certain assignments that I won't do if they're too dangerous. I will actively avoid being in a really kinetic situation on a front line. I won't be away for longer than two weeks max, but ideally one week. I do my due diligence for months to plan these trips to the best of my ability to be sure to mitigate every single risk. I feel like it's important to have mothers covering war. I think we bring a different perspective to the table. I think that I have changed a lot since becoming a mother. I know I've become more emotionally porous. I feel like my heart is sort of out there beating in the wind sensitive to every small act of suffering I see or a child or a woman who's pregnant or a mother making sacrifices for her children. I just feel acutely attuned to it and profoundly moved by it. I hope that makes its way into my reporting. Maybe if there were more mothers covering war, we wouldn't have so many wars, which is not to say that I think all moms should leave their kids and head to the front line, not at all. It's not for everyone. We need to have a diversity of voices telling these stories. I guess that's my point.

Zibby: Moms don't have time to go to war. [laughs]

Clarissa: Exactly. Definitely not.

Zibby: What do you think it was -- I know you spell out so much of this in the book. You take us all the way back to even childhood babysitters and all of it. What do you think made you able to do this job so well? This isn't something that everybody could just hop into and excel at. I know I couldn't do it. I have too much fear and anxiety to even fly to visit my grandmother right now. Seriously, is it bravery? Tell me, what do you think it is? What is it?

Clarissa: It's definitely not bravery because I don't think I'm exceptionally brave. I'm able to stay calm in incredibly stressful situations, but on the inside, I'm a wreck. I get very scared. It's not bravery. I think it's a combination of things. If I'm being generous with myself, it's -- I was an only child. My parents were very busy with their careers, always. I had to be able to perform to get attention. That meant learning to tell stories in a compelling way. It also meant learning to be really adaptable. I went to boarding school at the age of ten years old. I had come from the US. It was miserable. I hated it. It was a sink or swim situation. I needed to fit in. I needed to make friends. I needed to make it work. I did. That has allowed me, that skill in my career, to go into any culture in any place in the world and form human connections with people and just immerse myself. As long as I have a working Wi-Fi connection and maybe air conditioning at a push, I'm okay. I'll be okay. I also think there's a level of passion that you have to have because there is a lot of sacrifice that comes with a job like this both in terms of your personal life and trying to make that work and in terms of the emotional toll that obviously this kind of work inevitably takes. You really have to want it deep, deep, deep in your core. I tell that all the time to young journalists who are like, should I do this? I'm like, if you're even asking yourself that question, it's not going to happen. You have to want this with every fiber of your being. You have to feel it's a vocation.

Zibby: Interesting. Tell me more about the 9/11 experience for you and how this became your calling.

Clarissa: I don't know what your experience was like at Yale. My experience at Yale, it was tremendous. It was so thrilling in terms of the incredible education and campus life and all of it. We were making movies and starting magazines and enjoying French new wave cinema classes. I had pink hair and lots of piercings and was indulging in all sort of more superficial self-exploration, let's say. Then 9/11 happened. It was like a thunderbolt from the sky. It was like, oh, my goodness, this has been lovely, but let's face it, there is some really important stuff happening in the world. It's been happening for a while. I haven't been engaged. I haven't been paying attention. Why do these people hate us so much? What do they understand about America versus how America sees itself? How they can be engaged with? How can there be better communication? It felt to me on some level that this mutual process of dehumanization and miscommunication, that it was really fundamentally arising from this failure to understand each other. Keep in mind, I'm twenty-two. There's a lot of idealism and hubris at work, but I became impassioned by this idea that I wanted to go and act as a communicator between worlds and in the process of going to these places, take something of America with me to share with them, but also take their stories back to America. I have subsequently realized that that's a hard job because not everybody wants to hear that. Some people think that listening or humanizing the other is tantamount to weakness. It's been a humbling journey in many ways, but also one that I'm profoundly grateful for.

Zibby: Wow. You're so articulate. I love listening to people who speak in complete paragraphs. I feel like there are speechwriters who would want to grab what you just said and throw it down on the page and claim it as their own. It's awesome. I have such appreciation for your language. Anyway, so when you keep going from place to place -- I know you've worked in Moscow and Syria. You been everywhere, Bin Laden. You have traversed the planet, essentially. I know, yes, okay fine, only child and performance, but how do you literally land on your feet everywhere you go? How do you just pick up and immerse yourself in something totally new? How do you do it?

Clarissa: What drew me to television rather than print is that television is a team sport. It's collaborative. You work with a cameraman and a producer. That really, for me, is a hugely important part of what I do. I thrive on that collaboration. I really get a lot of energy from just joking around and hanging out. What people never tell you about covering war is ninety-nine percent of it is killing time and waiting for something big to happen. Then one percent of it is totally mental. Everything is going off. You're just trying to get as much done as you can. Then it's back to sitting around and waiting for a press conference, waiting for a ride to the front line. Waiting, waiting, waiting is a huge theme. You need to be with people in the field who make you laugh, who keep you grounded, who keep you sane, who look out for you, who feed you, who you feed. That comradery is a huge part of it.

Definitely, that's what's allowed me to parachute into all these crazy places and live in Beirut and Baghdad and Beijing and Moscow and all the places that I've lived because it is lonely. It is lonely. Definitely, when I've been on my own on these trips, and some of them I've had to do alone, you have moments where you witness something so beautiful or so profound or so sad or whatever it may be, and it's tinged with this real sense of loneliness that you can't share it with other people in that moment, people who you love or people who you work with. It is hard to be away from home for so long. It is hard, as successful as you can be at it, immersing yourself in other people's lives. They are other people's lives at the end of the day. One of the most challenging parts of the job is trying to carve out your own real life. What does that look like? Where is that? Who's a part of that? It's not possible, really, to do this forever, constantly being in other people's lives.

Zibby: When you come home and you have your husband, let's just say even before kids, how do navigate going through intense -- you would think you'd come back with PTSD every week. Then you come back and maybe -- like your girlfriend who we were talking about earlier who we both know, how do you confront, then, a girlfriend who's just having relationship problems when you've been watching a man be carried in a casket through the streets? How do you keep perspective and relate to everybody else?

Clarissa: I think this is one of the biggest challenges of the job, to be honest, because you are straddling different worlds and shuttling back and forth. It's polar opposites. How do you acclimatize? I think there's a lot of guilt as well that comes with leaving the front lines of Aleppo and going to the South of France and sitting with my girlfriends around the pool drinking rosé. It's like, on what planet is this okay? On what planet does that make any sense? Is there any justice in this world? It's a lot. What you come to realize as you do the job longer is that if you can't make that work, if you can't experience joy and allow yourself to have that joy and love and spiritual nourishment or physical decadence, pampering, whatever it is that you need to fill the tank when you're at home, you can't go back out and do the job again. You need to fill the tank. Once you understand that, you're able to navigate it a little bit better. There have been times, and I talk about this in the book, where I would come back and I didn't feel like I wanted to be me anymore.

I didn't feel in love with my life anymore. I would bristle when my husband would try to hug me. I would zone out when I would go out with girlfriends for dinner and catch up with them. They would ask me sincerely about Syria, and I would not be able to engage with them on it. That is not a healthy state to be in. You do need to be proactive if you're doing this kind of work and you're witnessing this kind of trauma. You need to be proactive about your mental health. You need to be seeing a therapist. You need to start to recognize the telltale signs of when you're burning out a little bit or when you are getting too detached and too numb. It's a little counterintuitive. You see movies and you think, oh, they see something bad and then you feel sad. No. Feeling sad would be great because that means I'm processing. There's catharsis in grief or sadness. There is not any catharsis in feeling numb, in feeling detached, in feeling irascible. That's when you know that you really need to do some work to get back to a place where you can feel joy, where you can feel love, and where you can feel connection.

Zibby: You have a great therapist. I need this person's number instantly. I think I have a lot of people who could benefit from this information. Or you're just super highly evolved and self-aware, which is also fantastic. It's a great combination. Tell me about the process of writing this book. When did you find the time to do this? How long did it take and all that?

Clarissa: I wrote it on my maternity leave because masochism comes naturally to me. I was like, what should I do with this time I have off as a first-time mother? I know, I'll write a book. I started out, the process for me was like, I'm going to write a thousand words a day. Then I quickly realized that didn't make sense for me. There would be days where I could write a thousand words no problem. There would be other days where I would become too obsessive about this word count thing, and it was impeding the flow. Then I shifted gears. I was like, okay, write as much as you want or as little as you want, but just sit down for two to three hours every day and write. That's manageable even when you have a baby. I was lucky. I had a maternity nurse. My parents were around, a lot of my husband. I had a lot of support. Two to three hours was manageable. What I think many people who writes memoirs find is that when you're writing about your own experiences, it's a lot easier. It does flow, and especially when it comes from a place of truth. It's an amazing experience. You're just like, wow, all I'm doing right now is typing out the words that are pouring out of me. That was the first draft. Then I went back to work. The first draft was done in three months. The second draft took almost a year because I was back at work. I was traveling a lot. It was much more difficult to find time to really immerse again in it. The second round, a lot of, flesh out a bit here, what the situation was like in Syria. It's stuff I know, but it's more the research, the "let me tell you in three paragraphs, the history of Syria" part. That requires a bit more discipline, I would say. That was harder. The first round flowed. The second round was work.

Zibby: Do you feel like now that you've had all this exposure and research and writing about it, you have intense political views? Does it shift how you feel about international relations and all of that on a bigger-picture scale?

Clarissa: It's interesting you ask that. I think not so much about political issues. I'm pretty passionate about Syria. I have pretty strong views on that. Obviously, I testified at the United Nations Security Council, which is kind of on the edge of, are you a journalist or an activist? I've definitely entered that hazy space. For the most part, I think what writing did, actually, was to give me more courage of my convictions in terms of what makes a great journalist, what makes a great story, and what these human moments of connection -- I know I keep coming back to that, but it made me understand better why I do this and what it's all about for me and the privilege that comes not just with witnessing history, which I have had the fortunate of doing on occasion, but of making profound connections with people who live a hundred thousand miles away and every metaphorical sense of that.

Zibby: Then how did you deal with COVID? When the brakes slammed on your life, how did you cope? How was it being back?

Clarissa: I was heavily pregnant. Basically, everyone was on lockdown with me. I was already on lockdown. Listen, it was really challenging because it's the first war I've covered from my living room. It's a very tough story to cover in terms of the way I like to cover stories, which is usually with more of a human angle. You have to rely a lot on technology and getting people to do video diaries. It's hard. I definitely learned a lot. Now I'm on maternity leave. It also meant that my book release was delayed by six months, which was a blessing in some ways because I don't think I realized with how much work releasing a book is. It turns out it's basically a full-time job. [laughter] We're calling this a maternity leave, but basically, it's a full-time job. It's a really fun full-time job because you're out there talking about something that you feel passionate and excited about. I'm definitely thinking now, okay, I'll be going back to work. I'll probably go back after the election. I have no idea what the world's going to look like both in terms of the election and in terms of COVID. What kinds of stories are people going to want to hear? This is one of these things, COVID, much like 9/11, it's a bolt from the sky again that's going to profoundly change the way we live and function as a society in ways that we don't really yet understand. We haven't quite got our arms around it. It's going to be tremendously interesting, but it's definitely going to be challenging as well.

Zibby: Yes, I would agree with that. Knowing how much work is involved in the whole thing, would you ever write another book, or are you like, this was great and now I'll be more prepared?

Clarissa: I haven't started therapy for that yet. [laughter] Yes, at some point I would like to write another book, but not for a while.

Zibby: Do you find time to read yourself?

Clarissa: I really wish that I had more -- I used to be a voracious reader of novels. I was a comp lit major. That's really what I loved.

Zibby: Which two languages?

Clarissa: I did French, Italian, and Russian, but my Russian wasn't good enough, so I was reading in translation. As you know, hence the name of the podcast, having kids is like, wow, when do you find time? I have this beautiful stack of books by my bedside. Then I get into bed. My husband's reading Netflix. I'm making sure that I haven't missed fifty Zoom calls or whatever. I get the book out. Then before I know it, I'm like, [snoring]. It's really hard. I'm not going to pretend it's not. One way that I get to read books is people ask me a lot to write blurbs for their books. That's great because then you really have to read the book. I do try to read, but man, I really wish I had more time and that I could read more. That's why I think it's so awesome what you're doing because we do need to carve out more time and find these little moments to read. It's such an important thing. I think social media and everything, we've gotten a little bit distracted.

Zibby: I hope by doing the show that I entice people to read. Once they hear somebody's story like yours, they're like, oh, my gosh, I have to hear more. I want to read the whole thing. That's my goal, whet the appetite like having movie trailers. This is the book trailer channel or something. [laughs]

Clarissa: Believe me, authors are so grateful to you for that. Your sincerity and your curiosity and enthusiasm is just really, really awesome.

Zibby: Thanks. I feel like a child. I really do get so excited. [laughs] I do. It's really awesome. My kids just went to school. Now they're only in school in real life for the mornings, my little guys at least. They come home after three and a half hours. My daughter was just at lunch. She was like, "Wow, I feel like I didn't even leave." I was like, "Yeah, I feel like that too except that I had three podcasts this morning and I met the most interesting women ever." I talked to somebody in Florence. I talked to somebody in Chicago. How else would I ever met all these interesting people? I feel very lucky.

Clarissa: That's kind of like my job, though. I feel the same way. I think that's how you know when you're onto a good thing. It's not about whatever the trappings of success might -- it's about that, wow, I'm really excited. I'm learning. I'm meeting interesting people. I'm seeing different ideas. That's the thrill of it. That's the excitement.

Zibby: Totally. Then once you're in it, more ideas and more things happen as opposed to when I was home when my twins who are now thirteen. When they were little and every day was like a thousand hours long, I was just like, I can't even think of a single essay to write right now. I'm so burnt out. Now, like with you, I'm sure, you just throw one more thing in the fire, and you're already going at warp speed.

Clarissa: Oh, yeah. It's long days, short years.

Zibby: Yes, exactly. It was so great to talk to you. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for sharing your journey with everybody. I'll look for you eventually on TV.

Clarissa: Yes, or in person hopefully if we ever find a vaccine.

Zibby: In person would be great. It would be even better. It would be awesome. I'll talk to you soon. Hopefully, I'll see you soon.

Clarissa: Take care. Thank you.

Zibby: Thanks, Clarissa. Buh-bye.

Clarissa: Bye.

Cameron Douglas, LONG WAY HOME

Zibby Owens: Hi, Cameron.

Cameron Douglas: Hi, Zibby.

Zibby: I'm looking forward to our conversation. We got a little preview beforehand. All these people stole some of my questions, but I'll come up with some more.

Cameron: Because you're a pro.

Zibby: Long Way Home: A Memoir of Fame, Family, and Redemption, you have been through so much in your life, and you're younger than me. It's unbelievable. Why did you decide to put it all into a book? Why write a book about this at all?

Cameron: I'll give you the short answer first. Then I'll elaborate a little bit. The short answer was to try to take some of these experiences that I've been through, some of them very painful, some of them lovely, and turn them into something useful for people. That's the short answer. To be a little more long-winded, at first, it was my father that was really pushing me to write this book. I was confused about that, as we talked about earlier, because our family has always been very private. It was helpful. It was out of love that he was pushing me to write this book and also out of the fact that he and the rest of my family felt that I had a story to tell and a story to share. At the expense of some of their privacy, they felt that it was worthwhile. It's been an interesting journey. It's been a long journey. I started writing the book before I came home in 2015, 2016. It took about four years to write all in all. I must say, I learned a lot. I learned a lot about myself, which is important to have insights like that when you paid such a high price for your decisions.

Zibby: You mentioned earlier that it was really your time in prison that allowed you to get in touch with your feelings. I wanted just to hear a little more about how that happened. Were you in prison one day and you asked for a notebook? How did you start writing there? How did you find the time? How in control of your time even were you?

Cameron: It started, really, when I was doing my first fairly long stretch in solitary confinement. It was around eleven months. It was fairly early on in my sojourn through prison. I had a really difficult time adjusting. My journey was very atypical. I started at a minimum security, and I worked my way up to high security. That's not the way it's supposed to work. You're supposed to go the other way. As I said, I really had a difficult time settling in. I was very angry at myself, which I think is understandable. I don't think I dealt with that very well. As a result, I just made life even more difficult for myself. I'd like to think that some of it was necessary. It's part of my journey. From where I'm sitting today, I probably wouldn't be here without a lot of those experiences. I was in solitary confinement. Obviously, you can imagine. You're in there twenty-three hours a day. You get one hour three times a week. Most days, you're in there twenty-four/seven. Then on the days that you do come out for that hour, usually they’ll come get you at around four thirty in the morning. If you're on the East Coast, they take you outside to a little cage. It's just freezing out there. I opted to sleep in most of the time anyway. I started journaling. What I tried to do is I tried to set up a curriculum for myself to keep my mind active. It made me feel like I was taking some of my freedom back. The curriculum was reading. I'd read three books. I'd have a self-help type of book. Then I'd read a literary classic, something you might read in an English lit class in college. Then I'd have a beach read like Game of Thrones or something like that. Had that. I had my exercise, meditation, and writing. I don't want to speak for too long, but that's where it started.

Zibby: I love the idea of you sitting -- I mean, not love, but the comical vision of you in solitary confinement with a beach read. [laughs] It's so against what you would think. That's great that literature could provide you with that outlet, as it does. That's some of the power of books to begin with. Where better to escape than when you literally can't?

Cameron: It really is. Then I'll fully answer your question. You have this book cart that comes around a couple times a week. I got this book off the cart by this great American classic author, Stephen Crane. This was his book of short stories called The Red Badge of Courage. They're all fantastic stories. The Red Badge of Courage in particular really spoke to me and gave me something that I think was necessary for me at the time. I was so taken by his writing that I got in touch with my -- you get one phone call every three weeks. I got on the phone and I asked, I forget who, I said, "Find me some more books by this guy Stephen Crane." I didn't realize he was a well-known poet as well. What came in the mail was all these books of poetry. I was like, what am I going to do with this? I was fairly well-educated, but I've never really connected with poetry. I started reading them, as you can imagine [indiscernible]. For the first time, I really was taken by poetry and inspired by it. I started playing around a little bit. That's kind of where it started.

Zibby: [child noises] Nice to have the little one. I was warning you that this good stage was going to end. Anyway, in your book, you talked when you were younger about developing what your mom called the curly-whirlies where you would spin your hair around. Your anxiety was clearly manifesting itself from an early age. Do you feel like some of your later behaviors were your own way of coping with maybe an anxiety disorder that wasn't really treated or underlying things? Now that you're in a totally new place emotionally, where did that all come from? What would you do to prevent this trajectory from happening to, say, your daughter?

Cameron: Especially as a child and then as a teenager, I always felt sort of uncomfortable in my own skin. I would do everything I could to not let onto that. I think I learned at a fairly early age that by getting high or getting buzzed, it would allow me to feel comfortable. Looking back on everything, one thing that I really had a chance to take advantage of but I didn't that I think would've been extremely helpful is therapy. Had I been a little more open and willing to talk to somebody as a teenager, I think maybe it would've been helpful. That's something I let anybody know. I have friends that have kids that are struggling. I tell people that I care about to give it a chance. It's a big part of my life today. It just took me so long. It wasn't until maybe six months before I was being released from prison. I remember one day saying to myself, I think I'm ready to give therapy a chance when I get home. I followed through on that. It's been very helpful for me.

Zibby: I thought it was so funny that when you got out of prison, one of the things you realized you missed the most was going to the dentist. Who knew?

Cameron: Exactly. I was pretty fortunate with my dental situation in prison. It's funny. My partner, Vivian, who I live with and we have a daughter together, I've known her for many years. She reached out to me. She wrote me a letter. I wrote her a letter back. We hadn’t seen each other in many, many years. Finally when we got on the phone together -- I had my visiting privileges suspended for a long time. Finally, I was getting them back. We'd been talking for about a year. I was on the phone with her. I said, "Look, I just want to warn you. I only have three teeth left. I feel a little self-conscious about it." There was dead silence on the line for a second. Then I started laughing. It can be a bad place for your teeth. That's for sure.

Zibby: [laughs] You wrote throughout the book about so many different losses. I don't feel like you necessarily framed them as such, but they just kept popping up in one way or another, even your manny, essentially. I thought it was so funny that your dad had a busboy and was like, "He seems like a good nanny." The next thing you know, he takes care of you intimately for years, which is one method of recruiting babysitters I have not tried yet. Now I'm going to open my mind to that. Even with him being so close to you for so many years and then gets let go of and immediately disappears, that's a big loss. Even your pet ferret getting eaten by your dog, these are heartbreaking things, particularly at that age and time of life, and then of course as life goes on and more things happen. What do you think those early losses -- do you feel like they were as significant as I'm perhaps making them or less so? I know you wrote about them a lot, so clearly you found them to have some importance.

Cameron: Joaquin is somebody that to this day I think about. Sometimes I'll even think I see him. He was a huge part of my life. That was a difficult loss. Kids are sensitive. In life, things are going to happen. When you're young, you need people to help you through it. They may not be available. I think they do leave a little scar. You try to figure out a way to deal with it yourself. You don't, maybe, have all the coping mechanisms at the time. Again, listen, life is -- that's what it is. It's full of loss and hardship. That's what builds character. We have the decision to make choices as a result of these things that we go through. Some choices are better than others. Can't really blame it on Joaquin and my ferret, although I would've liked to. [laughter] I think I told that to the judge.

Zibby: Maybe we could talk about your family in case that played more of a role in some way. You painted such a loving picture of your dad, and your mom at times. You painted her as somewhat inconsistent, I would say, in her availability and emotional availability, physical presence, all of that. You really made your dad seem like he wanted to compensate for having a famous father himself by being a great dad to you and making sure that you didn't feel the way he had felt, it's this whole full circle thing, and was really there for you and tried all these things when you did develop your drug addition to help. I wonder looking back, what do you think he could have done or your mom could have done to have prevented your addiction from spiraling in the way that it did, or was it just once it started, there was sort of no way to really reel it back in because you didn't really want it to stop?

Cameron: Quite frankly, I got to a place in my life where there was nothing that they could do. It's interesting. My father, one of his bones that he had with my mother -- my mother was so young when she had me, nineteen or twenty. My father's career was just getting going. It's a career that takes a lot of time and a lot of focus, a lot of attention. My father often felt like he had two kids to take care of, my mother and myself. My mother was so young. She didn't like the business. She's European and came to the States and met my father and didn't like the business and was angry and lonely as well. She was still extremely young herself. They had a lot of things going on. I was always loved and well-cared for, but maybe just didn't have the attention that I was needing. That kind of forced me to look elsewhere for that love and attention. Starting as younger teenager, I started finding that with a group of people that were rough around the edges. That's not to say they were bad people or anything like that. It's just people that were going down that road that would eventually lead to some issues. That's what happened. I remember at one point in my life I was wondering to myself, if I'm not in prison, who are these people in prison? I was wrapped up in all these different things. But I was. I just wasn't physically there yet. I was well on my way. That's it. If you're living that life, there's a place for you if you continue to live that way.

Zibby: There were so many moments where you just should not have survived, the car crash. There were just so many, the drugs, the seizures. It's a miracle that we're even on a Zoom call right now. It's crazy. What do you attribute that to? Do you feel like you have some sort of perspective on life having lived through all of this that perhaps others of us can't have or don't necessary have having cheated death so many times?

Cameron: I have been fortunate. I have angels watching over me. I've certainly not been careful with my life and often not valued it properly. Maybe subconsciously there was some purpose behind that. I guess that wasn't to be my story. That wasn't going to be the way that my story was going to end, whether I wanted it to or not. I like to think that there's something that I have to offer before it's all said and done.

Zibby: Obviously, one thing you have to offer is your story which is going to help so many other people who are struggling. Hopefully, they’ll all be reading it and can get back on track or get what they need out of it. It's an amazing gift when somebody shares their story so openly like that. That's awesome. You also talked about dealing with your dad's cancer diagnosis and treatment and how you felt about it. I was just wondering if you could share a little about that period of time and what it was like for you.

Cameron: For those of you that haven't read my book, I found out that he had cancer by one of the inmates that I was on the compound with. He came up to me and he said, "Hey Cam, I'm so sorry to hear about your dad." I said, "What are you talking about? I just saw him. What are you talking about?" He said, "I heard he has cancer." I said, "No, I don't think so." Then a couple more steps, and then somebody else came up to me. I went in and got on the payphone and tried to call him. He didn't answer, so I called a friend of mine. The first thing she said when she picked up the phone was, "I'm so sorry to hear about your father." I said, "What's going on? What happened?" She told me that it came out in the press that he had stage four throat cancer. I sat with that for a little while and obviously tried to get in touch with him. When I finally did, he felt bad. He said that he didn't want me to worry. I'll tell you, it really gave me a real respect for what these cancer survivors go through. I saw him about three weeks before he started his treatments, which was the radiation and the chemotherapy. He looked great. He looked healthy, how he always does. Then he came to visit me about a month and a half after his last treatment. It was maybe three months or something like that. I've never seen a body change so drastically in such a short amount of time. It's a real fight. Fortunately, he made it. One of the extremely unfortunate things about going away for so long is that life goes on, and as a result, you lose people. It happens a lot. I was hoping that I would make it home to see him. He got better long before I came home, so that was good.

Zibby: Wow. What is your relationship like now with your family? Do you feel like you've repaired any of the riffs that may have occurred over time? Do you feel this, still, enormous support? What's it like now? How has it been with the book as an entrant into the family as well?

Cameron: Ironically enough or oddly enough, everybody was really behind the book, which was nice. Obviously, that's important to me. That made it easier. My relationship with my mother and father are fantastic. It's taken some time, particularly with my father. So many years, I had been living in a certain way. Nobody knows that better than the people that are closest to you. To be living like that for so many years and then to go away to a place like prison -- as I said, I spent most of my time in higher-security prisons, which is a different reality in and of itself. It's like, who is coming home? I think everybody was kind of protecting themselves a little bit or maybe even more than a little bit. It's just consistency. I did a lot of growing up while I was away. I wish I was able to do that before having to go to that length. I feel like I made the most of it, if that can be possible in a situation like that. The consistency that I've shown since coming home is everything. We're in a great place.

Zibby: That's great. Tell me more about your current writing. You had mentioned that you are working on screenplays, that this book is being adapted. Tell me about all your exciting projects now.

Cameron: It's nice. Things are really just starting to come together. It was three years of awkwardness and trying to find my stride. Then it just takes a little bit of time. Things start to come together. The acting is something I jumped right into. I finished filming my first feature-length film in years in January of this year, so the beginning of this year. I just finally saw a cut of it. It looked good. It's been submitted to all the film festivals and stuff like that. We'll see what happens with that. Then I've been writing a lot during this quarantine. I hate to say it's been great because I know it's been so hard and difficult for so many people. As somebody that's procrastinated a lot in life and wasted a lot of time, I went into this quarantine with a mindset like, I have these projects that I really want to accomplish. I feel like I did so. I finished my first screenplay just a couple of weeks ago. Now I'm just refining it a little bit. It's too long. That's a good problem to have, at least initially. Then the book, Long Way Home, people have been interested in it. I teamed up with a production company called Fabrik and this amazing writer/showrunner named Tom Fontana. He's adapted it into an ongoing series. It's been exciting for me. It's been great to work with these guys in particular. Tom, he's a great writer. It's nice because it's a fictionalized version of my story. It's just based on my story, but all the characters will be fictionalized. Of course, to make it an ongoing series, you need some wiggle room. It's been exciting. It's been very exciting.

Zibby: You have a chapter, Orange Isn't the New Black. This is going to be the counter show to that one or a companion piece in a way. [laughs]

Cameron: It looks like it's going to be interesting. I'm excited to see what comes of that.

Zibby: This is a big question. What has it been like being a dad? How does it feel to have a daughter and to have a whole new perspective on life as a parent? What's that been like for you?

Cameron: It's been interesting. In regards to my own mother and father, it's been nice for them I think in particular because it sort of balanced the playing field a little bit. It's given me some insights into what they were dealing with and what a parent deals with. My daughter is my biggest teacher. She really is. I've learned so much about myself and really grown as a human being since she's graced us with her presence. It's pretty special, as you know.

Zibby: That's awesome. What advice would you have to aspiring authors, somebody who wants to write their story? Maybe it's not quite as dramatic as yours, but wants to get it down, wants it to help other people. What would you say?

Cameron: Nothing happens until you put the pen to paper or until you start banging away on the keyboard. That's the first thing with anything. Even with this screenplay, I've been thinking about it for so long. Screenplays is an art in and of itself. I was a little intimidated by it. It was just, write the screenplay and start figuring it out and banging away. It comes. I don't think one writes with the intention of making some big best seller. That's great if that happens, but you just write because you have something inside of you that you want to share or that needs to come out. You got to get started. I think if you get started and it's something that's for you, then you'll see that. You'll go from there. If you get started and you're like, no, this is not for me, then you can move on to the project.

Zibby: Screenwriting's not for me. Next. [laughs] I also was wondering, are you still friends -- in the book, you mentioned there was a boy named John you were friends with. You filmed a movie together. Your dad started to help and he was like, "Well, this production value's gone up a lot." Are you still friends with that guy?

Cameron: I am.

Zibby: You are. That's awesome.

Cameron: He's one of my oldest friends. He's actually a very successful producer now in his own right here in town. He's doing fantastic. He just had a little boy. He's married and lives about fifteen minutes away from me. We snuck a couple visits in during quarantine, but really just been keeping to ourselves like most people. Looking forward to seeing my friends and everything. Him and I have also been through a lot. We have a lot of funny stories together.

Zibby: That's great. I know there are going to be a lot of questions. Thank you for chatting with me, particularly the pre-chat. Now maybe I'll take some questions for you from the audience. What do you want to accomplish with the rest of your life? Good luck with this question.

Cameron: It's a good question. It's an important question. When it's all said and done, I want to feel like I've been useful. That's the short answer to a question that could possibly be endless. I want to feel useful. I wanted to be inspired. I want to have a purpose. I think that goes hand in hand with being useful.

Zibby: Good answer. If anybody else has questions, they can put them in the Q&A here on Zoom, and Cameron will answer them.

Cameron: I have a question for you, Zibby. How is your brother?

Zibby: My brother's great. He's actually a big producer in your town now too. He runs Black Bear Pictures. It's funny. I didn't actually even talk to him before this interview to get some inside scoop for you at sleepaway camp, but I'm going to have to.

Cameron: [laughs] That's probably better.

Zibby: Yeah. He may or may not have been kicked out himself. I'll just leave it at that. [laughs]

Cameron: Maybe I'll cross paths with him one of these days.

Zibby: You should.

Cameron: Tell him I said hello.

Zibby: I will. I absolutely will. Now we have a lot more questions. Although, you can keep asking me questions. We can turn this whole thing around. Okay, thank you for sharing your story. You are so positive after going through so much. How did you come to terms with accepting yourself and your faults and mistakes?

Cameron: It's a process. It starts with forgiveness. I certainly didn't come up with it, but a little slogan that's always stuck with me is, forgive, but you never forget. The forgiveness, especially forgiving yourself, allows you to begin to heal. The part of about not forgetting allows you to build from some of those choices. I've paid a high price for some of my decisions. The way I look at it is I might as well get what I paid for.

Zibby: I love that. Have you gotten involved in any prison support or work to reform?

Cameron: Yeah. One of the things that I'm involved in now is these voting rights for people that have either done their time -- for instance, supervised release is something that men and women are under once they finish their term in federal prison. In some states, they allow it. In some states, they don't. Look, I put it like this. Our judicial system and our government is not known for being particularly warm and fuzzy. If the time that you do is enough for them to call it even, then it should be enough for you to have your voting rights back at the very least. It goes on from there. It's really a struggle for men and women coming home. I'm very fortunate in that I have the support of my family. They believed in me. They never gave up on me. The reality for most men and women coming home is that they have nothing. To even get a job or a place to live being a convicted felon is really difficult. I think it's something that we need to work on. That's what you're doing. You're going there. You're paying the ultimate price for your misgivings.

Zibby: Someone is asking, what was your relationship with your grandfather?

Cameron: My relationship with my grandfather has always been amazing. My grandfather is notoriously a tough guy and was hard on my father and my uncles. With me, he was always full of love. Him and I had a lot in common. My grandfather was an athlete and a wrestler. I was as well. We're similar in a lot of ways and always had a lovely relationship. I was really blessed because I moved out to LA and got to spend the last years of his life with him. I moved about ten minutes away from him. I was over at his house two, three times a week, bringing my daughter, Vivian, and then just spending time with him myself. That was special for me, for sure, and hopefully for him as well.

Zibby: As you learn in the book, he often slipped you fifty-dollar bills whenever he said hello to you. That's always nice. [laughs]

Cameron: That's right, right on up through my twenties.

Zibby: Do you have a relationship with Judaism? Has it provided you with a way of gaining a purpose in life?

Cameron: My grandfather was bar mitzvahed in his seventies. He made a full circle. He was brought up Jewish and then wandered away from religion or spirituality in general and then made his way back. I'm not so religious. I was never raised in any particular religion. I am very spiritual. I believe in a higher power. I take little bits and pieces from all the different religions that I feel resonate with me. Having said that, my younger brother is bar mitzvahed. He's in Brown now and lives in a Jewish dorm and is doing his Shabbat dinners and things like that. My younger sister has been bat mitzvahed. They really resonate with Judaism.

Zibby: My daughter's bat mitzvah is on Saturday.

Cameron: Nice.

Zibby: It's on Zoom, so you can come if you want. We could do this again.

Cameron: Yes. They’ll be like, who is that guy?

Zibby: [laughs] Someone says, I'm Steve from Houston. Thank you for this awesome presentation. What is your favorite all-time movie not including one your father and/or grandfather starred in?

Cameron: My favorite all-time movie, that is tough. I'm going to throw out a couple just off the top of my head. True Romance keeps jumping into my mind for some reason. Apocalypse Now is great. I really love Legends of the Fall. Maybe I just had a big crush on Brad Pitt. I don't know. He's pretty good-looking. I just think of the cover. If anybody's seen it, it's him with that mane. It's a great movie. I loved it. I love period pieces, so Dances with Wolves. I love Star Wars. I love all of the Star Wars. I like sci-fi stuff.

Zibby: I'm going to vote for When Harry Met Sally if anybody's wondering.

Cameron: I was going to say that one.

Zibby: Yeah, I bet. Did the title of Mandela's book, Long Walk to Freedom, influence you in the choice of the title for your book?

Cameron: Not consciously, but may have subconscious. That was a great book. I loved it. Long Way Home, the impetus for that title is a band called Supertramp which is a seventies rock band. They have one song called "Take the Long Way Home." I've always loved that song. Then I felt like that's what I was doing, is taking the long way home. When I say home, it's not the destination. It's not the physical destination. I guess it's sort of arriving to a destination in my mind and in my heart. Family's probably a big part of that as well. That's where that came -- come here. Want to say hello? Come here.

Zibby: Are we getting a cameo?

Cameron: No, she's gone. She just came to grab her toy.

Zibby: Some stage fright. Do you do any speaking engagements or work with teens that have an addiction problem?

Cameron: I have. I've been doing a lot of these book tour things, but haven't been doing much just during this quarantine recently. Working with juveniles, particularly juveniles that are in that sort of trouble age which in my opinion is from thirteen, sixteen, seventeen, I think that's a critical age. I know just because I know myself when I was that age. It's important for these kids to be able to talk to somebody or listen to somebody that has been through some of the same stuff or else they don't want to hear about it. That's definitely something that I will get more involved in moving forward. I like to think that as my career starts gaining momentum it will allow me to reach more people. I feel like with success comes responsibility. That's certainly one of the areas that I care about and I think is important.

Zibby: Someone says, you mentioned all your reading in solitary. Are you still an avid reader?

Cameron: I am. I love to read. We were talking about it before the show. Yeah, I do. I love reading.

Zibby: What are you reading now? What's on your bedside table?

Cameron: I've been so focused on the screenplay that I haven't been doing too much reading. I have this book of prose from World War I authors that I've been reading at night before I go to sleep. I don't remember the name offhand. Want to come say hello?

Zibby: Hi, cutie. She's so cute. I like the pink hat. There's nothing like an indoors hat for a winter hat appearance. So cute.

Cameron: Do you have any good -- I know you said The Vanishing Half.

Zibby: Yes, that was very good. I'm reading this book about parenthood you might enjoy called Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear by Kim Brooks. Very interesting.

Cameron: Very cool.

Zibby: That's at the top of my stack at the moment. I have more questions for you. Sorry, a couple more. Are you close to Catherine, your dad's wife? Somebody else was asking about those siblings of yours.

Cameron: Those siblings of mine. [laughs]

Zibby: I was going to say those half-siblings. I wanted to make sure I was right before I said that. Yes, half-siblings. What is your relationship like with your stepmother and half-siblings? There it is.

Cameron: I'll answer the question about Catherine first. My relationship with her has always been fantastic. I was my father's best man at their wedding. Just always had a really good relationship. As I said, when I came home, my father in particular was protecting himself and was not really opening up to me as much as I would have liked. I think Catherine was one of my champions in sort of pushing him to open himself back up to me a little bit. I thought that was beautiful. My brother, Dylan, is amazing. He's at Brown. He's a tremendous actor. He's super involved in politics. In fact, he started his own political group called Make Room, makeroom.org. It's a really great movement. He's just an amazing young man. My sister, Carys, is gorgeous, sweet as can be. She's in boarding school in Switzerland. She's extremely smart and also an amazing actress in her own right. We'll certainly be hearing from them. We have already, actually. My sister's got a hundred-plus thousand followers or something on Instagram. She's miles ahead of her old brother.

Zibby: Wow. All right, I'll have to start following her. I think we're almost done with questions. What advice would you give employers with regard to hiring former prisoners?

Cameron: Like I said --

Child: -- Toy.

Zibby: Give them toys.

Cameron: Give them toys, exactly. If somebody has served their time and they're looking for a job -- this has been my experience anyway. Some of the smartest people that I've met, I met in prison. Sometimes life is difficult and people make some bad decisions. One thing I know for sure that is none of us are the same person now that we were ten years before that. We weren’t the same person then that we were ten years before that. People evolve. People make changes. When you've given years of your life based on some decisions that you've made and you come home and you're looking for a different kind of life, I think you might find that they’ll probably be some of the best employees that you can find.

Zibby: Last one. What was it like working with your family in It Runs in the Family?

Cameron: That was an amazing experience. Working with my father and my grandfather as well as my grandmother -- my dear grandmother, Diana Darrid, was also in the movie. It was fantastic. It was a lot fun. For me, I was young. I was twenty-two or something like that. Working with the two of them, it was just such a good feeling for me. I will treasure that.

Zibby: Excellent. Thanks for doing this. Thanks for doing this for the JCC. Thanks for letting us seriously into your home in the chaos that is having a small child which I am very familiar with.

Cameron: [laughs] I'm sorry about that. We made it. We did pretty good. I thought it was going to fall apart earlier, but we did pretty good.

Zibby: No, it was great.

Cameron: Thank you. I had a lot of fun with you, Zibby. I look forward to seeing you somewhere down the road or staying in touch. Thank you all for having me. I appreciate it. It's been really a lot of fun.

Fariha Roisin, LIKE A BIRD

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Fariha. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to discuss Like a Bird: A Novel.

Fariha Róisín: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Zibby: Your book, I read it at night. I was so disturbed and scared from some of the scenes. I loved it. It was gripping and powerful. Then I was almost closing my eyes at some of the things were happening. It's rough to take. It was gritty and out there. That's what a good book does. It makes you feel. Why don't tell listeners what it's about?

Fariha: It's funny. Under close inspection, it's about so much more than just the broad strokes. It's a survivor story. It's a story about, this young biracial girl is gangraped by a family friend. It's really in that lurching from her family, being disowned by her family, that she realizes that she actually has a lot more autonomy than she ever thought she did. That, for me, is such a personal story as well. I think a lot of women probably relate to that experience of being raised a certain way and thinking certain things about your capacity and who you are and how you should be defined and what determines you. Then you go out into the real world and you're like, oh, I have all of this that I can actually find and discover about myself. It's all of those things, but it's also the cracking of a family and the rupture that happens when people don't talk about their emotions and when they don't talk about the gravity of what they're feeling and experiencing in a day-to-day way. There's a lot of themes that might sound kind of out there, but they're also really real, like ancestral trauma. This idea of epigenetics, that's something I really wanted to bring in just even as a subtle motif because, again, it's something I think about so much. Some of us do become bearers of a familial burden, and we don't even know what it is that we're experiencing.

Zibby: Wow. This particular family has gone through so much trauma in a relatively short period of time. The scene where you have the mother when the main character is leaving after she's been cast aside and you have the mom wailing left alone with her two daughters without them, that was so powerful. I know I keep saying the same thing. I'm sorry. [laughs] I know you know it's powerful and everything, but I'm just reiterating.

Fariha: It's important to hear this, honestly. It's very validating.

Zibby: How closely does your background align with your character's?

Fariha: Not at all, really. I'm of South Asian descent. Taylia, the character, her mother is half Jewish American and her father is half Bengali Indian. That was also something I really wanted to explore because, again, the failures of assimilation and the failures of wanting a life that you think you deserve and you do deserve, but then what is lost in all of that? What happens in that transaction when you do prioritize certain things about what your family looks like, what the façade looks like as opposed to what is going on internally? Her parents are so cool. That's something I really wanted to show. Katherine and Adi are both really smart people. They're very cultured. They have taste. They want to see the world. Katherine is political. She married her husband even though her parents didn't want her to because she believed in her beliefs. She wanted expansion. She wanted to see what was outside. Then she married him. Because they kind of signed onto the same contract of living a lie together of something, there is another rupture with them that I think is so important. It's such an important facet of the story that I don't think we ever talk about, when parents, who are people, don't know what to do with themselves.

Zibby: It's so true. You were so funny writing about her mom. You wrote, "Like many white girls, even Jewish ones, Mama wanted to cause her Ashkenazi parents deep distress. She watched Guess Who's Coming to Dinner with a sadistic revery and preached to her friends that the racial divide was the true abomination in American society. Ignorant to the fact that her white-girl utopian idealism was a privilege in and of itself, she considered herself a savior and thought her protests were enough." [laughs] Love it.

Fariha: I like that you like the humor because I wanted it to be funny as well. Humans are so funny. We're so strange. We have so many contradictions. It's not like Taylia's the victim. Everybody's the victim. That's something that I really also wanted to show. That's something, definitely, I can attest to in my own life. Maybe the similarity between me and the family is that I had a pretty traumatic life. I think that's actually kind of common. We experience so much more than what we're willing to put into language. Really trying to see them through a lens of humor and trying to place them contextually in a way that's honest was really, really important to me. I didn't want it to seem like they were two-dimensional. That's also why in the end of the book there was a return to the idea of memory. What is memory? Can we trust it? She starts to replay these memories that she has of her mom and ideas that she has of her mom. Even writing them, I was just like, I've never seen this anywhere before, that questioning of, do I have this right? Did she love me? Maybe. I don't know. That was really fun and heartbreaking to play with.

Zibby: As someone who feels like she's losing her mind every day, this is very comforting to hear because I'm always like, wait, I'm sure this is what happened when I was growing up. Then of course, I'm like, maybe I should call my brother and just find out. Of course, I'm completely wrong. It's close enough. I'm like, I think this happened with this girl on this Valentine's Day. Anyway, you also poked fun at these poor parents where you were talking about how they achieved a new class, essentially. They had become wealthier throughout their, not hippy-dippy -- what's the right word? -- very, very liberal anti-wealth dogma. Then suddenly, they're wealthy, but they don't want to accept that about themselves because what would that mean to their whole identity? They kind of pretend that they're not. Yet they're living the high life in some regards. I thought that was very funny because there's so much of that, I feel like, now. You have to wonder with all this anti-wealth sentiment everywhere, if you won the lottery tomorrow, would this still be the same rhetoric or would it shift a little bit?

Fariha: Exactly. Capitalism, especially right now, it's something that we're all thinking about. I was raised by a Marxist. I was raised by a very intense Marxist. He's very anti-wealth. That's how I was raised. I have a lot of family members that are really rich. You're always navigating and seeing how they interact with their wealth. Oftentimes, there is this deep un-comfortability with the things that they’ve achieved. I can say that about my own life. I have a good life. I'm an artist. I'm a writer. I did this on my own, so I think I feel more vindicated by that. There are those contradictions that we all have to face. That's really what the book is trying to get you to do. It's trying to make you question yourself and question the way that you live your life.

Zibby: It's also, not the kindness of strangers, but whereas there's such capacity for these hateful, horrific acts, there's equal capacity for love and caring. I always forget everybody's names in books, but how the coffee shop owner takes her in not only to give her a job, but into her actual home. Then is it Kai who comes into the store and then offers her a place to live as well having just met her and saying, "It looks like you need a friend"? These are really wonderful things. I think it's important that you highlighted those too as opposed to just this tale of doom and gloom because that is what's so crazy about the world. You can have these diametrically opposed responses to the same person, essentially.

Fariha: Exactly. That is another reflection that I definitely had in my own life. I moved from Australia when I was nineteen to New York and didn't know anybody, came to go to school. I was very naïve, very vulnerable, and met so many people that lended me a hand in way or another. After having such a traumatic, almost loveless upbringing, I really needed that. I really needed to believe that there were people out there that could offer me things that I felt were just too big. That's something she tries to explore, the guilt and the shame of taking things, of wanting things, of wanting safety. There's a lot of shame around that. You think that because you've never gotten it, maybe that's just how your life is going to be. Then when someone offers you a hand, it causes you to question everything that you've accepted before that moment. In a way, I know that it probably seems quite dramatic, but those things that happened to Taylia have all in one way or another happened to me. I negotiate them as an adult all the time. The sexual violence didn't happen like that, but sexual violence has happened to me in my life. I am constantly having to balance those extreme moments with joy and community and real care. That, to me, is the plight of being human, as you kind of said.

Zibby: Wow. So really, just some tiny minor themes here in your book, nothing too deep. Did you have a relationship with a tree in the same way?

Fariha: [laughs] I have relationships with trees, for sure. I'm definitely a little bit of a kook, I'd say. I do a lot of plant medicine, so trees are really important. The natural world has so much to teach us. Again, it is this sweet sentiment that I wanted to bring out. When I was young, I didn't have a lot of friends that I could lean on. The natural world became my friend, sticks and stones, whether it was a little patch on the grass that I knew was mine, that kind of stuff. Especially when you don't have a lot, you find ways to protect yourself, totems.

Zibby: Pretty close to, actually, a totem pole in form and shape. My heart breaks that you experienced some of the same things and emotions because the experience of this character, Taylia, broke my heart over and over again. That devastation and loneliness was really tough. I'm sorry if that was part of your upbringing. That's not fair. That just stinks, honestly.

Fariha: Yeah, I had a really bad life. I had a really hard life for a really long time. I'm a child abuse survivor. All of those things come from deep, deep places. I don't know if you knew this. I wrote this book over eighteen years. I started writing it when I was twelve. I actually wrote myself out of my pain. Through a therapist, I've kind of figured out that even though it wasn't my life completely, I was creating a story a way to have a cathartic process. My family, we didn't know what therapy was. None of those things were options to me eighteen years ago. For whatever reason, I figured out at a young age that I could do this. I had to survive. I had something to say. That's really what carried me through. I don't even know how I did it, but I did it.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, bravo to you. That's amazing. When you said you started this eighteen years ago, I was like, you must have written this when you were five years old. I'm thinking, did you start this as a drawing? You look so young and everything. I think you might win the award, then, for longest time it's ever taken anyone to write a novel.

Fariha: [laughs] It's funny because when you write something, when you work on something for so long -- also, naturally, who I am, I'm very self-critical. That's why it's validating to hear that you like the book because I don't know. I don't know if anyone's reading this book. It becomes such an isolating experience when you put something out. I hope for the best. Here's all of my pain and trauma on the page. I'm trying to also show people that survivorship is real and possible. You question yourself. Especially after this long, you're like, is this story even good? It's an everyday process of reminding myself that at least I stuck to something for eighteen years. If that's all I have, that's pretty remarkable. I always have to pat myself on the back for that because I don't really know how I did it.

Zibby: Turns out it started on a floppy disk. Then you put it on a CD-ROM. Now you finally have it on your phone.

Fariha: [laughs] Google Drive. The evolution.

Zibby: The evolution of Like a Bird. It actually started as a baby bird. Now it's grown and flown away.

Fariha: I love it. Exactly.

Zibby: Did you start by handwriting this? How did you end up deciding now is the time? You're still only thirty. You could've done another eighteen years on it. That would've been justified.

Fariha: I know. I started writing it on hand. Then eventually, maybe a couple months later, we had a family computer. I was talking to my dad about it, who's a professor. He was like, "You should start typing it." With his direction, I started typing it. I would show him the pages and be like, "This, this." I have a really close connection with my dad. I was always looking for his approval. Then eighteen years later, it's a book. It's a three hundred-page book. So much work has gone into it. The evolution is, I started when I was twelve. I finished a first draft when I was fifteen that doesn't look -- it was more of a basic simple draft. All of the things are basically the same, which is wild. I finished it when I was fifteen.

Zibby: Did you lose a sibling?

Fariha: Mm-hmm. Everything -- oh, I didn't personally lose a sibling, no, no, no. Thank god. I was around a lot of death. It was a really palpable thing for me to think about death. Around the time that I started writing this, my favorite grandfather died. I was just being faced with a lot of death. It makes sense to me in the universe of Taylia to have something that triggers her into motion. It's not the rape. The rape isn't what triggers her. That's the last straw for her. She's just like, no, fuck this. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to live like this anymore. It's really the loss of her sister and trying to compute why somebody would do this that brings her to her own evolution. Then I formally started writing this book again when I was in my early twenties. I've been working on it more full time for about eight years.

Zibby: It's so crazy to think when you were twelve, you were writing this. When I was twelve, in my journal, it's like, I slowed danced with Chris McFarron. [laughs]

Fariha: I love that.

Zibby: It's insane. Now I feel horribly guilty for having these ridiculously middle school traditional privileged ups and downs. Then this is going on in your head. It's just insane. Yet here we are as adults just having a normal conversation. What you bring to it, what I bring to it -- not to say I haven't had lots of trauma in my life. It's just not at that young age particularly. Then the way that that informs how you grow up and what you do with your life is so important.

Fariha: Don't you think that we all -- I don't know if this is how you feel. We all become products of our lives. We make choices. At a certain point, maybe you did this as well, but I wanted a better life, so I fought for it. I think the things that happened to me, my therapist might disagree, but I've come to place of a lot of peace. It brings me pain, but I have a lot of peace with my life because I wouldn't be who I am if I didn't go through it. I like who I am a lot. The fact that I can write this book -- I'm being clownish and light. I obviously want people to read it. I obviously want people to connect with it. That is my offering, sourcing all this pain and putting it onto the page so people can have a toolkit. If every survivor is able to read this book, and there's a lot of survivors on this planet, that would mean so much to me. From my heart, it's been written to aid people through this journey.

Zibby: It's beautiful that you did that. I feel like I should put a theme song to this episode that's like, [singing] "I'm a survivor."

Fariha: Destiny's Child. [laughs]

Zibby: Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Yes, Destiny's Child. Thank you for not stopping the singing. That's my first singing on a podcast ever, and my last. [laughter]

Fariha: It's great.

Zibby: Thanks. What's coming next for you? In, let's see, 2038, will we have your next novel eighteen years from now?

Fariha: I'm working on another novel which I'm really excited about. It's still really early stages, so I won't talk about it, actually. I'm also writing a book of poetry called Survival Takes a Wild Imagination. Then I have my fourth book that comes out January 2022 or spring 2022 about the wellness industrial complex. It's my first nonfiction. I'm diving into, again, the things that we're talking about, trauma and my own experience and rooting it in my own experience, but also looking at the failures of the wellness industrial complex and how we very much owe it to one another to care more about one another, and especially in this climate and everything that's happening and where the world is going with climate change. It's going to be really, really interesting. Those are my two major book projects that are coming up. Then the novel, I think in a couple years. Stay tuned. Then I'm writing some screenplays as well. A lot of things are happening.

Zibby: Wow, that's great, as they should. You deserve nothing but success, especially having taken what was so painful for you and given it, as you said, as an offering to others. I hope that the circle of life gives back to you what you needed from it. It's just great.

Fariha: Thank you.

Zibby: Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Fariha: Trust your voice. Don't let anyone tell you that you don't have something to say. If you feel like you do, really trust it and nurture it. Read. Read a lot. I think enough writers, or enough people, don't read. We do need to read more. [laughs] I know that your podcast is about that.

Zibby: I would agree with you. I agree with you. I agree. Not enough people read. I actually read some crazy statistic recently how the average American reads one book every two years. I probably just botched that statistic, so nobody quote me on this or write it down. Just pretend you didn't hear me say that, but it's something like that. A lot of people hardly ever read. A lot of people don't even own a lot of books or any books. I just donated some books to this school in Texas. None of the kids had ever owned a book before and were writing me all these thank-you notes. "Oh, my gosh, I get to take it home. I get to keep it." I get more notes every day from this school. I'm surrounded by books. They're how I stay sane. They’ve helped me through everything that I've ever gone through in my life. I think, wow, I have these talismans of stories and experiences. I just look and I remember them. Now I'll have yours. Then it just brings it all back. Anyway, yes, I think people should make time for books and find ways to get books in everybody's hands.

Fariha: I love that sentiment. Reading is how I survived. If I couldn't have gone into different universes, I don't know what I would've done with myself. Absolutely, it breaks my heart that young kids don't have access to that.

Zibby: By the way, I was going to say this earlier, not that it's any of my business, but you should go to schools. I don't know if you're doing that or not. You should put yourself on the school circuit and go in and have talks and go to middle schools. You never know what's going on with people during that time. They might really need to hear it in the moment. I know it's a lot, this book, but I think you should do it. I think you should try a few schools and see what happens. I think you'll be surprised at how much you'll be able to affect change at that level.

Fariha: Okay, thank you. I'm going to listen to that.

Zibby: Just my two cents for what it's worth.

Fariha: Thank you.

Zibby: This has been unexpectedly fun. I thought this would be so deep and disturbing and intense. I think I had to lighten it up a bit as self-protection or something for both of us. Thank you. This book was beautiful. Your writing style is beautiful. When you said you weren’t sure if people were going to read it or whatever, I found your writing style to be something that was so captivating and a little bit different and a unique voice. I just kept reading and reading. I really liked it. There you have it.

Fariha: Thank you, Zibby. Thank you for having me on your podcast.

Zibby: Thanks for coming.

Fariha: I'll talk to you soon.

Zibby: Yes, keep me posted on the meaning of life and everything.

Fariha: [laughs] Bye.

Zibby: Bye.

Christa Parravani, LOVED AND WANTED

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Christa. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Christa Parravani: Thank you for having me.

Zibby: I always think it's so funny to interview someone who's written such an open memoir with so much information that I'm like, I already know all about you. Let's skip to the next part. What happened after the memoir? Let's catch up. It's like we already had a conversation. For listeners who don't know much about your book, Loved and Wanted, can you please tell them a little about what it's about?

Christa: Loved and Wanted is a memoir that is about my time living in West Virginia. I was a faculty member at West Virginia University. My family had moved there from Los Angeles. It's about the years that I lived in West Virginia and had a second daughter and then was unexpectedly pregnant with a third child a year after having my daughter. I was my family's sole provider. I couldn't afford a third baby. I looked into my options for reproductive healthcare and discovered that I didn't have any. [laughs] Or very few, and not the kinds of options that, as a mother to small children, that I could take. There were waiting periods that would've caused me to have to take two weeks off of work and find someone to stay with our kids. Oftentimes if you get an abortion, you have to have somebody come with you. We didn't have family nearby. The book is about that. It's about the journey that I had afterward, after I had my son who is very much loved and wanted, which is where the title of the book comes from. I believe that you can both want to have had the choice for reproductive healthcare and love and want your children. It's about the discovery about what the implications are for curtailing reproductive healthcare for women and children through my direct experience.

Zibby: I was so surprised to learn about how difficult it was for you in this day and age in a state that allows abortion to get it. You went through in the book so clearly, if I had done this, I would've had to give up this many days of work. This would've cost this. This bus ride would've cost this. Then I tried this other option. Then this doctor said no. I couldn't believe it. You were saying that this goes on all over the country. I'm from New York City. You just don't know what it's like. You had been coming from LA at the time, so it was a culture shock.

Christa: It was unbelievable to me as a person who grew up in New York and then lived in Los Angeles. Our family lived in New York City for many years. We lived in Los Angeles for many years. It was shocking to me that there are laws that prevent women from being able to seek reproductive healthcare in states like West Virginia and many other states. It's not just West Virginia. As a matter of fact, the majority of healthcare providers are in New York City and/or around New York and Los Angeles, California. The reason why we don't understand this to be a daily situation is because those providers are near those cities. There are many states that only have one facility for reproductive healthcare. The numbers are going down and down and down as times goes on. There are fewer and fewer places to be able to get reproductive healthcare. Again, like you, until I saw that directly, I was unaware, completely surprised. Also, in that surprise, I felt crazy. [laughs] I felt like, why do I feel like this is impossible? What is wrong with me? In fact, it was because it was impossible. Part of the reason I wrote the book is for that reason. The ways in which I was told indirectly that the choice was not mine to make because it was too hard to make caused me to doubt everything about myself including who I was as a mother to my two daughters.

Zibby: The fact that you had to go through that with no support and no help and struggling financially -- your mother was -- I'm glad she came through for you at one point in the book. I was like, well, thank god for this. Finally, there she shows up. Also, your tragic history with your sister which was the topic of your previous memoir, can you talk a little about that too? Really throw you in the fire this morning. Here, let's start right off with your most painful things in life for me who you just met.

Christa: Let me tell you. [laughs] When I was in my twenties, my identical twin sister, Cara, died of a heroin overdose. She had suffered from depression as a result of having been raped by a stranger in the woods when we were in our early to mid-twenties. She had a six-year struggle after that attack and eventually succumbed to depression and addiction. The book is about identity. It's called Her: A Memoir. It's about what it means to climb your way out of unimaginable grief. I wrote it because I feel like people want to know what it's like to have a twin. They want to know what it's like to have intimate love in that way. We don't talk about losing that very often. I felt a responsibility to do that. I felt a responsibility also to talk about what it means to be trying to care for somebody who's been sexually assaulted and not really know how to do that. I didn't realize the trajectory of my writing career had to do with activism. It does. [laughs] This book does that too. I'm now experiencing myself as somebody who is not only interested in writing, but interested in justice and justice for women and sharing our stories, in a way, to liberate us.

Zibby: That's a perfect tagline for a career. That's great. It's great to have such a clear goal. A marketing firm would say this is fantastic. You've outlined your mission. I'm so sorry. I don't even mean to make light of your horrific experience and your tragic loss of your sister. It's just awful, what happened. I need to go back now. After I finished this book, I was like, oh, my gosh, how did I miss her first book? Now I have to go back and read it. It sounds like you've been through the ringer in so many ways. It's like, at least, they should give you the choice of whether or not to have another baby.

Christa: I think we all deserve that choice. We deserve to be in situations where healthcare is strong enough for us to be able to make that choice, and once you have your baby, to be taken care of.

Zibby: Yes. That was the other thing in the book about all the pitfalls and misdiagnoses, essentially, with your son. Oh, my gosh, I wanted to scoop you up and take you to my doctor. [laughs]

Christa: I wanted to go to my doctor too.

Zibby: I know. I know you did. I know, oh, my gosh.

Christa: I don't mean to make light of any of these things. I do think, though, there's a way in which if you don't approach something with humor and levity, you're never going to be able to communicate the thing that you need to communicate. All these things did happen. Miraculously, I'm okay. I want to be able to teach women and people to be able to go through these experiences and still be okay and to be able to look at them and help other people. We deserve to have good healthcare. We deserve to have good reproductive healthcare. We deserve to have good pediatric care for our children. The thing that I discovered in this -- I'm looking at my book here, which is the galley copy.

Zibby: Yay!

Christa: Yay, there it is.

Zibby: Wait, let me see the cover again. I had to read it online. There wasn't a cover yet. Oh, I love it. It's awesome.

Christa: It's a picture of Morgantown, West Virginia, that was taken by a local photographer not very far from the house where I lived.

Zibby: PS, I would not say this was exactly an advertisement for Morgantown, West Virginia. I'm not sure they're going to have the biggest book party for you there.

Christa: I can't say that many people have acknowledged that it's happening. [laughs] I can't say that's the case. I have a lot of love for the place even though I had difficult times there, for sure, I did, unexpectedly. The thing that I discovered is that states that curtail access to women's healthcare -- curtailing access to abortion is not just curtailing access to abortion. In fact, it's curtailing access to pap smears and all sort of women's healthcare that is only available to certain people in places that perform abortions. It just so happens that the money that is funneled into women's healthcare, when you take it away, you don't get adequate care for children. That's something that occurs across the United States and which I didn't realize until after I had my son. He was born with some issues that were not easily taken care of in West Virginia but would have probably been noticed in a second in some place that had more resources, less overcrowding.

Zibby: Then you think of the spread of COVID across the country and then you realize, how can small towns everywhere focus when they don't have the advantages of all the science and all the expertise, necessarily, of bigger communities? That's what most people are turning to. It's just kind of frightening, to be honest.

Christa: It is frightening. In my case, I lived in a town where West Virginia University is which is where I teach. The medical center there is vast. It runs the state. It's a historically really interesting place. Mylan Pharmaceuticals is based there. This giant medical complex is based there. There's a history of healthcare there that's really interesting. However, because West Virginia does not have a lot of medical offices, it is serving the entire state, basically. There are people who need to commute two and a half hours to be able to see a doctor for any reason. That includes women who are pregnant and having babies.

Zibby: There was that one scene where the mom came in with her child and waited for two hours and had to drive two hours. Then she couldn't miss any more work and had to turn around and leave. It's just heartbreaking. Then of course, you realize how often this must be happening all over the place.

Christa: It's happening all over the place. It happened to me, a professor, somebody who has two master's degrees and writes books and is a white woman. The number of women that this happens to who are women of color and poor women is astronomical. I feel like we don't really have enough of a voice for that yet. I feel like as women, we haven't been able to articulate this yet because there's something about saying "I thought about having an abortion" that is still a really taboo subject. It's one that I came up against when I was writing the book. I asked myself consistently, can I do this? Why am I doing this? What does it mean for my son to do this? I have the answers, but as I was working my way through it, I did not have those answers. I just had the desire to be able to say something that didn't feel like it was being said often enough.

Zibby: What were some of those answers deep down?

Christa: I'll tell you. I have two daughters. I thought about what it was that I would say to them in two decades from now, a decade from now, about what it meant to live in this time and not advocate for their healthcare. I know that I look to my mother. I say, what did you do in your time and place? I remember being really disappointed by the fact that I didn't feel like she did a lot when she was growing up in the sixties. She didn't have the opportunity to do that. She worked at Sears, Roebuck. She was a waitress after that. She didn't have the resources that I have. I look to my daughters and I think, I will not forgive myself if I don't advocate for them. If I don't do it, who will? I think that my son will grow up in a household of girls, of a strong mother. He will understand that this necessity is one that doesn't have a lot to do with having him being loved or wanted at all. It happens to be something that makes a better world for him too, for his sisters, for his children. I think he'll understand. It was a risk that I had to take in order to take care of them all.

Zibby: You have to protect the ones you have. Anyway, I won't get into it, but I get it.

Christa: [laughs] Thank you.

Zibby: This is like Sophie's Choice or something, but yes, I understand. I'm glad you came to terms with it and crystalized your point in doing it all and all of that. Can I just ask, are you and your husband good these days?

Christa: We're trying. It was a horrific experience to go through in a marriage. It was. The time after my son was born was not easy either. I don't write about it. The last couple years have been hard for everyone. We're living in a chaotic country in which we're not sure what tomorrow will look like in a whiplash news cycle. We both happen to be writers, my husband and me. There's a way in which that career breeds uncertainty. He was really worried about my writing this book. I think he was worried about our son. I'm also worried about our son, but as a man, intimately concerned with his needs in that way, where I was concerned with our daughters' needs. It's been hard. We're trying to work it out. I don't know what'll happen, to be honest. It could go either way. Right now, we're still married.

Zibby: Okay, I'll just leave that alone.

Christa: [laughs] I want to say something about this. One of the things that I'm asked a lot about is what my husband thinks about this book. That's an interesting subject. I think that when you take a subject like this and you ask about someone's husband -- this is no offense to your question because I would ask it too in a second. I would say you're making something about what should be about a woman's choice and her role as a mother and turning it around and asking her what her husband thinks is making it less about her and more about him.

Zibby: I did not ask that question for the record.

Christa: No, no, no, I'm talking about it in terms of -- I was thinking about it. I'm a writer of nonfiction. My husband is a writer of nonfiction. We tell stories that would be harrowing for other people. He's written two memoirs. There's a take-no-prisoners approach in his writing that I don't necessarily have in mine. I thought, what is my gut reaction to not wanting to address him? I'm interested in talking about the marriage, but what is it about this particular situation that makes me feel nervous about that? When I look at him, I'm taking away something that was really about me. I don't want to do that because it clouds a situation which, to me, seems so clear in terms of what he would think and feel about, say for example, me having an abortion. He immediately, when he found out that I was pregnant, said, "It is your body and your choice."

Zibby: I didn't ask what he would think about it. I was more interested in, are you two okay? Just wondering what the conclusion was. I guess I would be wondering because you didn't paint such a great picture of your relationship. Revealing that has effects on both members of the party. That would be it. It actually had nothing to do with the abortion part. That's obviously one piece of your book, but certainly not the other piece. I also think it's about, how do you get through being a mother in a marriage when life is really, really, really hard? I think that's a big piece of your book regardless of the reproductive angle. It's the day-to-day life and the struggling and the financial stress that weighs on you and the blame and his career versus yours. I just felt like so much of this was so widely applicable. Also, abortion has so many political and religious and whatever. I was kind of not dealing with that because people have such different views on it. However, I was just trying to get to --

Christa: -- I totally understand what you're saying. The thing is that any marriage has its complications. I talk to my girlfriends and we're all talking about, oh, my god, what are our financial lives going to be like this year? How does that impact our marriage? Who's getting to work right now? Is my husband getting to work? Am I getting to work? Who's taking care of the children? No matter what the mess, the tangle of your life is, I think we all in some way are adjacent to that in that kind of stress. Keeping a marriage together is so hard. It's really hard. That doesn't mean that you don't love somebody. It doesn't mean you don't want to be with them. It just means that it's hard. It's not just hard for me. It's hard for all of us. Show me the perfect marriage. I want to see it. [laughs] As a writer of nonfiction, it's my job to tell the truth.

Zibby: Even still, many writers of nonfiction don't delve this deep into their own marriages. I feel like some authors do it when they're older reflecting back. Dani Shapiro wrote a beautiful memoir called Hourglass about her whole marriage.

Christa: I love that. So good. I love it.

Zibby: I feel like it's not as often that you hear from the inside. I feel like there's this, almost, iron wall sometimes around people's inner relationships that you didn't have, which was great which is in part what made your book so interesting and un-put-down-able. You're like, what's going to happen next? How did they navigate this? How would I navigate that? You put yourself in your shoes and go through it with you.

Christa: Thank you. I do feel like if I didn't write about the marriage, the book wouldn't ring true. I had to do it in order to tell the story. There was no way around me. Trust me, I thought about it. Do I need to do this? The answer was always yes and to do it respectfully and with love realizing that the outcome was going to be something that I felt would be helpful to people. There's always the do no harm. I just wanted to look at it from all angles. There was really no way to write this book without that. Everywhere I hit in the story, the marriage was there looking at me. [laughs]

Zibby: I got divorced after being married for ten years. I am now remarried. After this, if you ever want to ask me any questions, I'm around.

Christa: I'll Zoom you.

Zibby: Yeah, Zoom me. I'm around. Anyway, so tell me a little more about the actual writing of this story. When on earth did you find time, especially given how you painted your life, to write a book on top of everything else?

Christa: I had the great fortunate of working for an employer that gave me parental leave after I had my son. I was on a paid leave for a semester. There was really not a lot of time to work after having that baby, obviously. He was not well. I was literally hooked up to a milk machine, a pump, for the first four and a half months of his life because he was never able to nurse. Then having the two girls running around me while I did that, it was so hard. Just pure drive and grit made me write it. [laughs] I needed to get this book out of my soul. I would type it on the side while my son was napping and my daughters were wrestling around the living room, but I did. My husband was working full time at that point. He had gotten a job in television in Los Angeles, which is a more than twelve-hour-a-day job that also involves frequent travel. Those first six months of Keats', my son, that's his name, Keats, his life was not full of a lot of work. I did the best I could. Then he got a little older. I found a great childcare provider. Every free minute that I had I invested in writing this book. Then I used my summer vacation to write the book. Then I had to take leave off of my teaching for a semester to finish it, unpaid. There was no way to do it.

Zibby: Are you working for the same university?

Christa: Yes, I am. I teach remotely right now like so many people. Yeah, I do still teach for the university.

Zibby: But you left West Virginia?

Christa: I left West Virginia. Yeah, I did. I left West Virginia because I didn't feel like I could live there anymore. This book is also about homesickness and sadness. It's also about asking what it means to be from a place. I felt, even though it hurt me to live there in so many ways, that there was so much of me that loved it. My daughters loved it. It was a very hard decision but one that I felt like I had to make after looking at the facts and then knowing that if I felt like I had a heart attack in the middle of the night, when I had to call an ambulance, that it might not turn out okay.

Zibby: How is Keats? Is he okay now?

Christa: He's so wonderful. He's so great. He's healthy.

Zibby: How old is now? Three or something?

Christa: Two and a half.

Zibby: Two and a half, wow.

Christa: He's two and half. He's just starting to put together complex sentences. He's my big helper. He's the neatest of all the kids. If you look at him, he's playing in the play kitchen wiping down the counters. [laughs] He's just a sweet little love. He's healthy and doing so well.

Zibby: That's so great. Are you trying to write any more books on the side, or are you content with the chaos that your regular life...? [laughs]

Christa: I have another book that I'm working on right now. I had been working on before this book. It was a book that I had been working on. Then when I realized that I needed to write Love and Wanted and my publisher wanted to have it in time for the election, I had to put that other book aside. It's a deep love of mine. It's a nonfiction book about a woman who was a CIA operative during the Bin Laden years. She worked at the top of asset conversion while also being involved in a really awful marriage that involved domestic violence and not being able to tell anybody about that because it compromised national security.

Zibby: Whoa.

Christa: I met her through a friend. That story changed my life because I realized -- probably, obviously, it influenced this book too. I thought, what does it mean to be a woman working in the world at the top of your game and still have this closet full of secrets and shame? I'll finish that book. I'm about halfway through now. Obviously, I'm taking time with the kids and teaching. Remote school is hard.

Zibby: Yeah, I get it. Wow, that books sounds awesome. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Christa: Put your rear end in the chair. Don't worry about it not being good the first draft. It's so important to be able to get your story out and not to stop yourself by telling yourself lies like, this isn't good enough. Who will care about this? That's my biggest piece of advice. Also, if you can, to find a group of readers that you trust and engage yourself with them. Writing is a solitary experience, but it's also a community experience because you have a reader. It's not just about you. It's about what it means to have a conversation with somebody who picks up your book.

Zibby: I love that. I have to tell you in terms of the reader, I read this book -- I couldn't sleep. I sometimes get all this pain in my body. Anyway, whatever. It was the middle of the night. I read the whole thing walking in circles around my apartment standing up on my iPad. I read the first hundred and fifty pages just roaming around in circles and so in it in the dark with just the light of the iPad. I felt so connected to it. Then I finished the rest the next day.

Christa: That sounds like what it was like to live it. [laughs]

Zibby: It was a very intense moment, especially because I feel like I was in your life in the middle of my night in a dream state or something. It was awesome. I loved it.

Christa: Thank you. That was the aim. The aim was, how do I write a book where I feel like I can put my arm around you and just tell you this thing that happened to me and we can just be together in the dark with an iPad? [laughs]

Zibby: Yes, exactly. Mission accomplished. Check. Thanks so much for chatting with me today and for giving the conclusion to your story. I was like, what's happening now? Thanks for that too. I'm excited for your book to be out in the world.

Christa: Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me and for having this conversation. This is the first one that I've had about the book.

 Zibby: No way, oh, my gosh. It's been on my calendar. When I first heard about this book forever ago, I was like, yes, I can't wait. It's been one of my longest, and it did not disappoint me.

Christa: Thank you. Thank you so, so much.

Zibby: Good luck with everything. Buh-bye.

Christa: Bye.

Cecily von Ziegesar, COBBLE HILL

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Cecily. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Cecily von Ziegesar: Thank you. It's so nice to be here.

Zibby: See, that was so easy. I just asked a question. Not even. I said something. You said something back.

Cecily: I can do this.

Zibby: [laughs] First of all, Cobble Hill is so great. I was so excited to see that you had come out with a new book. It did not disappoint in the slightest. I love your characters and your sense of humor and the whole thing. I just had to say that from the outset. I thoroughly enjoyed it and needed a fun escape that pokes fun at basically everybody. That was awesome. Thank you.

Cecily: Thank you. That's really nice to hear. I'm at that tender stage where I'm terrified about what people are going to think of the book. People are just reading it now. It's always nice to hear good things.

Zibby: Thumbs up. Obviously, you've written the Gossip Girl series. That was smash hit, TV show, fame, whatever. Now how do you go from that and write another book? Tell me how you came up with the idea for Cobble Hill. We'll go from there.

Cecily: It's been a long time. The first Gossip Girl book came out in 2002. It's been a while. There are also many of them and as you said, a TV show. I have actually written a couple of books in between that weren’t really widely read. I kept also getting distracted and pulled away from this idea by other things, also, my kids. Actually, 2002 was when the first Gossip Girl book came out, but also when my first child was born. She's starting at college now. There you go. There's a good marker. Cobble Hill, actually, the germ of the idea came about in many paranoid conversations that I had with my kid's elementary school nurse. After reading the book, you'll discover that there is very definitely a school nurse in the book. She would send out these lice letters. I would just completely freak out. The minute I got the lice letter in my kid's backpack or whatever, I'd be like, they're all over me. They're in the walls. They're everywhere. She was this really nice, lovely person. I would go into her office and start out talking about lice. Then we wound up just chatting about other stuff. I knew I wanted to write a book set in this neighborhood, the neighborhood that I live in. In talking to her, I was like, I have to have lice in my book. [laughs] It was just so ridiculous. It's even more ridiculous now. If only lice were our problem, the only epidemic we were worrying about. It started with that. Then I very definitely extrapolated wildly from there. Another character in the book is a writer. The longer that I worked on this -- I think I've been working on this book on and off for more than five years, which is a really long time for me. The Gossip Girl books, I wrote two a year. The more I worked on it and it moved away from the original "moms in the schoolyard" type of book, it became about writing itself too and make fun of myself with the agonizing that I was doing.

Zibby: When I was reading it, you had this one scene where -- is his name Ray?

Cecily: Roy.

Zibby: Roy, sorry. He's walking around. You're charting the streets. Should I go to this bar? Should I go to this place? Should I go here? Should I go there? I'm like, was she actually doing this? Maybe that was her morning and this was the walk she took and then she sat down and then just wrote that out. [laughs]

Cecily: Actually, no. I've always tried to find other places to write other than home. Right now, I'm in, my daughter who went to college, her bedroom because I don't have an office in our apartment. I don't know how happy she is about this, but her room is now my office.

Zibby: Is she finding this out right now on this podcast?

Cecily: No, the way she found out was I took a -- she didn't have a desk in her room at all. I don't even know how she got through high school without having a desk. She just had this big fuzzy pillow on the floor. She would sit on the pillow and put her laptop in her lap. The first week that she was at college, I took a picture of the fuzzy pillow -- it looks like a dog pillow, it's really gross by now -- out on the sidewalk for the garbage to take away. I was like, "Say bye-bye to your fuzzy pillow."

Zibby: Oh, no. [laughter]

Cecily: I don't think she's too sad. She doesn't mind. Anyway, throughout my writing life, I've been wondering, there are people who work in the park. There are people who work in coffee shops. I'd go to a coffee place and bring my laptop fully intending to get something done. I don't know how people do that. All I do is eavesdrop on other people. I don't get anything done. It's impossible for me to do that. Part of Roy's journey -- it's also just procrastination. He's like, maybe I'll try this. Maybe I'll go here. In the meantime, he's not writing. He's just walking around. I tell everyone, even when you're not writing, you're writing. It's in your head. That is actually very true for me. Once I get going, I feel like I am kind of carrying the whole book in my head. The characters are having conversations. Now I sound like [indiscernible/laughter].

Zibby: I'm hearing all these voices in my head. Turns out I'm a novelist.

Cecily: It is actually true. Maybe you do have to be a little crazy to do that. Once they become fully formed characters, they are talking in your head, or in my head anyway.

Zibby: I loved Peaches, the nurse character, and how when she got to go through -- why am I blanking on everybody's name in this book? -- the musician's hair when he came to sit down [indiscernible] and she was like, "Thank you, god. Thank you, mom. Thank you, everybody who didn't let me drop out of nursing school for this moment right here. It was all worth it." [laughs] I just loved that.

Cecily: She's a terrible flirt. That's part of what I try to do with my writing. I think I did that in Gossip Girl too. You're kind of hearing every thought that every character has. It's that off-camera thing. It adds another dimension to them. You're also seeing how the person they're talking to is seeing them. It all gets very complicated. Part of what I learned that I like to do in writing Gossip Girl was having the idea of that perfect-looking person and then you see how flawed they really are, and insecure. I had a lot of fun with that in Cobble Hill too. Hopefully, it's amusing to hear how insecure -- I think a lot of it was also me wandering around my neighborhood and wondering what all these people are really doing when they go home, these people who don't seem to have nine-to-five jobs like me and who might be sitting on a park bench at eleven o'clock in the morning with their laptop or getting a coffee or just walking around. I became fascinated with what those people really are doing and what their lives were like.

Zibby: I feel like it's human nature, perhaps maybe more novelist nature, to wonder what everybody's thinking and doing. What is everything doing out? I remember working when I actually had a nine-to-five job in marketing before I went to business school. One day, I got the day off. I remember going to the reservoir and thinking, this is the height of luxury that I can go running in the middle of the day. I was like, who are these people? How is everybody else out and about? What are they all doing? How are they all here? Your books are the backstory that everybody's really wondering. You even have your Anna Wintour-ish character who's pretending like she's so busy at work and doing absolutely nothing. You have so many funny characters in different ways. It's just great. You poke fun at everybody from the Latin teacher to the -- it's just awesome. Why not make fun of everybody in a nice, funny, literary way? That's really what you do.

Cecily: It's funny because the teenagers are -- there are two main teenager characters as well, and they're the more serious characters in a way. That was something that I maybe have discovered in my middle age. Just because you're a grown-up doesn't mean you act like one. Sometimes the teenagers are a little bit more responsible. I have so much sympathy for my kids. I'm still in my bathrobe with my cup of coffee. It's seven o'clock in the morning. They're completely dressed. My daughter's eyelashes would be curled. They're facing the day and doing so much. I'm like, bye, I'm just going to go write a book in my bathrobe. A lot of it came out of that, just realizing how much shit they have going on in their lives. Also, there's so much that you deal with in high school that if you're in your little neighborhood adult bubble, you don't necessarily have to deal with that at all. There's a lot of that in the book too, almost that the teenagers are dealing with what's happening in the world around them more than the adults are.

Zibby: Did you ever actually debate faking MS yourself so that you could stay in bed all day?

Cecily: Oh, my god. Mandy's actually one of my favorite characters because she -- it's funny. At first, I was worried, are people just going to hate her because she's so indulgent and she's just staying in bed all day? Then I became so envious of her. Why not? [laughs] Why not just take a little time and stay in bed? I feel like it's sort of a brave thing to do somehow. She gets through it. She actually grows throughout the story. She's kind of moving on. It was just something she needed to do. I have a couple friends who have MS. When they were talking about their symptoms -- [laughs]. This is so twisted of me. I was like, this is the perfect disease to fake, just be like, I think I need to take it easy right now. This is just the way my completely crazy brain works. I had this idea while talking to my friend from college who has MS and just went with it. I guess I can ask you. When you read about it, were you like, oh, god, she's so lazy, or were you like, that takes a certain degree of courage to just be like, I'm staying in bed?

Zibby: At first, I was like, I wonder what's wrong with her. Is she depressed? What's going on? First, you hear about it from her husband. Then I felt sorry. Then I was like, oh, no, this poor woman. Then you find out that, actually, she's faking it. I was like, I cannot believe that she's faking it. [laughs]

Cecily: Spoiler alert. Did you know the whole time she's faking it? I love how I wrote the book and I can't remember.

Zibby: I feel like that was all very early. Did I ruin it?

Cecily: You totally didn't ruin it.

Zibby: It's all very early in the book.

Cecily: You see her process of googling what the symptoms are.

Zibby: I wonder if there will be an outbreak of other moms being like, you know what, I don't want to take my kid to school anymore. I'm just staying in bed. You put the bed in the living room. I feel like actually what it is, it's every crazy stressed-out mother's fantasy, is basically what you wrote. It's like, you know what, I've had enough. That's it. I'm just not going to do that anymore. Let's see what happens.

Cecily: Some of Mandy -- no, probably all of her behavior came from that moment where I'm saying goodbye to my family in the morning and it's just me and the dog. Then I'm like, what if I just took to my bed and they came home from school and work or whatever and I was just in bed? How crazy would that be? Instead of doing it, I wrote it.

Zibby: There we go. Why not? Cecily, how did you get into writing to begin with? Maybe it's just a natural outgrowth of what goes on in your head. How did you start the Gossip Girl series? How did you become a published author? How did it begin?

Cecily: Oh, boy. Going way back, in high school, English was my favorite class. I had this wonderful teacher named Christine Schutt. She's actually a published author. She really encouraged me to begin with when I was a teenager to write outside of class. In my head, I always had this idea that it was the only thing that I was really good at. In college, I was an English major. I took all the creative writing classes that they offered. I actually did both poetry and fiction. For my senior thesis, I published a collection of short stories and poetry. It's actually funny. I don't really write poems, but then when I'm writing a book -- Dan in Gossip Girl, in the books, is a poet. He writes poetry. Then Stuart in Cobble Hill is a musician. That's not poetry, but I did have fun with his little one-line rhymes. I started a master's, an MFA in fiction writing, but I didn't actually finish. Maybe I could go back. I just did a year. I felt like I wanted to be living in the world and not in school anymore.

My first job was actually in publishing in England working for a children's book publisher. My husband is English. We met over here. Then I went over there to live with him and got married over there. Hence, Roy is British in Cobble Hill. This is how I know so much about English people. Half of my family is English. While I was living in England in my early twenties at that job, it was this weird -- I feel like a lot of people have encountered this. I had this editorial assistant job. I didn't really have enough to do, and so I would start writing my own stuff. I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing. None of that was ever published. It's all on floppy disk. [laughter] What do you do with those? Anyway, then we moved to New York. I got a job with a company called 17th Street Productions which then was acquired by Alloy Entertainment. They were a very unusual company. It was a book production company which meant that they came up with ideas for series, mostly young adult series. The editors were really in charge of the content and what the series would be. That was my job. Then they would outsource the writing and hire writers who didn't get to use their own names. One of the most well-known series that they had done before I got there was Sweet Valley High.

I was hired to work on a horse series, because I grew up riding horses, called Thoroughbred. It was about horse racing. It was such a big series. I think we published one book a month or something. It was crazy. I was insanely busy. I had to come up with the plotlines for the stories. I'm going on and on. The company wanted to develop and produce more authentic fiction. They worked with all the big publishing houses. One of the series that one of my colleagues came up while we were there was The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. At the same time, another colleague of mine, after reading a newspaper article about a girl who had exposed everyone in her class, some sort of scandal through instant messaging, he came up with this title, Gossip Girl. The title was not mine. Then in the development process, I was assigned this to come up with the characters. I just went completely crazy. I was like, I don't want this to be like anything we've ever done before. I don't want it to be in this weird made-up place like Sweet Valley High. I grew up in Manhattan. It's going to be about Manhattan teenagers. I came up with the whole cast of characters. I wrote the introduction. They sent it out to publishers.

This one editor, Cindy Eagan at Little Brown, read it and was like, "This is amazing. This sounds exactly like the people that I went to boarding school with. I want to come and talk to you about publishing this." She asked in the meeting, "Who wrote this proposal?" I was like, "I did." I was still kind of a junior person there. She was like, "You're writing the books." My boss was like, "We don't usually do that." She was like, "No, she's writing the books." She was really my champion. They gave me a shot at writing the first book. She insisted that it have my name on it. To make a long story short, by the time this third book was coming out, it was on the best-seller list before it even was published because people were preordering it. I quit my job and was just writing Gossip Girl full time while also nursing my newborn baby. It's funny because the other thing that -- as Gossip Girl became more and more popular pretty early on, because I literally gave birth to my daughter and the first book came out at the same time and the second book came out six months later, the publisher at Little Brown had told people, "She can't travel right now," because I'd just given birth. Somehow, it got in the system that Cecily von Ziegesar doesn't travel. Years later people would be like, "I know you don't travel, but..." I felt like I had this weird reputation or something. I was like, "What do you mean I don't travel? I'll go anywhere." I'm a travel [indiscernible]. I love to travel. It was all just because of the weird timing of that first book that there was this idea that I never travel. Then the word got out I'm going to Brazil. I'll go anywhere. If you want me, I'll go.

Zibby: How involved were you, then, with it being adapted as a TV show?

Cecily: That happened -- I don't even remember when the show came out. 2007? Is that right? I can't remember when the show first came out. I wasn't involved in the writing of the show. I met with the creators of the show. I had lunch with Stephanie Savage at the restaurant in Barneys. She's not a native New Yorker. She's actually a Canadian. We walked around the reservoir in Central Park. Then we went to my school. We watched the girls coming out of school. I felt like I needed to take her around the neighborhood where it all happens just to be sure that she -- I think I was being a little crazy because then they wound up doing an incredible job. It was way better than I ever could've imagined. I was so nervous that it was going to be filmed in LA. I didn't know at that point. They were also very generous with me. I was able to go on set anytime. They asked me to do a little cameo in one of the later episodes. I had a line. That was really fun. The show was really amazing. It was really different from the books. It started out with the first book and then completely -- they had to go beyond the timeframe of the books. It was really amazing.

Zibby: Wow. I think I watched probably every episode of Gossip Girl over the years. I have four kids. My daughter is thirteen. She's like, "My friends are talking about this show." I'm like, I don't know. Do I want you watching it?

Cecily: It's funny because my daughter's friends -- I think she was always a little bit nervous about it or something. It was in her life. Because of that, she didn't really pay much attention. Then somebody would find out in middle school, seventh, eighth grade, the same age as your daughter. Then they'd be like, "Oh, my god. Tell your mom I want a --" She’d end up having to bring signed copies of the books to school. Sometimes teachers would ask too. It would just get out in school. She tried to keep it on the low-down a little bit. I think she has pretty much watched all of the episodes of the show. I don't think she's read all the books, though. Maybe later. It'll be her escape from schoolwork.

Zibby: I know you worked on Cobble Hill on and off for five years. Do you have another project that you've already been working on or dabbling in that you think might come next, or you're just not sure what's up after this?

Cecily: I don't want to get anyone too excited because it's not a done deal. I don't really know what my involvement is going to be. I'm trying to, just almost as an experiment at this stage, to adapt Cobble Hill for television. It would be really fun. I think it lends itself very much to a TV show. I wanted to try to take a stab at, this time, writing it myself. The problem so far has been that every single thing that you do when you're writing a book is not what you do when you're writing for television. What I was talking about earlier, all that interior monologue, all that off-camera what she's thinking and what he's thinking when she's talking and all that stuff, you can't do any of that. It's just dialogue. I'm finding it very challenging. I also have this weird impulse to get up and try to act it out myself, just the little things, the stage directions, so that it's not so awkward. It's a fun experiment. I don't know if I give it to somebody, if they're going to be like, yeah, just stick to books. [laughs] We'll see.

Zibby: What advice would you have for aspiring authors?

Cecily: Everyone tells you this, but reading, to me, is more helpful than anything else. I read across all genres. Maybe this is crazy too. There are even little kids' books that I love, picture books. I love the language. It's funny, the cover of Cobble Hill looks a lot like that Richard Scarry book, What Do People Do All Day? There are some lines in that book that I really like. There's a cadence to some kids' books. It is sort of like poetry. Reading for the music of the sentences, to me, is really important. Sometimes I'll just pick up a book that I know really well because I've read it a few times and just read a few lines. Then that gets me going again. I'm also just, I'm a book nerd. I'm guilty of the fact that I'll start -- I'm always reading like five different books at the same time. Do you do that?

Zibby: Yes. I, a hundred percent, do that.

Cecily: I feel like if the authors knew that I was doing that, they'd be like, what are you doing? You're not just reading my book? [laughs] Sometimes it'll just be a magazine or something. To get warmed up somehow, I always need to be reading. The other thing that I do is -- I'm sort of an insomniac, which is part of the reason why staying in bed all day makes sense to me. If you don't sleep, you may as well just be somewhere relaxing. I keep a pen or a pencil and a piece of paper next to my bed. In the middle of the night in the dark I'll just scribble down something. Usually in the morning, I can't read it. Every once in a while, it's worthwhile. It literally might be just a word or something. I do take notes on scraps of paper, napkins, Post-its. I'm always scribbling something down. This isn't good advice. This is just illustrating how crazy I am.

Zibby: I think it's great advice. I think reading is great. I think scribbling things down is great. I think opening up a book and getting inspired just by a couple sentences is awesome. Why not? This is all great advice.

Cecily: The other advice I have is -- I know after years of doing this that my brain doesn't really work that well until three in the afternoon. Some people are morning people. I'm definitely not a morning person. I probably wouldn't keep anything that I -- if I sat down at nine o'clock in the morning and made myself write, it wouldn't be good. I do everything else beforehand. I exercise and I do all the chores that I need to do and read and all that stuff in the first part of the day. Then all of a sudden, I'm ready to go. It has always been a shame for me that three o'clock in the afternoon was when people would start coming back into the house. I'm like, I'm writing. [laughs] I can be working at two o'clock in the morning. Ideally, if I didn't have a family, I would work from probably three in the afternoon until eleven o'clock at night. That doesn't really work when you have other people in the house. It's nice when you can just give yourself the liberty of being like -- you're not going to write for eight hours. It's not like a normal job. What works best me anyway is being like, oh, I'm going to literally just take a couple seconds to scribble this down. Somehow, I manage to piece it all together when I do have that time and my brain is in the right place. Then I'll write twenty pages at a sitting. What I'm trying to say is don't force it. Don't try to force something that isn't happening. Just go take a walk or go running or read something. You can't make yourself be creative.

Zibby: Or wander around Cobble Hill looking for a [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Cecily: Exactly. [laughter]

Zibby: Thank you, Cecily. Thanks so much for coming on my podcast. I know you're not a big podcast person, but you should listen to it because you're a book lover. You might enjoy it.

Cecily: It's so funny. I'm just old-fashioned. I'm just starting to discover podcasts. I'm excited. This is good. Somehow, I thought podcasts were for the people who are wired. [laughs] They're not. They're for everyone. I can do this too.

Zibby: You can experiment with your own. Have a great day. Thanks so much for doing this.

Cecily: Thank you, Zibby. It was really fun.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Cecily: Bye.

Bryan Washington, MEMORIAL

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Bryan. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Bryan Washington: Thanks so much for having me, Zibby.

Zibby: Congratulations on Memorial, your debut novel. I know you already have Lot, which was a collection of stories. Now your debut novel making a big, big splash in the world, congratulations.

Bryan: Thanks so much. It's all very surreal. I feel like anytime someone's interested in the thing that you're trying to do, it's deeply surreal.

Zibby: I bet.

Bryan: Massively surreal, but very grateful.

Zibby: I heard from your publicist that you are the next GMA Book Club pick, which I am so thrilled about. That's amazing.

Bryan: That comment about things being surreal, it would've been surreal just to have the book come out. To see it on that scale, on that platform, you can only be grateful because it's just such an unexpected thing.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. I'm almost sorry I'm not talking to you after because I would've wanted to hear what it was like to have your book in Times Square and all the rest. Just DM me or something because you won't be busy or anything. [laughs]

Bryan: I'll reach out.

Zibby: Aside from the success of your endeavors, let's talk about your actual endeavors and all of your writing. I read so many of your amazing essays in all sort of different publications like BuzzFeed and The New York Times and just everywhere, New Yorker, fiction, nonfiction, all your stories. Let's start with your roots going back to Jamaica. Can we talk about that a little bit? You wrote a few really beautiful pieces about that and having different cultures in different countries and going back and everybody clapping on the plane on the way to Jamaica, which, by the way, is one of my favorite places in the world. I think that's why I want to talk about it.

Bryan: Anytime that you land. It's just like, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. [laughs]

Zibby: It's one of the only places we regularly travelled to growing up. I just thought that's what you did on planes.

Bryan: Oh, my god, can you imagine? I feel like that's all we should do on planes. It's so beautiful that we've landed in a lot of ways.

Zibby: Until I read what you wrote, it didn't even occur to me it was only there. Then I had to go back in my head. I'm like, no way, was it really only to Jamaica? Anyway, you taught me something about my own life.

Bryan: When you fly to New York, no one seems terribly excited to be there. It's just like, let's get off the plane. I was born in Kentucky, but my mom's Jamaican. Pretty early on, I had the opportunity to go back a handful of times. I think that with every piece that I've written, in some capacity, a lot of it has come down to the generosity of the editors that I've been able to work with because I've been able to work with a lot of folks who are so great at their jobs like Nicole Chung over at Catapult and Rachel Sanders who used to be at BuzzFeed and now Racheal Arons at the New Yorker. They’ve been super receptive to me writing about a lot of different stuff and not really siloing me into one particular beat. It's made for a lot of opportunities to spread myself around as far as interests are concerned.

Zibby: I feel like this theme of travel and negotiating different relationships is very present in Memorial in many ways, and also the search for family and what that really means and all of that. Maybe you could start by telling people who don't know what Memorial is about, what it's about and how you ended up writing that novel.

Bryan: It really has depended on who I'm talking to. Sometimes I'll call it a gay psycho-dramedy. I've called it a lowercase love story. My editor started saying a rom-com with teeth a few months ago. I actually really like that. It really does depend on what headspace I'm in. I just use one of them. I think that at its base, it's a love story. I wanted to write a love story about characters that I wanted to read and that I hadn’t seen on the page. I wanted it to be a love story featuring characters in communities that were in conversation with one another as opposed to a reaction to trauma or a reaction to the obstacles, whether infrastructural or personal, that they may have been facing. Trying to write a love story that allowed room for each partner to grow into both that relationship but also the relationships around them and themselves was the overarching goal.

It started as a short story that I wrote for a zine. I was in the middle of writing another project that I will never turn back to. I keep turning back to this short story because it was easier to write, partly, but also because it was one that I wanted to see the ending of. Friends would tell me, "Hey, that's actually a big clue that you need to just do that." I was like, "No, no, no, no one would read this. It's not marketable." I pitched it to my agent. She was super receptive, but I was still a bit tentative. Then I pitched it to my editor, Laura Perciasepe. She was super receptive when she really didn't have to be. At that point, I sat down and really seriously started drafting it. It took about three years or so and about eleven-ish drafts or so. It was a little bit of work trying to get it to come together and trying to get the different threads in the place that I wanted them to be. Really, it was just reaching toward the sort of thing that I wanted to read and the sort of book that I thought that I might enjoy if it existed that got me to finish it.

Zibby: Wow. Your writing style is very unique. Rough around the edge is not -- I don't mean that in a bad way. Maybe raw around the edges. It's just so -- I used to have a good vocabulary. Today, it's failing me. Now I feel like I insulted you, which I obviously did not mean to do. I don't mean rough around the edges.

Bryan: No, rough around the edges, that's amazing as a description. [laughs]

Zibby: It's just so raw. I don't know how else to say it, bold. You don't mess around with words you don't need. You don't use flowery language that has no use. You just say it. It's in such a sparse way that's even more powerful, especially the dialogue and your use of punctuation. I was really into it.

Bryan: I so appreciate that. I'm really interested in the silences between characters and the spaces between what characters say to one another and also the spaces between what's actually said by someone and what they understand and what they internalize and how the context in which they're in when they hear the thing can impact what they actually take with them and how when that context changes, perhaps, their memory or their internalization of the thing that they heard could change as well. Really playing with the space between what's said and what's understood is always in the back of my head. Also, I'm hyperconscious of accessibility when it comes to language. That might have to do with the fact that I wasn't the most prodigious reader growing up. What's most impressive to me or what's really most amazing to me as far as fiction is concerned is folks who use a simplicity of language in order to get five, six, seven, eight, nine different themes across at the same time. Really striving for that is important to me generally, but also for Memorial too.

Zibby: Oh, good. Okay, great. [laughter] Good, you tried to do that. That's awesome.

Bryan: There was a little bit of tension on it, so it's been nice to hear -- I feel like you try to do a thing and then it's like, did I do the thing? Then other people tell you, you did the thing. I can talk about it now. [laughs]

Zibby: You did the thing. That's awesome. Wait, go back to not being a big reader growing up. Did you not like to read at all? Were you a late reader? Tell me about your reading in childhood and maybe just your childhood. You said you grew up in Kentucky, but now you're in Houston. What happened in between? Where'd you go? Tell me about growing up. We only have a little bit of time. [laughs] I'm like, tell me your life story.

Bryan: Oh, my god, who are you? I was born in Kentucky, moved to Texas when I was three or so. The first house we lived in was just outside of Houston proper. It was a very white neighborhood, a very white subdivision. The street itself was deeply diverse. My parents' friends, and there are a cohort of folks who moved to that area at the same time, was deeply diverse. I was really fortunate to be privy to a lot of different folks coming from a lot of different communities, cooking a number of different cuisines. I think that my earliest reading ventures were cookbooks, partly because of the fact that my parents worked. If I wanted to eat, I had to cook. I didn't know how to do that, so really just bugging friends and bugging friends' parents. Reading cookbooks was how I passed my time pretty early on. I did all of the Texas cis-boy things. I was really into football for a time. Then I was no longer. Once I stopped playing football, it left my brain. It entirely evaporated.

Zibby: What position did you play?

Bryan: I played fullback, which was an experience. I was pretty slow, so it really didn't make sense structurally for me to be doing that. What I really fell into narratively was film. It's a boon now. It's something that I can appreciate now. I watched a lot of foreign film, or foreign from the States in either case, so the ways in which you could tell a story both structurally and also narratively. The kind of stories that you could tell always seemed really wide open to me. We had a local Blockbuster. They had everything. You can travel the world at Blockbuster. A lot of my early narrative edification was through film. Then I went to the University of Houston for undergrad. I took a class with a guy named Matt Johnson. He was incredibly generous with his time and deeply kind as far as what I was trying to do on the page. It was encouragement to just keep going. It was really fortuitous to meet him. Then I did an MFA after undergrad. I met Joanna Leake who was also deeply generous with her time and deeply encouraging, so being really lucky to meet folks who were into what I was trying to do and receptive to it.

Zibby: Amazing. Why didn't you give up? What made you keep going? This is the thing I'm always most curious about. Eleven drafts of Memorial, why not just put it aside? What drove you to keep working on it?

Bryan: I've gotten to think a lot about it now. At this point, it seems like a bit much. [laughs] When I wrote Memorial, it wasn't a book that I wrote on contract. If I hadn’t finished it, then no one would've cared because there was no financial obligation one way or the other. I really wanted to see how it would end. I was teaching ESL at the time, which is a job that I loved. I would teach and then I would write on the weekends or write during lunch. If I had a day off, I would go to the coffee shop and work on it. I just wanted to see how it would end. For the longest time, I thought that I would finish an iteration of it, and then I would show it to my friends and then they would read it or not read, and that would be the story of Memorial. I was quite all right with that. I was quite happy with it. Really, just wanting to see what a narrative where there isn't really a clear antagonist and where there are characters that are hopefully approaching one another from a place of love and from a place of growth could end up and what that would look like, it was and is really important to me. Just trying to see if it was a thing that I could do was the driver in a lot of ways.

Zibby: Interesting. Was there anything in your life that happened, particularly I'm referring to not especially the mother-in-law, but the mother-in-law-ish person coming to stay from Tokyo and the boyfriend jetting off and leaving the -- I'm not explaining this well -- leaving the new person there so that he doesn't have to deal with his mother. It'd be like I start dating someone and I'm like, see ya, you hang out with my mom. That would not play probably even now, and I'm married. What inspired that? Where did that piece of it come from?

Bryan: That scenario arrived for me intact. There isn't really a one-to-one correlation between any of the characters and any of their arcs and things that I've experienced. The most tangible one might be that I worked at an aftercare place for five years. It was a job that I really loved. Aside from that, there's not a lot where you could draw a direct line. At the same time, I wanted to read something featuring the kinds of relationships that I'd had, the kind of relationships that my friends had had. Trying to put that on the page was really important to me. I knew that if I wanted to write a story in which the ending was open for the characters, not necessarily structurally open, but open as far as a possibility for them, I would need to at least create a stable foundation in the intro, a sort of bait and switch. If you're going to read the narrative about one particular thing, like a very strange [indiscernible], and then it becomes something else or it becomes many different things. I was really lucky in that that scenario arrived mostly intact from the very outset. At the same time, I think that was one of the very few things about the book that from the beginning I knew that this will probably stay. Everything else changed a handful of times, at least, over the course of writing it.

Zibby: I was struck in one of your essays about the experience with your uncle in Jamaica where you saw a group of gay men around a boat. You were like, oh, look, great. Before you knew it, your uncle was hurling stones at them. You were just standing there. Then you all just paddled off or something like that and left the men. You were like, well, I'm not coming out to this crew. Forget that. How did everybody in your family then react to this book which is very open and graphic? I don't know if that's the right word, but very graphic, as many sexual scenes are no matter what. You're right in that it doesn't happen as often in literature between two men. What does your family think about that?

Bryan: The family members that I know have read it have been overwhelmingly positive. I gave a galley of it to my mom once I had a solidified galley back in December. She would send updates every few weeks just sort of like USPS telling me, it's here right now, not whether they liked it or not whether they finished. [laughs]

Zibby: Just her page number?

Bryan: Like, the galley is in Atlanta. That galley's in New York. This is the person who has it. Everyone that I've heard from has been really supportive of the story and really just overwhelmingly positive toward what I was trying to do. I feel like if everyone is positive that also makes me a bit weary because I'm like, what am I not seeing? I'm grateful for it, but it also comes back to this idea of what I wanted to try to do with the book is not operate in binaries and not silo characters into archetypes that don't give them room to change or room to grow or room to expand their language or to silo them into one position or another. They may not have the language or the lexicon to have the conversations that the folks around them, whether it's family, whether it's lovers, whether it's friends, want them to have, and just putting every character in a position to be able to move toward goodness. So far, everyone has been overwhelmingly supportive, which is also a bit concerning. I'm waiting for the other shoe to fall. It's very strange.

Zibby: Holding your breath a little bit.

Bryan: Not too long. As soon as I say this, I'm going to get a text, so-and-so is [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Zibby: You're like, oh, good, I was waiting for that one.

Bryan: Exactly. Confirmed.

Zibby: Are you working on anything new now?

Bryan: Yeah. I have a project that I'm trying to get into shape. I don't know if it'll stick or if it's just a hiccup and then it'll go away. The biggest thing on the horizon is that I'm adapting this series for television. A24 is producing it. Rudin Productions is assisting in the production. A big thing for me during the option process was that if it was going to end up on screen, I wanted to be a person to adapt it because it just seemed like a really cool opportunity, for one thing. Also, there was a certain way that I wanted it done or a certain way that I wanted to see it. I'm really fortunate that A24 was super receptive to that. They're such great folks. The Rutin Production folks are such great folks. Trying to figure out what the iteration on screen will look like will probably keep me busy for a while.

Zibby: I would think.

Bryan: [laughs] Yeah, just a little bit.

Zibby: That sounds like a big job to do.

Bryan: It'll be an undertaking. I'm working with really cool folks. I think that everyone is approaching it from the standpoint of, we just want to make a cool thing, a really solid thing. I think it'll be a good experience.

Zibby: I didn't mean job in a negative way. I meant an exciting, fulfilling, wonderful project.

Bryan: No, it is work. It is certainly work. I'm in the midst of all of this work. I'm like, oh, my god, more work. I have to cast a positive light on the amount of work it is because otherwise it would be untenable.

Zibby: I feel like it actually might be easier than most to adapt just because I feel like your scenes are so visual. I can see it all, like the taxi or whatever, the car pulling up to the curb at the airport and the kitchen scene with waking up late and having the mother-in-law character be there. I see it. I don't know if that's what's in your head, but I have a clear vision of those scenes.

Bryan: When I'm writing, I pull a lot from film because so many of my narrative reference points and so many of my structural reference points are from things that I've seen. Trying to paint as clear a picture of the world and of the characters and of their interactions as possible is really important to me and something that I really set out to do. That probably comes through more in the editing process once the story is actually there, trying to hone it and cut away all of the unnecessary bits so that you just have story. You have the reader, and they're able to, ideally, have a relationship with that story. It becomes their own.

Zibby: I feel like I have to use what you keep referring to as -- what do you say? Your narrative creative process or something through film? I feel like I need to use that to justify the amount of TV I let my kids watch. I'll be like, no, no, no, they're just bolstering their film narrative of storytelling.

Bryan: That's exactly what it is. They're expanding the canon.

Zibby: Expanding the canon, thank you. That's even better. They're expanding the canon. I'm just going to leave them in front of the TV. [laughs] Do you have any advice to aspiring authors other than perhaps watching lots of TV?

Bryan: Watch as much TV as you can. Other than that, one thing that I would say is not to take too much heed of the market, which can be an incredible temptation, especially when you're first starting out or if you feel as though you don't have connections or if you feel like you don't have a byline or if you feel like you need to add more to your byline. The market really doesn't know what the market wants until the market wants it. For Memorial, a difficulty when it came to initially drafting it and then editing it was that there weren’t too many direct comps that I could pull from. There really weren’t very many total comps that I could pull from. It wasn't until, really, probably early March of this year that I was convinced that like six people would not read it. [laughs] I would just try to tell the story that you're trying to tell to the best of your ability and really create a world on the page, which is going to be difficult regardless of what your narrative looks like or what you set out to do. If you're able to achieve that, I think that that's the biggest boon in a lot of ways.

Zibby: Awesome. Great. Thank you, Bryan. Thanks for our little chat today. I hope I didn't offend you. [laughs]

Bryan: No, no, not at all. Thank you so much for having me.

Zibby: Thanks for coming on. I'll be watching Good Morning America to see when everything's announced. I'm so excited for you. That's awesome.

Bryan: Thanks so much, Zibby.

Zibby: Take care.

Bryan: Likewise. Please take care.

Zibby: Bye.

Alice Hoffman, MAGIC LESSONS

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Alice. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." I feel like I should call you Mrs. Hoffman. I have so much respect for you. I feel bad just calling you Alice.

Alice Hoffman: Please call me Alice.

Zibby: I'm delighted to have you on my podcast. I was actually secretly thrilled when you followed me on Instagram. I was like, oh, my gosh, Alice Hoffman's following me. It's a thrill. Welcome.

Alice: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Zibby: Congratulations on your latest book, Magic Lessons. At this point in your career, do you even get excited when a new book comes out? What's it like when a book comes out when you've already written so many books?

Alice: I more get anxious than I get excited. You're with the book by yourself for so long. Then it goes out into the world. It's kind of like sending your kid to school or something like that. You lose control. You don't know how people are going to like that kid of yours. Then once it's out, then it's fine. It's just more like the week before, the week of its first being out there, it's anxiety-provoking.

Zibby: Do you feel any better at this point? Are you calming?

Alice: Yeah.

Zibby: I'm glad I caught you on the down. [laughs] Would you mind just telling listeners a little more about Magic Lessons and why you chose to write a prequel to Practical Magic at this point?

Alice: I wrote Practical Magic, the original book, twenty-five years ago. I never intended to write any more about that family, but I kept getting notes and letters from readers that they really felt like it wasn't enough. They wanted to know more. Instead of going forward in time, I'm more interested in going back in time. The first thing I did was write a book called Rules of Magic which took place in the 1960s because that's my era. It was a pleasure to write about it. Then when I thought about writing another book because I kept getting letters, I thought I really wanted to see how the family originated. I'm always interested in, there's a theory of ghosts in the nursery, those relatives that you've never even met that influence everything about you and your life. I wanted to go backward in time and see who the first Owens woman was.

Zibby: Wow. By the way, my husband and I listened to this. We started listening to it in the car together. Our last name is Owens. It started the narration, and we were looking at each other like, [gasp]. [laughs]

Alice: I don't know, maybe you're related.

Zibby: Maybe.

Alice: I have to say, the recording is great. It's Sutton Foster. I'm a big fan of hers. She was in Younger. She's a great theater actress. It's a wonderful recording.

Zibby: I just had Pamela Redmond on my podcast who wrote Younger. It's all coming full circle.

Alice: Really?

Zibby: Yes. It was an amazing recording and very captivating. The drive flew by. Why write it now? Why at this point? You could write any book. What's it like when you sit down and you're like, what's my next project going to be? How come you arrived at this today?

Alice: I don't know if I think about it that way because I have a list of projects, things that I'm interested in doing, books that I think I'm going to write. It was sitting here. I just thought, I had a lot of fun writing Rules of Magic, so I wanted to get back to that. I kind of wanted to escape. I felt like this book could be an escape for me as a writer. I think it is in some ways for readers. This is such a difficult time. I felt like I wanted to go back to this other time and escape into magic and escape into this family. As it turned out, a lot of things that had happened in the seventeenth century had a correlation to what is happening right now in terms of how women are treated and the idea of strong, independent women being feared. Also, I didn't realize it took place during and after the plague in England. As I was writing it, it was just very strange that the world seemed not that different.

Zibby: I was helping my daughter study for an American history test last night. I was reading through the things. I was like, "Actually, this is very similar to the Black Lives Matter movement that's going on right now. You know how there are protests across the street? This is what they did then." It's funny how things sort of ebb and flow in cycles.

Alice: They really do. It was really interesting to me. Also, the whole idea of the puritan mentality -- puritans were the ones that started the witchcraft trials here. Although, there were witchcraft trials all over Europe. The idea that women were kind of at the root of all evil, it's the idea of Eve bringing evil into the world. It was really shocking, their whole philosophy, and a little bit scary because there's a little some of that happening right now.

Zibby: I was going to say, that's not completely gone, I would think, from some people's imaginations or whatever you want to call it. Why do you think witchcraft? I understand what you're saying about women in general, but what is it about the sorcery, the witchcraft-y-ness of it? You have lists of ingredients and what all of these things do, which you must have researched, I'm assuming.

Alice: Oh, yeah.

Zibby: What is your fascination with it?

Alice: I have always been fascinated with witches. I was a fairy tale fanatic as a kid. At that point when I was a kid, I felt like it was the literature that spoke the truth in a very deep way, an emotional truth that other children's literature didn't at that time. I still think it's the deepest psychological literature, especially when you're a child. I feel like witches, they are the only female mythic creature. They're the only mythic creature with power. I think that's why as a little girl I always wanted to dress up as a witch. I always wanted to read about witches. I just felt like they had power.

Zibby: There you go. It's funny because I never really thought of witches in such a positive way until this whole experience with you.

Alice: Good. [laughs] The idea of midwives and healers, I think that's all kind of under the same label as witch, women who do things they're not supposed to do. I thought it was so interesting that during the plague that women who did herbal remedies had a bigger success rate than doctors, mostly because they washed their hands. That was so interesting to me.

Zibby: That is interesting. That's the thing I try over and over to teach the kids. This is of the moment, the most important thing. What about mediums today? Do you feel like they're in the same family as the witch, or you think it's witch-adjacent?

Alice: I think witch is more mythic, more nature. It has more to do with green magic, nature, herbs, healing. That's how I perceive it. I have to say, in fairy tales, I can't remember the exact statistic, but over ninety percent of fairy tales have girl heroes, which is very unusual in folk tales or in any story, really. In fairy tales, the girls are the ones that figure things out. The girls are the ones who are at risk. I always feel like they're cautionary tales, the stories your grandmother would tell you to beware of certain things and to know certain things.

Zibby: Speaking of at risk, let's go back in time to your career trajectory here. First of all, can you tell me a little more about how you got started? I know I've read about it, but if you could just tell me the story of how your passion for writing translated in such a unique way into becoming a writer.

Alice: I never thought I'd be a writer. I was a reader. I was a fanatical reader. I was a secret writer, as I think many people are, especially girls. I had stories and notebooks that I never showed anyone. Then when I was about sixteen, for some reason I wrote a story and I sent it to Esquire magazine. I had never seen Esquire magazine. I'd just heard of it. I'd never read it. I sent them a terrible story about the end of the world. I didn't use any capital letters. I got back a handwritten note from somebody who said to me, "You should use capital letters and grammar. Also, if you have another story sometime and you're not kidding around, send it to us." I was in shock. It was this thing where suddenly I was in touch with the outside world, and somewhere, someone at this mythical magazine thought I was a writer. That stayed with me. I kept writing. I never intended to go to college. I lived in a very working-class world. I started going to college. I went to night school. My brother lived in California and said there was a really good school out there, I should apply, and then I could move to California. I had never heard of this school, but I applied.

It was Stanford. They gave me a fellowship. I had a great mentor. It just totally changed my life. I feel like sometimes you have this one teacher that just changes everything. My teacher was Albert Guerard. He sent my first story to City College, to a magazine that they had called Fiction. A friend of his was the editor. It was published, which was a shock. There's no money involved. I don't think people became writers to make money or anything back then. After the story was published, I got a letter from a very famous editor named Ted Solotaroff. He said, "Do you have a novel?" I wrote back. I said, "I do." I started writing it that day really fast. I think that's why I'm a fast writer. I just felt, I don't know if this guy's going to keep his job or what's going to happen. I better write this novel fast because no one's ever going to ask me this again.

Zibby: Wow. How long did that book take you?

Alice: Six months, but it was terrible. It was terrible. He helped me with it. In the end, he didn't take it, but he sent it to my agent. I feel like it was luck. Also, every time somebody opened the door, I walked through. I didn't say, I don't know, I don't have a novel, or it might take me two years. I just felt like, this is my chance and I'm taking it.

Zibby: That's great. You don't have the same agent, do you?

Alice: She was my agent until she passed away.

Zibby: I'm sorry.

Alice: She was my agent for, I think, forty years.

Zibby: I'm so sorry.

Alice: I was lucky. I was really lucky. She was great. Her name was Elaine Markson. She was an amazing agent.

Zibby: I also noticed you started the Hoffman Center for Breast Cancer Research. Is that right?

Alice: Yeah.

Zibby: I wanted to find out more about why you started that and what that whole initiative is about.

Alice: I'm a breast cancer survivor of twenty-five years. When I was being treated at Mount Auburn Hospital, which is a Harvard teaching hospital, this small hospital, they didn't have a breast center. While you were waiting for radiation, you'd be sitting next to someone who had broken his arm. Once I sat next to Gina, my wonderful dog groomer. There was no privacy. I think when you're going through treatment for that, you need something special. When I finished my treatment, I asked some of the doctors over there, what could I do? They said, "Let's start a center here. That's what you can do." For twenty-five years almost, maybe it's more like twenty years, we've been doing an event every spring where writers come and read. We've had incredible writers, everyone from Amy Tan to Celeste Ng to just so many amazing people who have given so generously of their time and created this state-of-the-art breast cancer center. I'm really proud of being involved with them.

Zibby: I want to get on the list. Put me on the list for the benefit. That sounds great. Obviously, as we've discussed with my love of books, I'm a sucker for hearing authors talk. I never seem to get tired of it, which is sort of shocking even to me. Of course, to support a great cause is also wonderful.

Alice: I will. I don't know what we're doing this year because everything is different this year.

Zibby: Everything is different everywhere. I'm beginning to think it's just never going back. I've given up. I've given up hope. [laughs]

Alice: I think Zoom is here to stay, don't you think?

Zibby: I do.

Alice: I think podcasts are here to stay. Certain things I think are not going back.

Zibby: It is nice not to have to move around as much throughout the world to see all these different people, which is nice. That's the only perk I've found. A lot your books have been adapted to movies, TV. How does that process fit into your thinking when you're writing the book? Do you visualize scenes at all, movie-wise, or does it not even come into your consciousness?

Alice: The truth is, I was a screenwriter for twenty-five years, some with my own books, but mostly for other people's books. I learned a lot from being a screenwriter. I learned a lot about telling a story. When I'm writing, I don't think of it as a movie. I feel like it's something I'm living. I feel like I'm in the book. I'm living it. I am the characters. I don't really think of it as a movie, like, would this make a good movie? That's not really the way I think about it.

Zibby: I'm sorry. I did know that because you wrote Independence Day, right, the screenplay for that?

Alice: Mm-hmm.

Zibby: Anyway, I'm sorry. I have heard from other authors how critical a skill it is to be able to screenwrite and then turn -- I feel like there's so many people who write fiction primarily and they're like, now I'm going to try screenwriting. I think there's something in the reverse that's very powerful.

Alice: I think it does teach you something about telling a story. It's really different. They're very different things. It teaches you to know what the heart of your story is. I think when you're writing a novel, this happens to me, you can just really get lost in these offshoots and tangents. Sometimes they're really interesting. Basically, with a screenplay, you're pretty much telling a straight-on story. That’s helpful.

Zibby: Which of your many projects are you going to pick up next?

Alice: I'm working on the fourth Magic book. I thought I was finished until I talked to my editor, but it turns out I'm not finished. [laughs] I have some more work on it. That's been both really fun and really sad because I feel like it's the last book. It's the end of twenty-five-year relationship with the Owens family. It's been both things. It's also been a great escape during this time during that's such a sad, terrible time.

Zibby: Which period of the world? What timeline are you writing that book in?

Alice: It's modern times.

Zibby: Wow, how great. Then you can have a whole box set, sell it at Halloween.

Alice: They're not all published by the same publisher.

Zibby: So you can't do that?

Alice: I can't do that with all of them.

Zibby: Well, that's okay. You can make your own. [laughter]

Alice: That's a good idea.

Zibby: Little gift bags. What advice would you have to aspiring authors?

Alice: I really think the best advice is to do it every day. My life is a little complicated right now, but I always would get up really early before anybody else was awake, before the phone's ringing, and work for at least two hours so that you get that two hours in. If you get up at five thirty and start working from six or whatever time it is, for me, that always was really helpful. When I had other jobs, I'd get up before that other job and write then. I feel like if you write every day, it's not so hard to go back to it. For me, I always feel like if I stop writing, I'm never going to be able to remember how to do it again. That's my tip. You have to write in order to write.

Zibby: It's so funny that you've been such an established literary figure and you still are afraid that if you take too long a vacation, you'll lose it.

Alice: I am afraid I'm going to lose it. Every time I start a book I feel like I don't know who wrote the other books. I don't know how they did it. I don't know how to do it. I have to relearn, how do you write a book?

Zibby: [laughs] How do you do it? Do you get it all out? Do you ever outline your stories?

Alice: I do. I'll outline. I make a lot of notes. What's fun for me is world-building. I write down lists of plants and lists of places and if I'm writing about the sixties in New York, all the different music clubs and all the different bookstores that were there, just starting to build the world for the characters to move in.

Zibby: Wow, that's beautiful. It's amazing that there's a job that allows you to just recreate the universe in which you live every time you open your laptop.

Alice: It's a good job. You know, it's kind of what you do as a reader. You leave this world behind. You go into a book. You escape. I feel like it's the same thing when you're writing. You're creating this other world using things that you knew, who you are and how you see the world. It's just creating something brand new.

Zibby: I know the world has changed so much from when you first went to Stanford until now. Is there anything that you miss from the way the publishing industry used to work? Is there anything you long for?

Alice: When I started, nobody talked about getting published. Nobody talked about money. It was right after the Ken Kesey era. Yes, you wanted to write a perfect story or something like that. There were no book tours except for people like Norman Mailer or something like that. There were no book tours. It wasn't about the outside things. It was about the inside, about wanting to be a writer, wanting to tell a story. I think there's a lot more pressure on people right now. I think it's harder to get published. The publishing houses are conglomerates. There were a lot more publishing houses. Now there are also different options about publishing in different ways, online or with small presses. I kind of miss that freedom to just do whatever you wanted to. It was about what you wanted to write, not about what's publishable. Now for people starting out, they have to think about both things.

Zibby: That's true. That's where the commercialization of even fiction writing -- but I often hear that the best advice is to ignore all of that, as I'm sure you would agree, and just do what's fun for you and what you need to write or else you can kind of tell when there's no passion in it.

Alice: Absolutely. You have to have passion. If you want to be published, it also can't be, like, a diary. I always feel like I'm writing for myself and I'm writing the book for myself. Somebody else has to read it and have it mean what it means to them.

Zibby: Is there any innovations that you've particularly adapted well to that you're like, I love X, Y, or Z? I don't even know why I'm asking you these questions. I'm just curious.

Alice: I love Google because if I don't know what year something happened and I'm in the middle of writing, I don't have to go through all my books. I can just find out what year the Salem witch trials ended real quick. It's very helpful. Also, when I started, people were typing. It took a long time. Every time you rewrote, you rewrote the whole manuscript, really. I think it was kind of good practice, actually, but it just was time-consuming.

Zibby: I am old enough that I used to use a typewriter for my school assignments and have my mother help me and have to restart and the Wite-Out, and oh, my gosh.

Alice: Wite-Out, yeah.

Zibby: The idea that you can even produce as clear a thought when there's so much on the line, when you have to start over again as opposed to now, it's like, I'll change that.

Alice: I actually think that's good for writers. I tend to still do that. When you start at the beginning again instead of moving things around the way we can do now, it gives it different rhythm. It makes for a different kind of revision. Sometimes when I talk to -- I'm involved in a program for young writers at Adelphi University out on Long Island every summer. Sometimes I think they really think that writers just write it down, and that's it. That's not it at all. Most people have to do lots of revisions and lots of changes. I think that's just a good thing to know when you're starting out, that everybody does it.

Zibby: Yes, wait for those comments in Google Docs. Then everything melds together, your love of Google. There you go. [laughs] Thank you so much. Thanks for chatting with me today. I'm sorry I had such random questions, but I was really curious about the lifespan of being an author for so many different periods of time as the industry has changed. You've stayed just as current. It's really awesome. It was a unique vantage point, so thanks.

Alice: Thank you. Thanks for chatting with me today.

Zibby: Thank you. Have a great day.

Alice: Take care. Bye.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Susie Yang, WHITE IVY

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Susie. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Susie Yang: Hi. It's good to be here. Hello again.

Zibby: Hello again. I know. We've just been chatting. Now it's official, though. We can officially make it sound very polished and awesome. [laughs]

Susie: It's very fun to be here.

Zibby: White Ivy, congratulations on this amazing novel. So great, so captivating from the very beginning. This main character you've created, I feel like I could spot her on the sidewalk at this point. You made her so real. Even the way you describe her posture, the way she walks, everything about her seems so real. Now of course, I have to keep my belongings close so she doesn't swipe anything. First of all, tell listeners what White Ivy is about, please.

Susie: White Ivy follows the characters of Ivy Lin from when she's fourteen to twenty-seven. She falls in love with the son of a state senator when she's a child. They reconnect again as an adult. The entire arc of the story is Ivy trying to capture Gideon's heart and marry into his very patrician, WASP family. It's mostly set in Boston, but there are parts of her life where she goes to New Jersey. She spends a summer in China. All of these experiences inform her worldview and leads her to make the decisions that she makes in the book as she strives to get what she wants in life.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, the scene where you have her entire family storm into Gideon's house on that first sleepover and they're all waiting on the couch and her brother's eating pancakes, it was so awkward and tense. I just was recoiling inside myself. It was like, oh, my gosh, this poor girl.

Susie: I think awkwardness is an underused emotion in books. [laughs] It's such a common emotion in real life, secondhand emotion. It's very visceral.

Zibby: It's so true. How did you come up with this story idea?

Susie: When I decided to write the novel, I gave myself a year to finish the complete draft. The first thing I had to decide was, what kind of book did I want to write? I've always been drawn to anti-hero characters, so think Becky Sharp or Scarlet O'Hara or Tom Ripley. I knew that I wanted to create a pretty unique, strong, female character who would go to great lengths to get what she wanted. That would obviously involve moral compromises and manipulation. Then the first sentence of the book, "Ivy Lin was a thief, but you would never know it to look at her," that came to me out of the blue. Then once I had that, the entire arc of her story came to me at once. That hasn’t changed from the very first sentence. I always kind of saw the whole vision of the book. A lot of the revisions and the different drafts was just making sure that it was a pleasurable read and getting all of the details correct and the sequence of events correct.

Zibby: Wow. Go back to when you decided to take a year to write a novel. How did that fit into your life? Where did that come from?

Susie: My life plan. [laughs] The short story is that I've always written for fun. It was always a hobby of mine. I come from a Chinese American background. My parents wanted me to be one of three professions: a doctor, a lawyer, maybe an engineer. I always thought of writing as a hobby. I never thought of it as a career path. I was running my own tech startup in San Francisco for around three years at that point. Something in me just changed. I call it my quarter-life crisis. Wait a second, is this really what I want to be doing for the rest of my life? I'd always been trying to write a novel just in my free time. Classic problem is I couldn't ever finish one. I have a hundred chapter ones on my computer. I thought if I don't give myself that pressure to say, let me just put an arbitrary deadline on this to prove to myself I could do it, then I'll never ever do this. I just decided to make that time to do it to see if I could.

Zibby: So you're very young, then?

Susie: I'm thirty-two. At that time, I was twenty-six, twenty-seven, something like that.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, that's amazing. That's particularly amazing because this book is so good. I feel like sometimes you need more life experience to really inform a book, but maybe that's what I just fool myself to think. [laughs]

Susie: I think it's a vivid imagination.

Zibby: Maybe. Okay, maybe that's part of it. Ivy grew up at first with her grandmother in China and then tragically, almost, got sent across the world in an airplane by herself to reunite with her parents who she didn't even remember and who she was raised by until her grandmother eventually meets them there. A lot of this is about a sense of place and identity and belonging and how out of place she feels in America. Even with her own family, she never really ever feels comfortable. Tell me about that sense. Is that something you are familiar with? Do you have family who's first -- does that come from a personal place or just a societal, imaginative place?

Susie: That's super personal. I was born in China. I came to the US when I was five. Even despite that, I've moved around so much growing up. My dad changed jobs a lot. I was talking to somebody about this, and I think I've gone to eight different schools before college even. That feeling of always entering a new environment and observing people or adapting and always looking at the scene through an outsider's point of view, that's something that's very natural to me. I'm really drawn to that in books as well. I love books that always examine a group or a club or a society from the point of view of somebody who doesn't belong there because that's the point of view that I'm most comfortable with. It was really natural for me to structure the story of Ivy around that perspective. Ivy's experiences also inform her feeling of being an outsider. She goes to this very private school that's full of very wealthy people, but she's not wealthy herself. Then there's the fact that she's an immigrant. All these factors also contribute to her feeling of wanting to belong and wanting to understand what values her classmates have and trying to absorb them as her own.

Zibby: The way that you wrote about her first immersion into this new lifestyle when she was walking around Gideon's house, not to keep coming back to this scene, and just looking as he is casually like, that's our summer cottage, and her just being like, what? [laughs] It's neat to see her. You could feel her eyes widening and all of that. What does it feel like to have this book coming out into the world? Are you so excited about it? How does it feel?

Susie: Honestly, it's just been such a strange year. I feel like at normal times it would be very much, you'd be out and about in the world. I could hold the book and see people in real life. This year has been so strange. Even all the feedback I'm getting, it really is just through the internet or Zoom calls and things like that. It feels, in a way, I'm isolated from the effects of it having come out. It hasn’t come out yet, but just from the early readers and early reviewers. In a way, I'm glad because of that because I feel like it makes it feel less distracting. There's people who are like, I read it, I really liked it, and that's been amazing. In a sense, my life is still very much me going in my pajamas to write book two and taking these calls with you to talk about the book.

Zibby: Wait, tell me -- sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. I wanted to hear about book two right away, so I had to interrupt you.

Susie: [laughs] I'm two-thirds in, so I feel like I'm not going to describe it really well. I'm still in the weeds. Essentially, it kind of talks about the same themes. I realize I'm still really interested in the theme of reinvention. It's about a couple. It also spans around a decade. It's set between US and Beijing. It tackles the Chinese entertainment industry. It talks about people's different agendas. Those are themes I find myself drawn to, this constant identity politics and comedy of manners and observing a strange society with an outsider's eye. That's the most big-picture I can think about it right now.

Zibby: Now you're an American living in the UK and also temporarily in Florence. You've continued to put yourself in these situations where you are not --

Susie: -- I know. It's a disease. [laughs]

Zibby: Might I point out to you that you have this issue. Just saying.

Susie: Yes. I always tell myself, I'm going to settle. I'm so tired of moving. I'm so tired of moving. I just want to settle down. I seem unable to do that.

Zibby: At least you've come to a fragile peace with it, and it's good material if that's your central theme. You're just getting more material.

Susie: I tell myself that. It's all good for the experiences.

Zibby: Wait, go back for a second to after you finished writing White Ivy and finished tinkering. How long did that process take? Then I want to hear about how you sold it, the publishing part of it.

Susie: I feel like that was really where I learned to become a writer. When I wrote the first draft, I truly had no idea about -- I didn't get an MFA. I don't have writer friends. It felt like I was writing it for myself to see if I could do it. I had no idea how it worked, even. When I look back now, I'm like, oh god, that first draft was horrible. I went to this conference called Tin House. It was in July. Around that time, it was in the year of me writing the first draft. I had around probably seventy, eighty percent of the first draft done. They had agents come to Tin House. I actually sat down next to Jenny who is now my agent, but it was completely coincidental. She was like, "What are you working on?" I think I pitched my book as an Asian American Edith Wharton-type book or something like that. She's like, "Great, send it to me when you're done." That really lit the fire under my butt. I was like, wow, there is somebody waiting to read it, and she's an agent. Around October -- actually, it was Halloween. A few months later, I sent her the complete first draft. I had done my research. It was what to expect. I assumed that we'd go back and forth in revisions. She read it in one day. She emailed me back the next day and was basically like, "Oh, my god, can we meet up?" I was living in New York at the time. She's in Brooklyn. She's like, "I'd love to represent you. I think it's ready to be sold."

Zibby: What?

Susie: I was like, I don't know about this. [laughs] Are you lying to me? Can I trust you? She was basically like, "I think it's ready. I can't think of any revisions that I would want you to make." I trusted her. That was November. Then she sold the book in December one month later.

Zibby: Wow, that's awesome.

Susie: That's how it was sold. The next part is where I actually learned how to become a real writer. I went through six drafts of edits with my editor, Marysue at Simon & Schuster. Wow, I learned, essentially, craft. Everything before that was just almost instinct and fumbling my way, kind of throwing words at the wall and seeing what stuck. Through the different drafts, I feel like I actually learned why something was working, how to make something more compelling. My writing got better. It felt like I wrote it very quickly if I say one year. Actually, I consider it, really, a three-project because it took two years of edits after with my editor.

Zibby: So now we don't feel as shamed that you just whipped this thing out.

Susie: I'm ashamed. I look at my draft, I'm like, okay. [laughs]

Zibby: Oh, stop.

Susie: No, really.

Zibby: How do your parents who wanted you to be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer feel about having a novelist as a daughter?

Susie: It's so funny. When I decided to do the one year to write the book, I actually didn't tell anyone about it except for my husband. I was like, "I'm going to do this." He's like, "I support you," obviously. I didn't tell my friends. I didn't tell my family. We were still running the company. It wasn't until I got my agent that I told my family. I was like, "Guys, I signed with an agent." They were like, "What does that mean?" I explained everything to them. Then when the book sold, I think that's when it became real. I remember my dad -- of course, they were like, "Can we read it? Can we read it?" I was like, "No, not until it's totally done." I think his first question was something like, "Are you going to write more books, or is this just a one-time thing that you wanted to try out?" That was really funny. Then when I actually had the production copy everybody's reading now, I sent it over to him. He was giving me real-time feedback on all the chapters and things like that. That was definitely an experience. Never thought I'd have my parents read a sex scene that I wrote. [laughter]

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, not high on the list when you're growing up of imagined activities. Is your husband a senator's son? Did you have to do some research into depicting that character?

Susie: I definitely did research. I actually hate research, so I'm an extremely lazy researcher. My copy editor had a lot of work. [laughs] She would fact-check things for me. I think that was actually one of the issues. There was a difference between a state senator versus just a senator, and so had to change a lot of the details, a lot of googling.

Zibby: What was your tech company? What did it do?

Susie: It was called [indiscernible]. It actually taught people how to build web apps. When I graduated from pharmacy school, I was like, I hate pharmacy school. I don't want to be a pharmacist. I actually moved out to San Francisco at the time to work in tech. I ended up starting a company. I taught myself how to code, and then I understood the resources that were available. Then I thought, these aren't that great, at the time. I started a company that, essentially, they do videos. We did videos that teaches people how to build things like Etsy or Yelp so that people could launch them as startups.

Zibby: That’s so cool. Now I'll have to go and see that on the side. I always am frustrated. My website is on Squarespace, and so I've learned how to use that. Sometimes I'm like, oh, but I'd really rather -- if only I knew how to do this, I wouldn't have to wait for someone else. I like to do everything myself. My daughter does coding classes now. I've missed the coding boat, I think, but maybe a site like yours would've helped.

Susie: Not anymore. There's way better ones now than the site. It's still up, but it's so out of date.

Zibby: All right. Well, I'll put that on the backburner of things I'm going to teach myself to do these days. What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Susie: My gosh, I don't know that I'm qualified to give advice to aspiring authors.

Zibby: You're qualified. You count. You are an author. You sold a book.

Susie: I'm trying to think about what really helped me get through the slumps. One thing that really helped me get through -- I'm the sort of person where I always need to understand the vision of what I'm writing because that's what pulls me through the bad writing and also when you get tired of certain things. The advice was, I've read it somewhere, which is, write something only you can write. That was such a touchstone for me because I'd always think, is this the most interesting thing? Is this worth writing? Is this going to be interesting to anyone but me? During all those times of doubts, I would always think, at least nobody else can write this specific book with this specific vision. That made it worthwhile for me personally. I would say that one really got me through a lot of the hard times. The other advice actually came from my agent, which is just to think about writing as the long term, as a marathon, not a sprint. I tend to work in really intense spurts where I just want to get it done. I have a really impatient personality. For me, it's like, [distorted audio] this finished. It was calming down looking at it from a long-term point of view. What kind of stories am I going to be interested in writing? What ideas do I have? and jotting those down. So not being in such a rush and not giving myself so much pressure to have it perfect the first draft or the first time around and to look at it like a marathon.

Zibby: Good advice. Excellent. Awesome. Thank you so much for chatting about your book and for the great book and the great read. I half-expected you to look like your character, but you don't at all. You're very pretty. [laughs]

Susie: Thank you. One of the questions I always get from my friends is always, "Is that you on the cover of the book?" [laughs] I'm like, no, clearly, you don't know me that well.

Zibby: I actually haven't seen the cover yet because I read it online.

Susie: When you see it, it's not me.

Zibby: All right. I'll tell you. Now I have inside information as to what you really look like. I hope next time we see you -- you'll probably be living in five other countries. Maybe if you ever breeze through New York, I'll cross paths with you.

Susie: Hopefully when all this is over.

Zibby: Yes, exactly.

Susie: Thanks for having me.

Zibby: Thanks for coming. Good luck with launch. Buh-bye.

Susie: Bye.

Brit Bennett, THE VANISHING HALF

Deborah: It gives me great pleasure to introduce Brit Bennett. Born and raised in Southern California, Brit graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan where she won a Hopwood Award in graduate short fiction. In 2014, she received the Hurston-Wright Award for college writers. She's a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree. Her debut novel, The Mothers, was a New York Times best seller. Her second novel, The Vanishing Half, was recently selected for this year's National Book Award longlist. Her essays have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel. Welcome, Brit. Additionally, I would like to introduce our very special guest host tonight, Zibby Owens. Zibby is the creator and host of award-winning podcast "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Zibby, named New York City's most powerful book influencer by Vulture, conducts warm, inquisitive conversations with authors as wide-ranging as Alicia Keys, Lena Dunham, to Delia Owens and Jennifer Weiner. I leave it to you, Zibby.

Zibby Owens: Thank you, Deborah. Thank you so much for having me here tonight. This is such a thrill. Brit, I am so excited to be interviewing you tonight. Just bear with my glee as I ask you questions. [laughs]

Brit Bennett: Thank you. Thanks for being here.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, I snooped on you earlier today doing your Instagram Live with Shondaland to get a little preview of what's been on your mind. Thanks for that today too. I read about how your mother had told you about this small town which really was the inspiration for this book. Maybe you could share that story with everybody here and go into more how you took that germ of an idea and translated it into what became one of the most sensational novels I've read in my entire life.

Brit: Thank you. Thank you for having me tonight. Thank you, everyone, for watching. I honestly don't really remember the context of the conversation I was even having with my mother. I just remember her very offhandedly mentioning this town that she remembered from her childhood where everyone was so obsessed with skin color that they just married within the community in hopes that their children would get lighter from generation to generation. She said it to me very offhandedly like it was something that everyone just kind of knows. It immediately struck me. All I remember is being like, wait, slow down, slow down. Let's go back to that thing that you just said. That's crazy. It immediately struck me. I wrote it down in my phone. I have it in my notes. I just jotted down that basic idea. Then at the time, I was still finishing up The Mothers, so I didn't really go back to it right away. It immediately struck me as something that was potentially the setting for a novel. It was an idea of a town that's oriented around this really troubling idea. When you're thinking about a novel, the idea of having something that immediately presents itself as a problem -- immediately, this town presented itself to me as a problem. From there, I thought about, what would it be like to be a light-skinned person in this town that has this really horrific ideology? What would it be like to be a dark-skinned person in this town? That was the basis of the idea of these twin sisters whose lives take them in very different directions.

Zibby: It's one thing to have a little note in your phone and start noodling on a concept, but it's another to then blow it out into all these different interwoven stories across timelines and all the rest. What happened between the idea and now? How did you craft it to become what it was in terms of process? Did you outline it? How did you get it from there to here?

Brit: I talk about it as if this was a straightforward journey. Of course, it totally wasn't. I don't really outline. I know that it took me many, many drafts and many years of trying to figure it out. I knew immediately that I was interested in these twin sisters, one who you see at the beginning of the book when she has returned to this town with her dark-skinned child, and the other one who's kind of vanished off into the wind and you don't know what happened to her. I knew that that was the opening of the book. From there, it was a lot of trying different things out. I didn't realize originally that I was interested in the lives of the twin sisters' children. I thought originally it would just be, one half of the book would be one sister and the other half of the book would be the other sister, and that would be really nice and neat. Then I realized I was really interested in their children. I was interested in the men in their lives. I was interested in all these other minor characters that gripped me because of their own stories about reinvention and transformation that really appealed to me. It took a lot of trial and error to try to weave all of those stories in a way that was even coherent, let alone hopefully moving and interesting to the reader.

Zibby: Did you use flashcards? Paint me a picture here. I have to know how you did it because it looks so seamless when you read it. Of course, it's not when you do it. Did you keep it all in your head? Were you cutting and pasting like crazy?

Brit: Eventually, there were some flashcards. As far as the beat by beat of it, honestly, again, it was trial and error. At first, I thought, is the first chapter Desiree and then immediately you see Stella? Am I going to delay when you see Stella? That became something I was trying to modulate. Then as far as the daughters, I originally thought the book was going to be chronological. I thought, I'm just going to be moving through time. Then there was always something to me that didn't feel -- it felt disjointed, the lives of these women. It didn't feel like they existed in the same timeline, really. Then once I realized that, that kind of freed me to play around with that timeline and make some other bigger imaginative leaps. There was not a streamlined process at all. There was a lot of frustration, a lot of banging my head against the wall, and fortunately, a lot of really great help from my editor who was just in the trenches with me the whole time trying to help me figure this thing out.

Zibby: Wow. Your editor, then, deserves some sort of medal or something. One thing I was struck by in the beginning was how all the characters had left home in a pretty dramatic way. Desiree and Stella both left. When you go through generations, Jude eventually leaves. Kennedy eventually leaves. Reese has left his family. Early has left his family. They do so, in part, to find themselves, but also just to escape and begin again. I was wondering why you incorporated that theme. What did you yourself ever leave behind that might have amplified this message in your personal life?

Brit: I have never had as dramatic a departure as all those characters that you just described. All of my leavings have just been going somewhere for school or just wanting to move or wanting to do something new. I've always been drawn to that idea of leaving home. I think it's inherently pretty interesting. I also do associate it so much with change. I think that it can be really hard to change who you are when you're around the same people who have always known you to be one certain way versus once you get a little bit of distance and then you can kind of try out different people. You can play around with who you are in a little bit of a different way. All of these characters experience that similarly. When Stella is growing up in this town, she dabbles with passing. She's tried it before, but it's not something she can really get away with because she still lives at her mother's house. She can't truly commit to this life as a white woman in a way that she finds herself -- she starts to ease into it more once she and her sister go to New Orleans. She can ease more into that life but then fully commits once she has left her sister behind. That's true of a lot of these characters. Once they gain that physical separation, you can make that mental and emotional separation that is required in order to become a different person or to become the person that you want to be.

Zibby: Is there a piece of yourself that you wanted to change and reinvent in a new place? Is there half of yourself you would like to have vanished?

Brit: [laughs] I don't know about that. I do know that in writing this book, I kept thinking about my relationship with my family, which is very close. At the same time, I think sometimes that closeness can feel sort of claustrophobic. You can feel sometimes kind of trapped into the person. For example, I'm the youngest child in my family. There is a sense of always being the baby when you're at home, which can be nice sometimes in ways and other times can be a little bit frustrating. There are things like that or having these roles that you can be hemmed into. I'm talking about this in a very low-stakes way. The stakes for all these characters are so much higher of the types of roles that they're trapped into and the ways in which they're trying to break free from them.

Zibby: The way that they transform is so dramatic. Everything that you would think is static becomes fluid, from race to gender to names. Everything is in flux constantly in this book. I think that's what's so unique because you never know who you're getting to know as they get to know themselves. I wondered if you could talk a little more about that sense of fluidity that nothing is stable except, perhaps, love.

Brit: That was one of the things that really drew me into writing this book. I knew I wanted to write this story that was going to be about passing, but I wanted to write into this literature of passing from my perspective as a twenty-first century writer. From my perspective, I think sometimes the most famous passing literature, it kind of essentializes identity in this way. Sometimes there's something inherently contradictory about those stories because you have a character who's moving from one category to another which kind of destabilizes those categories. At the same time, there's often a way in which, if they are exposed, it's because somebody senses that you are black. They sense an essentialized blackness within you that you cannot rid yourself of. That is what makes you black, because there is something essentially black inside you. There are those types of understandings of race. There are ways in which I think a lot of passing stories can actually be, they can be sort of transgressive in one way, but also this very regressive way of thinking about identity where identity is essentially fixed within you. For myself, I wanted to write against that. I wanted to write against that idea that there's anything essential about these identities, the idea that there's anything stable about them, or that there's anything even clear.

Stella's experience of passing when she finally commits to it is that she goes in to get a job and somebody mistakens her for white, and she just goes with it. There's something so absurd about that because she walked into this office building as a black woman and she left as a white woman. How is that possible? But it is. There was always something, to me, very, absurd is one of the words that I was thinking about this, about these identity categories. Again, they determine so much about our lives. The fact that whether Stella is black or white determines whether she can get this job or not, but she becomes white because somebody believes her to be white and she just says, yeah, I am, so what does that mean that her racial identity determines this very real fact of, can she pay her rent and can she feed herself? At the same time, it's so flimsy that she can just easily slip into one category. To me, it was that contradiction between those two things of the very real implications of all of those categories of race or gender but also just the flimsiness between them and the way in which they are permeable in ways that we may not easily assume, but in ways that at least I believe to be true.

Zibby: You must be asked all these questions about identity and all this stuff all the time. This must be your bread and butter. You must talk about this forever. Does it make you turn a lens onto yourself to think, how do I feel about my own identity? How important is your race, your gender, your sexuality to you as an author and to you as a person? How did that play into the writing? Is it that you want all that to be fluid? Is it that it's so central to your core of your soul? Tell me about your relationship to your own identity.

Brit: That's a really huge question. I guess it's fluid. It's something that I don't have an easy answer towards. There's a lot of ways within this book I was thinking about ways in which identity and labelling identity can be really important for community formation. For example, when Jude arrives in LA, she becomes friends with a group of drag queens who have all found community with each other and welcome her into this community. There are ways in which forming those types of spaces around identity can be really lifesaving and really important. On the flip side, there are also ways in which labels for certain types of identities can be restrictive. They can feel like they box you in in some way. I was thinking about that a lot for the book too, that moving between ways in which any type of labeling can be really liberating and also ways in which it can make you feel trapped, and these characters moving between in a lot of those different ways.

In a lot of ways, writing the book, I think more than anything, it's caused me to take a step back, one, when I'm speaking. One of the things that I thought about in this book is the way in which identity is so much more complicated than our language allows. A good example of that is Stella's daughter. I still have not really decided a way to racially identify her. I don't really know is the accurate way to describe this person who is a daughter of a black/white-passing mother and has a white father and believes herself to be white. There's not a succinct way to describe her. Part of it has made me take a step back and be critical of the language that I use in thinking about identity and also in the ways in which I make snap judgements about other people's identities. Part of the book is that you just have no way of knowing. Identities are not as clear as we believe them to be.

Zibby: I think that it's true for people too. You don't know the core of people's identity on the surface. You don't know what people are going through on the surface. You could pass by them on the street. It's like how the drag queens who you reference literally could be somebody completely different. You could just be going through something really challenging. You just might not know. It's almost like shining an X-ray machine onto everybody. What would that do to society if we all could actually see inside, what was really going on? Maybe everything would be a little better, I hope. I don't know.

Brit: Maybe. [laughs]

Zibby: Maybe. Or much worse. Maybe sometimes I don't want to see inside. In terms of going back to your craft a little bit, even what you were saying with language, the way that you were able to tap into different ways of speaking based on all the different characters and even in so few words paint such a picture of what was going on and what someone's personality was like and then how you had all these cliffhangers. The scene where the wine bottle drops, that's going to be a Jeopardy question in fifty years. What's the biggest cliffhanger? In terms of things like that, did you pick those up in your MFA program, voice and language, I know we already talked about structure, but cliffhangers and building that suspense? That's something in this book that, it's so propulsive, not to use an overused word.

Brit: I don't know. For this book, when I started to realize the structure of it was going to be these pieces, that it wasn't necessarily this one continuous narrative, that you were going to have these starts and stops, then I did become interested in the idea of those types of cliffhangers. For that section in particular, that's dead center of the book. Thinking about that middle point of the book or the movie or whatever you're looking at is usually when something big happens, so the idea of that being the moment where the stories start to converge. Something about the dark red wine on that white carpet was really memorable to me at least when I was thinking about this moment that would convey the shock that this character's experiencing. I thought about it in that way. In general, thinking about the suspense, I think of this kind of as a fake mystery story because the mystery is not really, where's Stella? That's what feels like the mystery at first, maybe, is, we've got to find Stella. Where did she go? I tell you where she went. That's not really the journey.

The journey is more, what has become of Stella or what's Stella in a more existential way of what happened to Stella? That's more the question pulling you through. For me, for both of my books, the thing that I did take away from my MFA program was this idea of creating suspense by revealing information instead of withholding it. For me, in The Vanishing Half, from the opening section I tell you, this is Desiree. This is Stella. This is kind of what happened to Desiree. This is kind of what happened to Stella. Here is the setup for the whole town. I didn't want the question reading the book to just be, what happened to Stella? I just wanted to tell you right away. She's living as a white woman somewhere. We're going to go on after giving you that information.

Zibby: What has this been like for you? I know you already had a New York Times best seller with The Mothers which I have to go back and read. Now I'm so excited to have a new thing on my shelf that I can't wait to get into. You've had such success. This was such a blowout hit during such a crazy time of the world. Your life must be somewhat different even if you're in the exact same place. How does it feel to you to have had all this happen? You're only thirty or something like that. That's crazy. What does it feel like that you've been set on this trajectory and to have seventeen studios bidding over your movie rights? That’s just nuts. What does it feel like to you?

Brit: I think exactly what you just described. It's been the weirdest year of anybody's life. Certainly been the weirdest year of my life. For me, it was just very strange to swing between these poles of being really excited about things happening with the book, being really horrified by everything else. Also, the weirdness of experiencing all of this in isolation has been really strange, talking the TV rights for the book and having these really intense Hollywood conversations just being by myself in my apartment dealing with all of it. It's been a weird feeling of feeling both really exposed but also very alone and also really excited about the book and also really devasted by everything else happening in the world. It's been a weird year of swinging between those poles in a lot of different ways.

Zibby: Do you have some amazing work of fiction that's going to come out of this time of this vacillation between the two poles?

Brit: I don't know how amazing it will be, but I've been writing because, again, I'm by myself. I'm like, what else am I -- when it was earlier in the lockdown, I was teaching a class. The class went on Zoom. Then eventually, the class ended in May. I had this five weeks or whatever in between when the class ended and when the book came out. I was basically just working on this next book because I had so much anxiety about what was going to happen with The Vanishing Half. I'm publishing in a pandemic. Is anyone going to care? Then all of the other just normal anxiety of being in New York at the time. I've been able to try to pour some of my energy into working on something else. It's been great to be able to start a new project and think about a whole different new fictional world and give me at least some place to put all of my energy that is just being contained in my apartment right now.

Zibby: Can you tell us any more about that book?

Brit: It's still very early. It's about music. It's about singers who have a lifelong feud. It's a really different project for me, but one that I've been really excited about.

Zibby: Wow. Did you have an eye to make this into something cinematic when you were writing The Vanishing Half, or was that just not even in your consciousness?

Brit: I think that you're always influenced by watching TV or films or these other things. I'm sure those elements kind of creep in as you're writing, but I don't think about casting it or anything like that. I never think that far about anything. I don't think about it, but I am excited to see what the adaptation will look like.

Zibby: Have you been able to see your family or friends at all, or have you been walled off completely this whole time?

Brit: I got to go back to California for the summer. I saw my family. I've been able to see friends at the park and everything while the weather's still nice, so hoping that we'll hold out for a few more weeks of nice weather before we all retreat into our winters of solitude.

Zibby: Exactly. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Brit: My advice is very basic advice, which is just read everything. You learn from things that you like and also from things that you hate, so I think reading widely. That's not to say read everything, like, you have to read everything that's ever been in print. That's just to say read widely. That's one of my pieces of advice. Just be patient with yourself because the work will be bad for far longer than it will ever be good. That's if you ever feel that your work is good. Most writers I know never feel that way. You have to just learn how to be patient with yourself. Trust that that's part of the process, is kind of hating your work. The difference is being able just to stick through it and to believe that you can make it better throughout all of the challenges of wresting with the work.

Zibby: What type of books do you like? What are some of your biggest influences? What do you like to read even when you're tired?

Brit: Different things. I'm sort of a slow reader. I've been balancing a lot more nonfiction and fiction these days. I've been reading a lot of biographies because of the new book, so lots of music biographies that I've been reading. I generally love fiction. The book that I've read recently that I loved the most was Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg which came out, I think, last year. The structure of the book is like an art catalog where she is describing photographs, but you don't actually see the pictures as you're reading the book. You're just reading descriptions of them. I love that. I've been thinking a lot about, how do you write about art that the reader does not get to actually experience? I'm writing about music that doesn't exist, so it was really cool to see how somebody is doing that with describing pictures that you never get to see.

Zibby: Very cool. Thank you. I know everybody else is going to have a lot of questions, so I don't want to monopolize you. Thanks for letting me probe into your inner psyche for a few minutes and find out more of the backstory. Thanks.

Brit: Thanks.

Zibby: Deborah, if you want to...

Deborah: Thank you, Zibby. Thank you, Brit, for that.

Nicole Krauss, TO BE A MAN

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Nicole. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Nicole Krauss: Thank you for having me.

Zibby: I'm so excited to discuss To Be a Man, your collection of stories. I just took this off of my shelf behind me where I knew exactly where it was on eye level. I pass it every day, The History of Love, just FYI in case you were wondering. For readers who don't know anything yet about To Be a Man, can you tell us what this collection of stories is essentially about and what inspired you to write all of them or to make a whole new collection of stories?

Nicole: It's always hard to say what any book is about, per se, even a novel, but it's especially hard when it's a collection of short stories. If pressed, I would say that it's a collection of stories that's largely about relationships, about what it is to be a woman and what it is to be a man, about the tension between freedom and relationship, the requirements and limitation of relationship, and the difficulties of freedom. It's a lot about the paradoxes of people. There are a lot of men in these stories, a lot of women looking at men and experiencing men. The men, just like the women, are full of contradictions. They're not contradictions that I want to solve as an author, but I want to hold and to look at. Maybe that gives you a taste.

Zibby: I'm glad I pressed. Your pressed answer, that was a perfect, beautiful, articulate answer to that question, par for the course with your writing. Let me talk about just a few of the stories with you. The first story, for instance, "Switzerland," with Suraiya -- at first, I didn't even realize if it was a girl or a boy. As the story unfolds, you kind of realize what's going on and that there are three girls in this intermediate boarding house-ish type place. One girl gets ensnared in a perhaps not-so-great relationship with a, presumably, much older man. What happens to her along the way? We can only imagine as the story unfolds. In this story, I felt like the girls were so -- with so few words, you created these entire characters. You enabled me to feel fear and worry for a character that had just appeared in my imagination. I'm always intrigued by how an author can do that because a minute ago I hadn’t even met this character. Next thing you know, I'm like, oh, no, don't go to the hotel! What do you think it is? What do you think helps you create that intimacy and ability to get the reader right in to get to know a character like that?

Nicole: I think it begins with the writer's own relationship to the characters. I tend to choose characters that I feel an enormous amount of compassion for. I don't think that's unusual, but I don't think it's always the case. I think there are writers who do very well choosing characters that they hold in ironic distance from themselves. For me, I get so close to my characters that I am them. I'm inside of them or I'm pulling out pieces of myself in order to make them or pulling out pieces of intimate experience. In this case, the narrator is thirteen. Those older girls, Suraiya and Maria, are eighteen. I had the structure or the setting or maybe the circumstance of the story came from my own experience of being thirteen in a boarding house in Geneva at boarding school. It's a time, at a certain moment in life, I found myself going back to in my memory and thinking about that time. The story kind of came out of that. The other two girls that the narrator are describing, I just think she feels, and so I as narrator felt, such enormous affinity for them or connection to them. They were these older girls who cut this pathway into this more mature life that as a thirteen-year-old she knew was on the horizon but she hadn’t reached yet. They were teaching her something about it in their way. I think there's a kind of strange gratitude in that. Maybe that's part of what allows the reader, if the reader likes the story, to feel like a quick connection to them as well.

Zibby: Then in other stories about the character who goes to, I think it was Tel Aviv and inherits her father's apartment and starts following the strange man who comes in and starts cooking her dinner -- I'm blanking on the name of this story, but I can look it up really fast.

Nicole: That story's called "I Am Asleep, but My Heart is Awake," which is a [indiscernible] from Song of Songs.

Zibby: That story was fantastic, but almost harder to imagine, a little bit on the outer reaches of the suspension of disbelief. Would she really have followed him this far? How would she have gotten back? I feel like at times you play with our imagination a little and push the envelope.

Nicole: That one story in particular because that story is predicated on this idea that a man can arrive inexplicably into one's apartment and then have an ability to sleep, and sleep like the dead in some sense. There's the question, of course, of whether that story is real in the way that we think of realism or whether it's real on a more soul level. It's a story about the question of the existence of the soul and what happens to the soul after death. There, I hoped that the reader would suspend their disbelief a little bit in order to go to where the story emotionally wanted to go. A lot of the other stories are more realistic, but there are a couple that are like that. "The Husband" is also another one of those kind of stories that asks the reader to leap off into something perhaps more imaginary.

Zibby: The line that stuck with me the most, or the thought I should say, is that the apartment that this woman inherits of her father's, she realizes, oh, is this who he really was, and where we had been living all this time, because the mother had passed away, had that just sort of been a front? Yet that was her entire life. Here she was in this other place which seemed so fundamental to who he was as a person. Yet she was just meeting it after he passed away.

Nicole: This is something that a lot of us, even if we don't have a parent who comes from one country and raises us in another country and then we go back to that origin country and understand, this is the place that made my parents, and it gives all this new access to them, I think even when we don't have that experience, all of us at some point or other come to understand that our parents are adults with their own secret, private lives that, as children, we didn't know about or didn't want to know about or they didn't tell us about. I think that coming to terms with one's parents' other life not as a parent is really an interesting thing. It happens in stages. It happens first probably when we're teenagers. Then it happens throughout life. As we go through the things we watched them do, like have our children, we understand, oh, my god, this is what they must have been thinking or feeling. Then of course, I think as they get older or pass away and we go through their things, we find out all these other -- I know so many incredible stories of people finding out whole other lives of what their parents lived that they didn't know about. All of that was on my mind in that story, what happens after a parent dies, what is left, and what you can go on discovering about them.

Zibby: Has that happened to you?

Nicole: No. Thanks goodness, my parents are both alive. Thank you for asking. They are still well.

Zibby: Good. It seems like you have a close connection with Israel. It makes appearance in most of your work. What is that about?

Nicole: It's just a place that -- it's kind of another -- I wanted to say another version of home, but I always have trouble with the notion of home is place because my family comes from so many places. Growing up, we never were encouraged to commit to any one place as an idea of home. America was where we were being raised, but we were from Europe. Israel was the place where everyone in the family met, fell in love, got married, etc. It's just a place that I've been going to all my life. It's become another alternative as a place to draw on as a writer. I feel such a connection to it. I know it so well. As a writer, it provides me something different than, let's say, New York, which is my other local geography. New York has wonderful things and people and strange contradictions in its life. Israel has a totally different set of those. The whole system of values in the society is completely different. The levels of intensity are different. I find that those things, to go back and forth between the hot and cold of those environments, in some ways just gives me a lot. I wouldn't want to give up either one. Of course, I've set novels and stories in a lot of places, London. England was a big part of Great House. There are stories here set in Switzerland, as you mentioned, and Japan and South America. I'm certainly a person drawn to geography as a way to reach ideas or feeling in fictional narratives.

Zibby: Interesting. I didn't mean to suggest that you were a one-location pony, if you will. [laughs]

Nicole: No. You're right to point out that that's a place that is paramount in my work. Certainly in the last novel and in these stories, absolutely.

Zibby: Do you find, is it more place specific, or do you also feel like the religion is a key factor?

Nicole: I'm not a religious person. I think it has more to do with three thousand-plus years of history. America's such a new place. Israel, every stone in the ground sings with history. The complexity of that combined with a state that's very, very new and people trying to invent themselves, I think all that is very, very rich material. There's so many things that pull me there. It's one of those places where it's so intense as a writer. You can go and gather forty stories, but you're exhausted afterwards. New York, I find, is much better to actually work, to get work done. I almost never get work done in Tel Aviv. I do the abstract work of gathering lots of stories and experience. New York is a place where, of course, everyone is working all the time, and so you don't feel like you're missing the beach and the restaurants and the life and friendship that seems to be everywhere in Tel Aviv.

Zibby: I feel like the whole culture here, I'm also in New York, is if you're walking around the park all day, people are thinking, what is she doing? Whereas, you are working. You can be thinking and brainstorming and creating and doing all this essential work that you need to do before you sit down and put stuff on paper. It's sort of a culture of, why are you not running somewhere else faster at times?

Nicole: Work as a religion is a very American ideal. In New York, it's just only exaggerated. It is remarkable when you grow up with that and you go elsewhere, to the Mediterranean or to India or wherever, Morocco, and you just realize this is not the values of everyone else in the world. Everyone wants to live and to get by and survive, but work as a definition of self is a peculiarly American thing. I think it takes work to distance oneself from that idea.

Zibby: Yes. New York particularly has its clutches in a lot of different things we need to extricate from ourselves to have a healthy life. [laughs]

Nicole: Every place does these days.

Zibby: That's true, now in particular. Tell me more about how you got to this place in your career. When did you know you were a writer? How did you really get started? Then how did you not give up along the way?

Nicole: I really started where a lot of writers do, when I was a teenager, fourteen. It's a very specific moment. I was in ninth grade. I had this older friend who was a senior. He was writing poetry. It sort of became this way of inventing myself, which is what all teenagers are in the process of doing. They're trying on different selves very, very quickly. The discovery that language was a medium in which that could happen with enormous speed but also breadth, you could become so many things on the page, I think that was very attractive to me. I stayed writing poetry for a long time. I thought that that's what I wanted to do. It was really much later when I was already finished with college that I started to write fiction. I actually finished with graduate school too. I started my first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was the first time I really started to write fiction. I was twenty-five when I wrote that. I've been going since then. Since I was fifteen, I've been at it. In terms of not being discouraged, I've been discouraged a million times. At this point, it's so deeply part of how I process life and relate to the world and relate to other people, how I keep in balance with experience and feeling and communicate, all those things. It's so much who I am. I can no longer take it out of me or tell you why I do it or why I go on doing it. It's just like breathing for me.

Zibby: Another writer I interviewed at one point, or author I should say, compared it to dreaming. She's like, dreams happen. They always come. You always have them.

Nicole: Except that writing doesn't always come, which is really interesting.

Zibby: That's true.

Nicole: I think you always need it. I always need it. There's not always fluency, I find. That's a whole nother story.

Zibby: Do you write where you are now? Is this your workspace?

Nicole: I was in my workspace until we --

Zibby: -- Until I dragged you across the apartment? [laughs]

Nicole: I'll often sit here and work because this is actually a rocking chair. I don't know why I don't give it away. It's also where I nursed my kids. I can't quite give it up. It's extremely comfortable. I tend to sit in the same couple of chairs to work.

Zibby: I guess the days of the coffee shop writing --

Nicole: -- I never was a coffee shop writer. I just find it too distracting. I find other people too fascinating. I just want to look at people and understand what's going on. I can't focus on my work. I have to be alone.

Zibby: Do you find that in your own friendships, say, or relationships or if you go to have a dinner with a friend or something like that, that you apply that same sort of analysis, if you will, or observation where you're trying to figure things out in every situation you're in? Are you always sort of mining unconsciously for material in a way?

Nicole: [laughs] Unfortunately, yes, as all of my friends know. My first thought to your question was I think that there's a psychological machine in some of our brains that is constantly trying to understand people's motivations and to understand the subtext of what they're not saying but they're saying and to try to make sense behind the scenes of what's visible on the surface of the conversation or the person. Yes, I can't dismantle that. That's always at play, and for better or for worse. In terms of material, as I get older this is more and more problematic because more and more interesting things happen to all of us as we get older. All around us fascinating things happen, to everyone it seems like, as we all enter midlife. This question of material and using material has been an interesting one.

There is a story in the book, the title story, "To Be a Man," that involved a kind of agreement with certain people that I would use certain material with their blessing. There are writers who certainly don't ask for the blessings of the people whose material that they borrow or steal, but it does matter a lot to me that I don't betray confidence. On the other hand, again, I hope it comes down to a certain kind of compassion. When you feel compassion for the people you're writing about, even if you expose a vulnerability or fragility, a mistake, a whatever, at the end, you're holding them up in the human light. That's the goal. In the end, there's the love of attentiveness, what it is to attend to somebody and look at them and try to understand them. My hope is that that is always what comes through. So far, it has. I haven't offended anyone yet, lost any dear ones. Let's hope for the best.

Zibby: I read this article about you in Elle, not to snoop or anything, but just to find out more. Let me see if I can find the quote. Of course, now I'm not going to be able to find it. You were talking about divorce. I'm particularly interested, as I got divorced about five years ago or so. I'm always reading up on it and all this stuff. You had said something like that you knew something was amiss and yet you didn't know what to do with that information, similar to knowing that the afterlife might not exist but not knowing how to handle that in the day-to-day life either.

Nicole: That's a quote from Forest Dark.

Zibby: Oh, sorry. I'm so sorry.

Nicole: No problem. That mistake is often made, the sense that I am continuous with her. That's my own fault because I gave her my name. I remember writing that line.

Zibby: The question is really, how do you, especially in a life event like this where I at least felt the ground kind of shook under me and everything had to be reimagined, how do you then take that experience and put that into writing without betraying -- back to our other question of mining for material. How do you use that and help yourself through whatever experience you're going through in the best literary way?

Nicole: For that one, for my divorce, I didn't have a hard time with that because I didn't write about that. I feel like one of the journalistic or critical mistakes of writing about Forest Dark was the notion that it's a book about divorce, but it isn't. Divorce doesn't happen in the book. It's about a woman who understands that she's reached a moment in her life where she can no longer sustain the forms that she's committed to, one of which is her marriage. The divorce doesn't actually take place in the book. It's just her journey into herself, really. Because that book wasn't about divorce and it wasn't specifically about what it is to have a husband or any specific husband at all, I felt that I steered clear of there. I do think there are certain areas, the one that jumps most readily to mind is one's children, there are certain things that you just cannot -- there are lines you cannot cross. That, I feel very strongly about. I didn't have that issue in my work. The kind of things I'm thinking about are friends or lovers or parents or siblings, those kind of things where it's a slightly different situation.

Zibby: Are you already at work on your next big project, or are you taking a minute?

Nicole: Both. I'm always working. I'm always writing. I'm trying to find my way into a new novel, which is always a long process for me, but a pretty playful one at this point in my life. It wasn't always. I'm playing with a few ideas and working on things, but I don't yet feel that I've found the vein that I'm going to mine for the novel. Let's put it that way. I wrote a story during quarantine that's coming out with Harper's in their next issue. Then I thought maybe I'll put aside short stories for now and really try to get into a novel. We'll see.

Zibby: Is it just when the mood strikes?

Nicole: No, I'm a pretty disciplined worker. I work every day. When I'm in this stage, I'm reading a lot. Normally, I would say I'm living a lot in order to acquire, accumulate experience. Living a lot, I don't even know what that means in times of COVID. What does it mean to live a lot now? That's been interesting, particularly because my life has been, in these last however many, seven years, been deliberately designed to allow for maximal experience. How can one do that? Or can one not do that now and just have to burrow in? We'll see. I feel like a lot's happened to me. I think I still have a lot of material to draw on in the banks there.

Zibby: Time to open up the vault and go back. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Nicole: The only thing I ever think to say is just it really requires doing it constantly. A lot of times so many people imagine that they have a book in them. I think we all do. The book in all of us is the self. That's the book we're all writing. In order to actually translate that or some part of that into a real book, it really requires the doing, the daily doing of that. It seems like obvious advice, but I think very few people actually take it, honestly. I think a lot of people think about writing or imagine writing or want to write or see the value of writing, but don't go to the hard effort of putting language on a page day in and day out. That's the only way anything ever gets written.

Zibby: Last question. Just wondering, what are you reading now? What do you like to read?

Nicole: I'm reading this right now, which is beautiful. It's Landscapes by John Berger. I don't know if you’ve read John Berger. He's absolutely one of the most wonderful writers to read. I loved his book Portraits. A lot of his [indiscernible] is about portraiture. I just picked this one up. Of course, he's written novels as well and all kinds of essays. He's no longer with us. He died a couple of years ago. He really was one of our gems.

Zibby: Awesome. Thanks for chatting with me today. It's been such an honor to talk to you because I've been following you for so long. This has been so nice.

Nicole: I'm so glad. Thank you for making the time for me. I really appreciate it.

Zibby: Oh, gosh, it's my pleasure. Have a great day.

Nicole: You too.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Alison Hammer on ending the taboo of talking about weight

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Alison. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight." 

Alison Hammer: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. I'm not a mom, but I am an aunt.

Zibby: You do not have to be a mom. I'm delighted to have a non-mom. It's just because I'm a mom and this is my brand and whatever. [laughs] Alison, you've been part of the community on Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight. You've been commenting. You have an interesting story. I would love to hear it. Tell me about your journey.

Alison: Absolutely. I've been dealing with needing to lose weight pretty much my whole life. I was talking to my mom this morning trying to remember exactly how old I was when I was in Weight Watchers. It was either eight or ten. I was the youngest member in the meeting. Then we did another program, a medical program. I was the youngest by far. It was all these forty-year-olds and me. At the time, I think I was twelve or thirteen. I went to a weight loss camp when I was a teenager. I've done everything. I've had a few times in my life where I've been successful, but it usually would have a stopping point. I would get back into bad habits. I wasn't necessarily an emotional eater. I wasn't necessarily an overeater. I think that I made a lot of bad food choices. I put a lot of pressure on myself. My family, weight has been an issue on both my mom's side and my dad's side historically. My grandmother was a lifetime member of Weight Watchers. My mom has done Weight Watchers. She still thinks she needs to lose weight even though she doesn't. It's been something that has just been part of my family and part of my life since I can remember. It has been a constant struggle. This past year, it's been a big year for me. I have a full-time job. I also have a second full-time job. I had my first book come out this year on April 7th.

Zibby: Congratulations.

Alison: Thank you. About two or three weeks into the pandemic, so it's been a crazy ride. That was a big moment where I thought I might be out there a little bit more. I'm sorry, I'm a mess. [laughs] 

Zibby: There's no right way. Literally, we're friends talking. I just want to hear the story. You don't have to have any pressure. I'm just curious.

Alison: This is the first time I've publicly talked about it. This might be interesting. When you're struggling with weight, it's something that, it's visible. Anybody who sees you, they know it. It's such a taboo topic that it's not like people really talk about it. I remember one time when I joined Weight Watchers probably my fourth or fifth time, I made a point to tell people because if you tell people, then they’ll help you be accountable. It's not something that I've ever talked publicly about. I'm really excited, but I'm also a little bit nervous.

Zibby: I understand. I totally understand. If it makes you feel any better, I had the same thing. My mother had me, age ten, I was measuring half a cup of orange juice and writing down my calories and looking it all up in a book before I went to fourth grade. I understand the pressure and societal expectations and all the rest. I get it.

Alison: It's fascinating to me because I think that our mothers, they were doing what they were doing out of love. It's because of what their mothers did. I think that this generation, it's different in the way of body positivity and of accepting. The world has changed, I think for the better. The fact that we're having conversations like this and there's communities like yours, I think it's all for the better. I'm very social. I always have a lot of friends. I'm doing a lot of different things, but I feel like I probably kept part of myself hidden. When I look back at photos, I always had to be the one who was in control of the photos because I wanted to be able to protect myself from any unflattering lens. I was always really careful in that situation. I also, looking back at photos, saw that I would always be in the back. I would be kind of hiding and popping my head out. I was just very self-conscious about how I looked in photos. With my book coming out, it was something that was on my mind. If I was doing a reading, back when the world had readings, if I was a bookstore, I couldn't control that anymore. That was something that I was a little bit worried about. As excited as I was about this new career and this new world I was getting into, I had a little bit of anxiety about it. 

About a year before my book came out -- it's such a long process. I sold it in 2018. It didn't come out until 2020. I had another writer friend who had a health scare. That scared me. I was always like, I'm fine. I'm heavy, but I'm healthy. I also have an issue -- I hadn’t been to a doctor for a checkup in a while because it was something, again, with a lot of anxiety. I found a great doctor using the Zocdoc app. Just finding a new doctor can be overwhelming in itself. The app made it really easy to find someone who had availability that week so I didn't lose my nerve. They had Yelp reviews, so I could find somebody with good bedside manner. I went to the doctor. She suggested that I try Whole30. I was like, "No way. There's no way I can do it." I have a ton of friends who do it. I'm very picky. I don't eat red meat or pork. That was the main thing. It felt to me like something that was so protein heavy. I eat chicken, turkey, and seafood. I love cheese. There's no way I can do that. She's like, "Try it." I was like, "Okay, fine." I tried it. It wasn't as hard as I thought. In the first month, I lost twenty-five pounds. It was crazy. I decided to keep going with it. On Whole30, it's super strict. They want you to break habits. If you always have coffee with cream and you're like, there's no way I can do it, break that habit. You might be surprised that you like it. They don't want you to do a lot of replacements because they want you to break that habit. Because I was making it more of a lifestyle, I decided I'm okay with getting a replacement. 

I avoid anything with grains, dairy, or sugar, which sounds like everything. It kind of is, but I've found things that I love. I look forward to lunch every day. It's something that is totally on plan. The other night, I'd had a tough night. Just between work deadlines and book deadlines, I was like, I don't have time to cook. I ordered from a restaurant down the street. It was wings that were not breaded and crispy potatoes. That's on plan. I wasn't cheating. I lost weight the next day. I think that there's such a thing about good foods and bad foods. What I tell people is that it took me forty years to find out what worked for me. Looking back, it's that my body doesn't react well to grains, dairy, and sugar. Even if I just had a little bit or even if I was counting points or even if I was doing all these different things, not every plan is right for every person. I tease, it took me forty years to figure it out. In May, I hit the one-hundred-pound mark. It's crazy. It's funny. When I look in the mirror, I don't always see it. There have been a few times where I've seen pictures of me that other people have posted where I can't find myself in the photo. Then I look and I'm like, oh, that's me. It's been an interesting experience. Then I hit a hundred pounds and went into quarantine. My building has a gym. The gym closed. I, again, have two full-time jobs that got really busy. I sit at this little table for fourteen hours a day, it seems.

Zibby: Where are you in the world, by the way? Are you in New York?

Alison: No, I'm in Chicago.

Zibby: Okay. Sorry, go on.

Alison: I live in Chicago. I have a six-hundred-square-foot apartment. There's not a ton of room. I probably use a lot of excuses. I'm sure I could've done a Zoom workout, but where would I have done it? I'm really good at procrastinating. I'm really good at making excuses. I kept up the eating. I commented on one of the posts in the group about this the other day. I take an eighty/twenty approach. If I was going to be good a hundred percent of the time, I would fail. I'm somebody who believes in setting goals that I will achieve. I want to set myself up for success. I end up doing probably ninety-nine to a hundred. Most days, I'm staying in plan. I have a group of writers. We call ourselves Slice of Fiction. We go out for pizza once every couple months. I had a piece of pizza. It was amazing. I didn't feel guilty about it because it fits into that eighty/twenty. It doesn't get me off of the rails. I found substitutes. I like salty more than sweet, but I like a bite of sweet. I found a few things that don't have grains and don't have sugar but can give me that fix. I don't feel like I'm suffering.

Zibby: Wait, what are those things? [laughs] Back up to the secret weapon there.

Alison: There's two things that I go to. One of them is Catalina Crunch. It's a cereal. They have a chocolate flavor. They have a graham cracker flavor and a cinnamon toast flavor that I've had. I literally just take a little pinch of it. I have just a few of those dry. It feels cookie-like. There's another thing I just tried last night. Some of my friends posted all of their baking photos. They were quarantine baking, and cookies. I wanted something sweet. I decided to try, I have this Birch Benders pumpkin pancake mix. I asked my critique partner, I'm like, "Do you think I could pour them in a muffin tin and turn it into muffins with a batter?" She's like, "Why not?" I made muffins with pancake mix. It turned out great. Another thing, I love pasta. I'm Jewish. I feel like Jews and Italians, they have a lot of similar issues and food we love. I found a chickpea pasta which literally tastes exactly the same to me. I put my sauce on it. I have an almond ricotta cheese that I'll use a little bit of. Really, I don't suffer. When I go out to restaurants, most places it's fine to make accommodations. I think just starting was the hard thing. Then once I got used to it -- one of my best friends is vegan. When she made that decision to go vegan, she realized that everybody has food issues. When you go to a restaurant with five people, someone's going to say, that on the side, I don't want that, I don't want that. 

Rather than be embarrassed about my special needs, I'm proud of, no, I'm doing this for my health. I'm doing this for me. I've been okay with it. I am pretty annoying to go out to dinner with, though. Again, once I went into quarantine, it just stopped. As of today, I'm at 104 pounds lost. I reached a hundred in May. I haven't gotten to 105 yet. I've been between 104 and then 98 for the last six months. I've just been going up and down, and up and down. It's been super frustrating. I've been really frustrated with myself. I have a lot of friends who are like, "Everybody else in the world is gaining weight during quarantine, so maybe maintaining is okay." I'm really hard on myself. I know a lot of women are. When I saw you starting that group, I'm like, maybe that accountability is what I need. I use accountability in my writing life. I run a Facebook group for women called The Every Damn Day Writers. I think that having that support and that accountability, it helps me get my writing done, and so maybe it'll help with this.

Zibby: I hope so. I hope we can help. I think just having the group and knowing anybody out there cares and listens is helpful, for me personally. I'm a member of -- what's that hair club commercial? Do you know what I'm talking about, or am I dating myself here?

Alison: I do. I'm not just a spokesperson, I'm a member too.

Zibby: I'm also a member, right. You can follow a plan, but there's something intangible that I think the Weight Watchers method originally set out to do, which I think has been lost in the corporatization or whatever. It was sitting around talking to other women in someone's living room. There are no living rooms, but I was doing that with books. If I could do that with weight loss -- women, we could sit and talk for eight hours straight about eating stuff.

Alison: A hundred percent. To me, I loved that part of Weight Watchers. I actually used one of the lines, my Weight Watchers, the leader when I was living in Boston used. She said that if somebody offers you something that you can't have, say you're allergic and that you'll break out in hips. [laughter] With Weight Watchers, for me, it would always work. Then I would get so comfortable with it that I would eyeball things. I would be like, I don't have to count because I know. Then just bit by bit, you would get back into bad habits. For me, I realized that, again, it's what I have to do for myself and that I'm better when it's stricter. It's worked. It's crazy. One funny story. My gym has opened again with mixed hours. I got to a point where I had certain Netflix shows. I watched You on Netflix, but I would only let myself watch it when I was on the treadmill. That was a motivator to go do that. I got into it. I got to a point where I was actually looked forward to it. It had been five months since I had been on the treadmill. I've been taking walks, but there's something different about the ground moving underneath you or not when you're on a treadmill. 

I went back last week. I was very proud of myself for going back, but I made a mistake. I started where I had left off. I was doing this interval program at intermediate level. My first time back in five months, I went at intermediate level. Let me tell you, I should've started back at beginner again. I wouldn't have been surprised if I had fallen off the treadmill. It started going so fast. It did show me how far I had come when I was doing it. I do think that it's that habit and routine. Again, everybody that I talk to -- my sister tried Whole30, and it didn't work for her. I think that a lot of it is trying to see what's right for you. I spent a lifetime trying things. I'm glad that I finally figured it out. I'd like to lose about forty more pounds. I don't know if I'll ever be thin, but I don't know if that's my goal. I want to feel good and look good and be healthy and not have to worry too much about hiding from photos and being able to enjoy my life and to not have to worry about not being able to keep up if my friends want to go somewhere. I'm in a walking city, being able to walk everywhere. It's been a big year. I'm excited about it.

Zibby: First of all, I don't want this to sound condescending to say I'm proud of you. Maybe that's the wrong word. I'm really excited for you. I think it's amazing that you found something that worked, and you stuck to it and you had a huge accomplishment. That just shows such commitment and drive and so many other amazing qualities about you and your focus. I know how frustrating it must feel when you're close. You're trying so hard. You didn't give up trying for six months, even though I see why people want to say, oh, you didn't gain. I do feel that way too. It could've been far worse, but that's not what you want to hear when you're trying to go forward.

Alison: It's interesting. I didn't think about this until you just said that, but I had my book launch as my goal. I wanted to lose a hundred pounds by April 7th when my book came out. I didn't make it. I was close. I was at ninety-five or something. I was still happy enough about it.

Zibby: That counts.

Alison: Doing this side by side was great. When I hit a hundred, it was amazing. Then my attitude was like, okay, I hit that goal. I know I want to lose another forty, but I'm not in a rush for it. I was in a rush for it before. I did it healthfully. I lost in a safe amount of time. Maybe I need that goal. Maybe I need to give myself that. My next book's coming out April 13th, so I maybe I need another [indiscernible/crosstalk].

Zibby: There you go. I think that's perfect. What is that? Six months away or so?

Alison: Exactly, from tomorrow.

Zibby: Six months, six times four, it's about twenty-four weeks. Maybe forty's too much, but if you do a pound a week.

Alison: I think that I should pick a number. Forty's the final goal. Maybe I can do it. I, again, like goals that I can reach. I want to make sure I can reach it. Giving myself a goal, I think that I became a little bit more relaxed about it. It's become a part of my life. I do think that I perform better under deadline.

Zibby: There you go. You'll find a number that feels good to you and that's achievable. Sometimes at the beginning when I'm trying to gear up to try to stop overeating so much, I'll be like, oh, my god, but I have to lose twenty pounds or thirty pounds or whatever it is that I'm like, oh, my god. Then I'm like, I actually just really want to lose one pound. If I could just stop the train from being so out of control and just lose one, then the second one's a lot easier. I feel like one after the next after the next as opposed to being overwhelmed by how much is left, that works.

Alison: It's interesting. I find a lot of parallels between my writing life and the weight loss. You're a writer. You know. There's a massive amount of words. I'm trying to finish my second draft of a book by the end of this month. When I looked at the amount of words, it was overwhelming. I'm like, there's no way I can do it. Then I divided it by weeks. I divided it by days. I'm like, okay, I have a plan. I know what I have to do. If I miss I day, I know the exact number I need to make up. When we look at something like twenty-five pounds or forty pounds or anything, it just feels like so much. When you do it a little bit at a time -- the other thing that I think is that it's good to mix things up a little bit for your body because your body gets used to things. Sometimes I feel like if I get in a rut, I'll try something new. Then my body will do well with that. I also tried, about six months ago or maybe a little bit more, I brought intermittent fasting into the mix just because I had stalled. I think it was the ninety-pound mark. Ninety pounds, I was there for over a month. I was so frustrated because I was like, I haven't changed anything. 

My friends were like, "Yeah, you haven't changed anything, so maybe you need to change something up." I tried it. It worked. The first week, I saw movement again. I haven't since, but I'm afraid to stop trying it. I don't eat after eight thirty. Then I don't eat breakfast. I don't eat again until twelve. I'm bad with math. I don't know how many hours that is of fasting, but it's doable. It's easy for me. I feel like I can't stop. I was recently wondering if I should maybe try two weeks on or two weeks off just to get my body out of the rhythm. I wish there was a guidebook. I think that everybody's body is different. Our bodies even change and get used to things. It's just about keeping going. I know a mistake that I used to make was I would make one mistake and I'd be like, then it doesn't matter what I do. I would kind of give up. Again, the accountability. Thank you for starting the group. I'm really excited. I've already picked up some good tips. I've been drinking more water. That was my challenge for this week. I think it's going to be great for women to support each other in this journey that most of us are on, I feel like. [laughs] 

Zibby: Totally. I feel like everybody's on it in one stage or another because this is part of life. This is all we have. This is our car through life. We only get one. We have to sometimes change the oil or take it into the shop. I think you're super aware of what's coming next. I love tying the goal, as long as it doesn't make you crazy, I love the idea of tying it to your next book and taking a smaller, more achievable goal based on the twenty-four weeks or whatever, count them up, that you have left. Maybe half a pound a week. Maybe it's twelve pounds, is your goal.

Alison: I do something that everybody says not to do, but I can't help myself. I get on the scale every day. So much of what I learned from starting Whole30 was about how foods can cause inflammation. I think that part of what I lost in that first month, a lot of it was inflammation because of the different foods not agreeing with my body. Part of it is seeing the daily fluctuation. If I'm up this one day, what did I have that may have caused that? Some days, I'll be bad. Then the next day, there's nothing on the scale and I'm so excited. Then two days later it shows up. It's not an exact science. Again, I think it keeps me accountable. It's fascinating talking about these things because I'm understanding maybe why I do some things that I do. It's a lifelong struggle. I was in Florida visiting some family. They were asking me about my diet. I was like, it's not a diet. I think the word diet has a lot of negative connotation to it. There's nothing wrong with it. For me, it's a lifestyle change. It's not like I can't have something. It's that I choose not to. I think that putting myself in control and determining the narrative and using the words I want to use and making the choices makes it not as hard. It gives me more control. In a world where we don't have control very much at all, it's nice to be able to just claim this one thing.

Zibby: I think once you get out of your apartment and get back to the gym and find some new things, you're working out your body in new ways, I have a feeling, if I were a guessing person, a betting person rather, I would bet that that will help shake up things in your body as well because you're burning more calories than you were before. I know it's not as simple an equation as that. There's more output. You'll be more active. Maybe you'll get into something fun like kickboxing. Who knows? Mix it up. Try some new things. Feel how great your body feels where it is now. Maybe make something not just the scale. Maybe there's an amount of weight you want to lift. Maybe there's some physical, an amount of jumping jacks. I'm just saying maybe the way to get the scale down is not to stare at it, but to do something else just to mix it up. Take up jump roping, spinning. Sometimes I just think, try it. You can write about it. You can put it in your book. Write funny articles. Talk about how it feels. Experiment. Use that new body of yours. Try it out. Take it for a spin.

Alison: If I took up jump roping, I would owe the biggest apology to my downstairs neighbor. [laughs] 

Zibby: Maybe do it at the gym. Okay, fine.

Alison: I'm laughing at the image of that. You're right. The scale is only one way to measure. I know there's a thing, NSV, non-scale victories. I do look for those. Back when I would go to the office, I cut my commute time so much because I'm walking faster. My clothes, there were a few sad moments because some of the clothes that I used to love don't fit anymore in a good way. They just look too baggy on me. The clothing size change, being able to shop in stores that aren't just plus size, it's still crazy. It still surprises me sometimes that I can wear a size that I don't know if I've worn since junior high. I do look for those little moments to appreciate how far I've come. I try not to be too hard on myself, but I think it's a little human nature. At least, it is for me. I'm excited about this goal, April 13th. I'll message in the group. I'll make that official. I'll choose my number. I'll post it in the group.

Zibby: Then we'll be checking in. I'll be looking at the comments all the time. I'll be watching for you and rooting for you. It'll be interesting to see what ends up moving the needle, so to speak. I really want to see you try some new stuff at the gym. I think that's going to be really fun for you.

Alison: Thank you so much. It's been so nice talking to you. Again, thank you for starting this group. I'm really excited about it.

Zibby: Good. I'm really excited you're a part of it. Take care.

Alison: Bye.

Zibby: Bye, Alison.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, MELANIA AND ME

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff: I've been listening to your podcast. Amazing. Thank you.

Zibby Owen: Thank you. Thanks for listening to it.

Stephanie: Really interesting. Very interesting.

Zibby: Congratulations on your book.

Stephanie: Thank you. I appreciate that.

Zibby: Let's discuss Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady. When did you decide you were going to write about your experience?

Stephanie: The first thing to say is that my experience with Melania and the White House and the presidential inauguration committee was fast and furious. I am a meticulous recordkeeper. I've always been. It's just who I am. My intent in having all the administrative things that you would do normally under any circumstance as part of your job -- mine was very much about budgets with my work that I've done. Things just didn't seem to add up. Let's just put it that way. After the presidential inauguration committee, producing the events, I then went into the White House with Melania because she had no one else. I mean, no one.

Zibby: Maybe I should back up. I was so interested. I just wanted to hear you answer that question so badly, but maybe I should provide more context, which is that you and Melania were friends. You met, in part, through your kids. You would go to lunches. You would hang out. She considered you one of her inner circle, essentially, beforehand and would always give you birthday gifts and call you if she needed favors and recommendations. You were her go-to. That's the context.

Stephanie: The orchid was yearly. That was the birthday gift, the orchid.

Zibby: Yeah, the orchid. Sorry, not flowers. Orchid.

Stephanie: I think it's really important because, for me at the time, every year I would get them and I would think to myself, oh, my god, she remembered. Your friends remember these things. She wasn't the one ordering it. It was a yearly -- those were the things that I had to pick up on and take a step back and go, yes, it was a lovely gesture and it was wonderful to be acknowledged and have your friend write -- all you want is your friends to reach out in a text and say happy birthday. At the time when was so much was going on, you think, wow, that was really nice. I considered it more care than maybe really what it was.

Zibby: You don't think that it was from a place of care at all?

Stephanie: No, not at all. I definitely think it was from a place of care, but that's just who she is. It's part of her makeup, is to make sure that things are recognized on behalf of others, a thank you note. She's very cordial. She does things very formally. That's more how I was thinking of it versus my scattered brain where I'm all over the place. I'm, last minute, writing my friends and calling them. Life, between work and kids --

Zibby: -- Wait, just teasing this out, so do you think that she had it in her calendar and that it's less care?

Stephanie: Not that it's less care, but it is in her calendar. Melania does have assistants and people that take care of those things. She had to want to do it. It's that next step where not only do you see it on your iCal, but you take the time to make sure that it gets there and you ask and you talk about it. It was a very kind gesture.

Zibby: You think it was a kind gesture, but it seemed kinder than it actually was because of how it was -- I don't want to keep dwelling on this. Anyway, let me just let it go. That ended up happening. [laughs] Then as you had gotten closer and you recorded a bunch of your emails and all this stuff --

Stephanie: -- I didn't record.

Zibby: I'm sorry. That was the wrong word. You were just saying you're a great recordkeeper, so I think that's why it was in my head that you keep meticulous records and everything. Then you have so many of the emails you exchanged in the book. Like everybody, they save.

Stephanie: Absolutely. That's the thing too. One of the most important things for me in writing this book was to clear my conscience because it was immediately after I was fed to the wolves, thrown under the bus, and accused of a financial crime and headlined all over the world as, Melania's friend gets twenty-six million dollars. Then the following week, Melania's friend gets fired. They attached it. They made it culpable. Neither headline was true. Again, that's why I felt like I had to take a big step back. I started writing because I was writing an op-ed. I was trying to put this into an op-ed thinking if I write what happened in eight hundred words -- I'm trying to fit this in so everyone can understand. That op-ed just kept going and going and going and going because I couldn't get enough out.

Zibby: Now your op-ed is this long, is basically what happened.

Stephanie: There it is. That's my op-ed based on all facts. There's not a line that's disputable. When the White House kept coming after me saying I was delusional, I made things up, those are the reasons why you hear some of those recordings now.

Zibby: For people who don't know what happened, you went into the White House. You were hired to help with the inauguration. You had a whole history running the Met Ball for many, many years and were a complete superstar event producer and a thousand trillion other amazing, reputable things in society. You go. Melania says she wants you to be part of the inauguration. You orchestrate that in your way that you are used to doing. Then what happens?

Stephanie: I was working with a lot of people during the inauguration. There were a lot of things going on around me that I wasn't accustomed to but I also wasn't familiar with. I would constantly bring up to Donald and Melania, a lot of inconsistencies and inaccuracies of things that didn't add up and also didn't make sense. After the inauguration, we planned eighteen events. I was only supposed to go in to do creative on a couple events. I ended up being the central figure. I became the face of the inauguration for some odd reason. I do know there was a meeting a couple days, a week, before that. "Steph, you need to go out front. We're going to do a New York Times article. We need you out there to show everyone that you're in support of this." I hadn’t done any press. I had no intention of doing press. I was just doing it actually out of honor because it is the United States of America. I am a producer. I felt it's an amazing thing to be asked to do. Melania's my friend. Nobody else would do it. The reality is even if other people would've done it, it's my own fault, I didn't take policy into consideration at the time at all, neither was I that familiar with it. I've had to educate myself. Quite honestly, I thought I could separate politics and ethics. The way I was able to live my life was to work on humanitarian, contribute in producing like the inauguration, but I always blocked out the noise of politics. You cannot live your life like that. That is my fault for going into this and saying yes to something that I knew nothing about.

This was no fairy-tale. This was no New York Fashion Week. This was a different world, a different beast, and I didn't know enough. That's one of the biggest lessons I learned. No matter how close you are to someone, you’ve got to ask questions. You've got to make sure you understand who the players are before you agree to jump into anything that you do in your life. I wanted to believe that good over evil -- it doesn't matter. It does not work that way in politics or in this world that I was dealing with with these people, but I always felt Melania had my back, and Donald. It was really with the support of Melania -- when I came back to New York, literally two days later I flew to DC. She had no one else. I mean, no one. I was interviewing everyone for her office during the inauguration. As I was planning the inauguration and I was working on Ralph Lauren and organizing her for the swearing in, every step of the way working on production and broadcast, I was interviewing and met and hired a few people for the East Wing. When I went back to the White House, it was empty. It was an empty, dark place. I was alone. I turned on the lights. I remember calling her and being like -- there I was standing in Michelle Obama's office. To me, I was like, oh, my god, I'm standing in Michelle Obama's office. She was like, no big deal. I'm FaceTiming her. I just remember that moment. I'm like, "My god. Look where I am. I'm in your office. This is the White House. This is the United States of America." She just moved on, laughed, and moved on to what's next, which is the redecorating and the staffing. She didn't really want to even talk about that. Again, I think I held the regard. I was obviously projecting what I felt onto her.

That's another thing that I see in retrospect. Because I was in a position to help her and the proximity to her, the power that she wielded, the platform that she had at her fingertips, obviously, it was something that I -- people say, you wanted the power. No, no. There's so much about children and social/emotional learning that's very personal to me because of my children, and the importance of not identifying children based on how they look. Are they typical? Are they not? Our family's been through a lot, the journeys that we've had to take to understand how important it is for children to be able to, first of all, understand themselves and be able to express themselves. They need the tools to know how to do that. That's all about prevention. It's not about intervention. When you go into kindergarten, you need to learn that -- "I don't feel well," what does that mean? Express your feelings. Understand what that means. Regulate yourself. These are things that my husband and I and my kids learned over ten years. I felt that every child should have this because it's not just for children with learning disabilities and differences. It's for every child. The fact that she only wanted to focus on cyber bullying -- she was open to a bigger umbrella. For me, I was working with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Aspen Institute, Tim Shriver. We had an amazing team of people that truly -- Ivanka wanted to usurp the first lady. The West Wing did not want her to continue moving on on a platform, honestly. There's so much going on at once. I apologize. I was banging my head against the wall every day about her and about the position I put myself in and also looking forward and tunnel vision to get it done.

Zibby: Basically, you took an assignment and then didn't totally process because who could know what would come with it? Then you find yourself in this new environment. Then you didn't have your one ally, you feel, enough.

Stephanie: I had her until I had her. I did, I had her until they needed to place blame. They heard there was an investigation opening up into the presidential inauguration committee. As soon as that happened, she turned her back on me when I needed her most. All I needed her to do was speak the truth. She says it to me personally. People say, I can't believe you recorded a friend. No, no. They had already accused me of getting twenty-six million dollars. They accused me of being fired and all the other accusations that came with it. I already had hired a lawyer when I was in the White House still in January. She knew about it because there was this setup to taking me down, and I was aware of it.

Zibby: Why did they want to take you down?

Stephanie: Again, in the book, but it was the importance of mitigating the negative response to any type of headline for the first lady in reference to me working for her because of the accusations of the pick. Now, I'm the one who raised all the red flags. I didn't have any signing powers. I didn't have budget powers. I was a piece of chewing gum between everyone. I was being pulled and pushed in every direction. I never even had access to a bank account. I never had a checkbook. I was kicked out of financial meetings. I could run over to their apartment at Trump Tower and show them things and say, oh, my god, I'm going to end up in the bottom of the Potomac because I'm pointing this out to you. They would pick up the phone and fire Rick Gates. At the end of the day, I had no financial responsibility, which made it even worse, so the fact that this worked -- internally, there were these sixty-two questions that went around the White House for a year. Inauguration's over in January 2017.

In February 2018, they released the 990. It's form 990 that's going to the federal election committee. When they did that, they list the top five companies. You don't list individuals ever. As [indiscernible] was created -- for full transparency, it's literally four people from Tiny Horse and myself. Again, we were only supposed to be overseeing $1.62 million. How it got to where it got to is a whole nother story. I'm working with the United States attorney general for the District of Columbia. I know I'm going all over the place. I apologize. I'm involved in three different investigations. I was subpoenaed by the grand jury of the Southern District of New York, the intelligence committee, as well as working with DC NOW. It took over my life. I pressed record after I was in the White House, after I had already hired a lawyer because they wanted me to create a narrative. I wouldn't go along with theirs, which was, this was the most peaceful transition of power and everything was done by the book. I wouldn't do it. This is when I'm sitting in the first lady's office creating her initiatives. I was a problem. I was a problem for everyone. I actually expressed that to the lawyers. I was very vocal about the fact of what had happened during the inauguration. I wouldn't keep my mouth shut. Not only did they not want the initiative to move forward, they needed me to stop talking about the improprieties.

Zibby: I get everything. I did read your book. I followed you on the news.

Stephanie: I'm sorry.

Zibby: No, no, I just want you to know I do have some background. Part of this is teasing out what happened. I am sorry for what's happened to you. I can sense your fear, really. There's a lot going on. A lot of it is out of your control. All you've done is work hard. Yet all this stuff is happening to you. I can tell how unfair you feel that is, and justifiably.

Stephanie: It took over my life, financially, socially, emotionally, physically. I was in the hospital for over a month. I almost died. I gave up all my businesses. I literally gave up all my partnerships to go do this for her. That's why that betrayal was so hard. It still affects me. It wasn't like your friend just didn't call you back. I gave up twenty-five years of my life's work, my career, my livelihood. My three children had to watch this.

Zibby: Do you think she had the free will, almost, enough to do -- from just how it looks on the outside -- I shouldn't say that. Do you think that she was an independent actor enough to have, if she wanted to, have had your back? Do you think she could have?

Stephanie: That's when I have the recordings. That's where she couldn't have, and she told me. These are her words.

Zibby: It's almost like, is it really her fault? Not to say that there's not a huge amount of wrongdoing here. It seems like with the book at least, the point of view of the book is the friend who does you wrong. I'm not saying she didn't. I'm just wondering, is all the rage and the frustration and justifiable sentiment you feel, is it really because of her, or is it because of this whole situation?

Stephanie: Had it not been for her, I wouldn't have put myself in that situation. The first story that said I got twenty-six million dollars, which to begin with wasn't true, whatever. It was the second story where all she had to do was say I wasn't fired. That made me culpable to the money. It made it look as if I was on a contract that was terminated due to Jared and Rob Porter's security clearances. It had nothing to do with the pick. She asked me to keep it quiet about my contract because there was only one other person who had the same contract. Had I actually said that and told the world that, then they could have made me culpable to the first article. Again, the persuasiveness to keep my mouth quiet -- talk to a lawyer, but keep your mouth quiet. I had the NDA, so I was gagged. I couldn't say a word. When your friend tells you to get over it and don't be so dramatic after that happens to you, that's not a friend. There was no empathy. There was no understanding. This came to that because of politics. Those were her words. Again, I didn't need for her to do anything with the presidential inauguration committee misdeeds. She wanted to stay out of that. I just needed her to say I wasn't fired because I wasn't.

Zibby: Do you think she feels remorse? Do you think she feels anything? In the book, you paint her as somebody who doesn't have that many emotions. Sometimes we're like, how can she stand by? How can this not bother her? That's the common thing. She seems so, you describe it as calm, but it's also, can she feel the feelings? Is she capable of remorse? What do you think? That's sort of different. That's like a kid at school who doesn't have the ability, necessarily. We're all very up to date, Child Mind, different socioemotional stuff. Is it that she lacks the ability, or is it that it was intentional?

Stephanie: There are many different angles to Melania. There are many different Melanias. What's consistent is that, I say that she's unapologetically skin deep. If she cannot control how you think about her, she will not even consider how you're feeling or what you're thinking. That's a fact. She must be able to control the narrative. She says it over and over, I don't care. Somebody hurts her, somebody does something mean to terrible to her, they expose her nudies on the cover of a magazine; politics. The RNC speech; politics, liberal media. She literally says about those type of things, it'll pass in a day. We had a lot of conversations, she and I, where I said, I wish I could live my life somewhat like that. I can't. I wear my heart on my sleeve. She does and did express how she is able to move on and people need to just stand up, hold your head up high, and move on and get on with it because you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, the next week, the next month. These are her words. She did say I love you and I'm sorry. That's not enough.

Zibby: You have the letter in here where she's apologetic-ish and saying "Love, Melania" and all this stuff to the end. Did you ever think of yourself as a person who would write a book about a friendship gone wrong type of thing, your other friendships and all the rest?

Stephanie: Never. I literally looked at my husband one night. I was like, "I'm an author?" I never ever, ever, ever -- this was me to be able to understand what happened to me and the world around me because I could make sense of, who is Melania, then? How is it possible that she could be so callous yet at the same time I was drawn to her because she had such great common advice, because she was so strong and independent? What that is, there's a barrier. She feels it, but she's not going to internalize it ever.

Zibby: I totally get that you need to figure her out and process it. You must have just a trillion feelings about this whole thing, but that's one bucket. Another bucket is taking it and sharing it with the entire world.

Stephanie: The entire world needs to know she supports him. She's his biggest cheerleader. She thinks that he should be very strong and assertive about everything that he's doing. She is not at all concerned about what you think, nor does she want to tell you what's really going in the incident with the meme Free Melania. As you know, Barron accidently kicked her in the foot. She will never reveal to anyone the source of what's happening because she doesn't want you to know her emotions. She doesn't want the reader to know who she is. She doesn't want anyone in the world to have any inkling. The truth is, she does not care. She really doesn't. If it's good for Melania, it's good for Melania. Forget about me. I'm talking about everyone else from anyone else's situation to the way I watched her deal with certain people that were very close friends. She will ask, "How's that person doing?" She really doesn't care.

Zibby: Do you think that anyone doesn't believe that she supports her husband?

Stephanie: I do. That's one of the reasons why I did release the tape in addition to the fact that they were calling me a paranoid liar. People need to hear it from her so they understand that Melania, in order for her to do something, she needs to be recognized for doing it. That's where she and Donald are very similar, but he'll cry about it if someone's beating him up. She doesn't care. You could say anything you want about her. That's the difference between the two of them. They both want the attention. They both internalize it. But Melania, that's where it ends.

Zibby: Based on your friendship before, do you feel like you had any loyalty to her to not share her inner stuff?

Stephanie: Honestly, the whole thing that happened with the recording yesterday, I, in my mind, never even went there. To think that that's what it would turn into, a battle between Twitter, I honestly was sick to my stomach. Not my intent. Honestly, I wanted to write the book and move on. I really thought, I'm going to write this. I'm going to make sure that the world knows what really happened. I'm involved in these investigations, so I was leaving some breadcrumbs as well. Because of my NDA, I am still gagged. I worked with first amendment lawyers to be able to write as much as I could. There is a lot of bad going on in our administration. I mean, a lot. The people that are leading it are connected in so many different ways that people don't even realize, the intricacies of what's going on and how it's affecting us and how it will affect our children and our children's children. I felt like I'm still protecting them if I don't release the tape as well. After the presidential debate, the way he acted to Joe Biden and then when she went on stage and admiringly looked at him and smiled, regardless of how they held each other because that's a whole different -- that's not what they do anyway. All of a sudden, I felt my blood boil. I felt like it just wasn't right. If it was my husband, I would've gone on stage regardless on cameras or not, I would've looked at him like, what was that? I understand he's the president, but don't treat people that way. It's not okay. The disrespect, the lack of character and integrity, she stands behind that because that is who she is too. There is no Free Melania. There is no, oh, poor Melania.

Zibby: You don't want us to feel sorry for her at all.

Stephanie: Neither does she. She doesn't want anyone to feel sorry for her. She knows exactly what she's doing. She's says, consequences or no consequences, I do what I do because I want to. She doesn't feel it the way that everyone thinks she feels it. She just doesn't at all. We're a month away from this election. Having spent the time, these couple of years, learning about politics and learning about the fact that you've got to educate yourself and you have to know the differences not only between right and wrong -- for me, it was never left versus right. It was always right versus wrong. You have to know the differences because, as I said earlier, your ethics, your values, have to be in line with your politics. I have a responsibility to myself, my children, my family. They watched me suffer and give up. I had a responsibility to learn what I didn't know. Now I'm vocalizing it and verbalizing it so people understand that they need to know more.

Zibby: Is this helping you? I feel like you're still really upset.

Stephanie: Can I tell you? There's something that happened. Things got a little -- again, I wanted to write the book and go like this. The fact is that I have so much information that people are still using because of the investigations. I'm a witness in all of them. The weight on me in not being able to talk about the things I know and the expectations from all of these prosecutors and people -- again, I spent millions of dollars. Why? For what? So I can give the government the information that I kept calling out over and over and over? What's happening? These people are still walking around -- for me, the emotion is not so much, it's not Melania. It's not the betrayal because I really got it. I understand the fact that it's inhumane. It is. Yet we have a humanitarian crisis in our back yard. That's all anyone should be talking about. That's all she should be doing. Yet what she did to the Rose Garden is just -- I tie those things together and I say to myself, that's what makes me angry, is that she's in a position to make a difference, and she doesn't. What still upsets me is that I am a voice that knows her and knows this family in a very different way. I know Melania to her core. I have sat with that family at dinner tables. Now, do I know Donald and the boys and Ivanka? Not anywhere near how I know Melanie at all. I know Melania. I can say to everyone, do not worry about her. Do not think that she has, remotely, any sad feelings or she's locked up. I do have to vocalize. I must verbalize the fact that, I can't say it enough, people really need to understand the politics of this all and how it's going to affect our next generation. We're not going to be here to protect them.

Zibby: Wow. This is intense.

Stephanie: I'm sorry.

Zibby: No, don't be sorry. You have a lot going on. This is a lot to carry for anyone. It sounds like you're using the book to sort out your feelings. You're trying hard not to succumb to the things that have happened. You're trying to look for why they happened. You're angry and frustrated.

Stephanie: Here's the thing. The truth is that what happened to me is happening to everyone else. Writing the book and expressing those sixty-nine days, I was able to tell it from my friendship with Melania because of the NDA. Through my friendship with Melania, I didn't have an NDA. I wasn't being paid for my work for Melania. Everything I did was on my own dime.

Zibby: I understand. I get it.

Stephanie: It was a journey.

Zibby: It's a journey. We're out of time already. I didn't even ask you about the writing of the book.

Stephanie: I'm so sorry that I went off topic.

Zibby: No, I just feel like there's so much to unpack in your experience. I feel like I am watching someone who is really struggling. That is really hard. Maybe I'm not. I'm blind saying that.

Stephanie: When I say I almost died, I've had two pulmonary embolisms. I had two spinal fusions. I wear a neck brace around my house. I can't do the things I used to do. I am not the same person.

Zibby: Oh, god, I have to get my daughter. [laughs]

Stephanie: Oh, my god, go. Go, go, go.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. I'm like, let's just ask a few more questions. Meanwhile, she's waiting.

Stephanie: Well, you're not wrong. Let me just say that. You're not wrong.

Zibby: I hope that this book plays into your being able to find some sort of inner peace and make sense of what's happened and move on because ultimately, you can't save the world. You have to focus, maybe, on you.

Stephanie: A hundred percent. That's why, again, writing the book and closing the door would've been perfect. It didn't allow me to because of everything else that's going on. It's out of my control.

Zibby: I'm happy to continue this in another forum, but... [laughs]

Stephanie: Thank you so much. Again, I'm so sorry that I over-spoke about other things.

Zibby: No, it's very interesting.

Stephanie: If you want to speak some more even off the podcast, I'm happy to. I do apologize.

Zibby: No, please don't apologize.

Stephanie: Thank you so much. This has been great.

Zibby: Thanks for coming on the show. Buh-bye.

Stephanie: Thanks. Bye.

Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney, LORETTA LITTLE LOOKS BACK

Zibby Owens: Welcome so much, Andrea and Brian. This is a such a huge thrill to be interviewing both of you and getting a visual element and literary. It's so exciting. Thanks for joining me on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Andrea Pinkney: Thank you.

Zibby: Let's talk about your most recent book first, Loretta Little Looks Back. I can't speak today. Can you please tell everybody what this particular book is about? It's so unique and interesting. Also, what inspired you to write it?

Andrea: It is a mouthful, isn't it? Loretta Little Looks Back, say that ten times fast. Maybe I will begin by telling you what it's about by introducing you to some of the characters. The title is Loretta Little Looks Back: Three Voices Go Tell It. As Loretta says, "Right here, I'm sharing the honest-to-goodness." As young brother Roly proclaims, "I'm gon' reach back, and tell how it all went. I'm gon' speak on it. My way." As young Aggie B who is twelve years old will tell you, "Folks claim I got more nerve than a bad tooth. But there is nothing bad about being bold." This is their three stories. It is the story of the Little family: Loretta, Roly, and Aggie B. It spans from 1927. We begin in a Mississippi sharecropping field. We go all the way up to the 1968 presidential election. It spans three generations. We really get a front-row seat to African Americans on the Civil Rights journey, but also claiming the right to vote. That's a little bit about the book.

Zibby: You describe this book as a go-tell-it, a monologue novel. The way you wrote it was, even though it reads as a novel, some is more like poetry. Some are more like scenes from a play. It's all very visual and auditory as well, almost as if it should be on stage as well as a book. Tell me about how you structured it because it was so interesting, this format. Tell me.

Andrea: Loretta Little Looks Back, I am calling it a monologue novel. It really is a mix of poetry, first-person narratives, gospel rhythms, a little bit of blues thrown in. In each of the sections, the characters come out on stage, as you will, and they talk to us. The idea is that we're really getting behind the eyes of Loretta. We're getting in the belly of Roly. We're getting right, right, heart and soul of Aggie B. Kids, young readers, can really feel what they're feeling. It's very experiential. The idea also is that the book could be shared with friends. It could be done as a readers' theater. You can read it quietly and contemplatively on your own. Really, we just want to hear those voices of the three characters. We really want to inhabit who they are so we can experience what they're going through.

Zibby: Did you consider just writing this as a play?

Andrea: I did. Speaking as one who likes that front row seat -- we live in New York City. I spend a lot of time in the theater. That was my first thought. We just strung it together as a narrative, and now it lives as a novel. Maybe it will live as a play or a film someday at some point.

Zibby: There you go, all very versatile. Of course, you have your husband, an acclaimed illustrator in his right. You guys are such a power duo. This is insane. He does all the illustrations. Now Brian, we're looking at your incredible studio here with all these drawings behind you. Tell me about what it was like working together. I know you have before. What was it like illustrating for this novel in particular?

Brian Pinkey: When I illustrate with Andrea, it's an amazing process. It's always different because her approach to writing changes with every novel or every book that she does. My first thing is that I just read the stories over and over again to the point where I know them so well. I start feeling it in my heart. Then I just start making artwork. The best way for me to explain that is to actually show it while I'm talking. This is the paint that I used. There's gouache here. I have acrylic. I have watercolor. I think with the paintbrush. It's almost like I'm thinking theatrically. In the case of doing the cover, I'm thinking about what colors would be in the South. I'm thinking blue. I think of the sky. I think of lots of sunlight. I'm making circles. I know in my mind this is going to be Aggie's face. Andrea talks about her looking back in the title. I thought, what would that be like to be looking back but also moving forward at the same time? I'm thinking abstractly. This is going to be her face. This is going to be land. This is going to be sunlight back here. It's very wet. The watercolors move very fast. I'm using a sumi brush, which is a Japanese watercolor brush.

Then I'll go back in just intuitively thinking about brown skin, her face. It's going to be somewhere here. The soil is also brown. They're sharecroppers. There's green for the vegetation that's growing. I'll get something very messy like this. Then I'll just sit with that for a while because you can see I paint really fast. I'm going to show you a piece that I had earlier that's very similar but already dry. It has to dry. This is kind of my underpainting. Again, I would do a lot of sketches like this until I find one that I like. Then I'll go back in with another brush called a Da Vinci Maestro, which is a very fine-pointed brush. I'll go in with black ink. I'm using black ink here and a brush. While I work, I am thinking about the blues and jazz. It's very improvisational. Again, my hand is dancing while I'm drawing. I'm thinking, this is going to be Loretta Little looking back. I'll look at hundreds of pictures of beautiful, young, African American girls to get an idea of what she should look like. In my mind, she kind of looks like my niece who is about twelve or thirteen now, very curious. I think, what would it have been like for her if that was her? Just with the paintbrush, drawing her hair. Now I use different pressure. What's great about this is because my studio is not in the home, Andrea actually does not know what I'm doing when I do it.

Andrea: I'm loving it. It's always a wonderful surprise.

Brian: This is how I work. I'll look at outfits like costumes of -- what did the clothing look like? I want to make sure everything is authentic to the time. I'll look at cotton fields. How does the cotton grow? All the while, I'm thinking, what is this saying about the main character? She's looking back over her shoulder here. I'll take breaks and go back into it with more color. I may do this image four or five times, six or seven times, to get the one that I think is exactly what I want. I can hold this up a little bit on the bigger screen so you can see how it's coming out. You know the cover of the book.

Andrea: I'm going to hold this up where you can see it. What I love about the cover is that Loretta Little is indeed looking back. What Brian has done so brilliantly is that she's gazing back at her history, her legacy, and also looking ahead into an unknown future. I really love the cover.

Zibby: I love the cover too. This is great.

Brian: That's basically the process. In terms of Andrea and I working together, we've come up with a couple guidelines so that we actually can stay happily married and work together. Andrea, you want to me start out?

Andrea: Kick it off, Brian. You got it.

Brian: Some of the rules we came up with that -- Andrea is an editor and an author. She has an amazing eye for details. I appreciate that, but I'm also very sensitive. It's very important for me that when Andrea sees something that doesn't look quite right to her, she words it correctly for me. For example, if she sees Loretta Little's foot, she can't say something like, "It looks like a football," because that kind of hurts my feelings.

Zibby: Has that actually happened?

Andrea: That has happened.

Zibby: It sounded like that might have been an actual [indiscernible/laughter].

Brian: Her thing is that if you see something that doesn't look quite right, she can't say, "Loretta Little's foot looks like a football." She has to say, "Loretta Little's foot looks unresolved."

Andrea: It's unresolved. It's a work-in-progress.

Brian: Then my self-esteem stays intact. Then I can come up with some lame excuse, or maybe a good one. Andrea always has guidelines for me, which is that she loves it when I read her manuscripts no matter what stage they're at. As the artist, I do have the peripheral vision of it. I can kind of see it. Her rule for me is that no matter what I think of her writing at the time I must start my comments outs with, "Honey, you're off to a great start."

Andrea: We're all off to a great start one way or the other. Brian mentioned his studio is not in our home. That's deliberate. Most authors and illustrators don't meet each other. They don't collaborate in the traditional sense. The person in the publishing company, the editor, keeps those individuals apart. It seems very strange, but that really is how it works. If I weren’t married to him, if the illustrator of many of my books wasn't sharing a box of cereal or a tube of toothpaste, then I wouldn't see what he's doing in the studio. We don't talk about it. We do get together once a week on a Saturday. It's usually from around noon to three o'clock in the afternoon, three hours. We come to the dining table. That's really when we talk about the work. We have a designated time period. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end. I know that if there's something else I want to say or convey, I wait until the following Saturday. There's a nice boundary around that. We were talking about work all the time. That meeting space allows us to talk about it and to move on and have a happy family life and a great marriage.

Zibby: This should definitely be your next book, by the way, all these tips. This is great. "Honey, you're off to a good start" is a great way to really preface any conversation, almost any idea.

Andrea: It's always true.

Brian: Anyone in a relationship, your partner says they're going to clean the room, they don't or they do and you're not quite happy, you can say, "Honey, it looks a little unresolved."

Zibby: Unresolved, okay. Good starts and unresolved things, I'm making mental notes here. This is good to know, the secrets to the successful collaboration. I love it, especially in a creative field where it's not right or wrong. It's always in the eyes of the beholder, essentially, what the work is from a book to a drawing to everything. Excellent advice. Can I hear a little more about how both of you got into your fields to begin with? I want to also hear how you met. I heard that it was through work or something. Go back in time for me a little bit. Give me some background.

Brian: I'll start. My family are all in the arts. My father is Jerry Pinkney who's an award-winning children's books illustrator. Growing up, I always visited him in his studio and would see him make pictures. I followed in his footsteps in a way. Then I went to art school, university art school, visual arts, and came out and started illustrating and getting freelance jobs and doing books. It was hard work, but I love doing hard work. That's how I got started.

Andrea: I fell into children's book publishing, and really book publishing, a little bit by accident, which happens to a lot of people. I did go to journalism school. I wanted to be a journalist, which I was. I worked for a lot of the leading women's magazines. I was the contemporary living editor at Essence magazine. Part of that job at Essence was that every month I had to fill a section with information about African American children's books. This was in the mid-eighties. I would call up publishers. I'd say, "Send me your best books." There weren’t a lot to send. Now someone who works in publishing will do anything to get that coverage in the media. My editor-in-chief at the time, Susan Taylor, said, "Andrea, you've got to fill this section." I said, "Susan, I can't. There's just not enough books for every month." I met someone at the BookExpo America conference. I said, "Hey, we need the black Baby-Sitters Club. We need more board books for babies. We need biographies." We got to talking. One thing led to another. I got my first job in book publishing at Simon & Schuster where I was a children's book editor. Then I went on from there. Then I started writing books. Brian was illustrating textbooks at the time. I kept saying to him, "You should call your editor at this-and-that publishing company and tell them we need a black teen series, board books for babies, mysteries, fantasy, adventure, biographies." He said, "Well, why don't you write some of those books?" Here we are.

Zibby: Wow, that's amazing. With so many ideas of what you wanted to do, how did you even decide where to begin?

Andrea: As a magazine editor, I almost feel like you're installed with a radar. When you're working for a magazine, you have to have ideas constantly because you have to be filling that magazine every month, long lead, four months ahead. The radar is always up. I was saying to my then fiancé, maybe somebody should do a book about the dancer Alvin Ailey. Is there any children's book about Duke Ellington? Has anybody written just a little cute series for babies? Just riffing on the ideas. Brian was saying, "You do it. You do it. You do it." Again, here we are. Always got the idea mill going.

Zibby: Then from an editor perspective, tell me about ushering in other people's work on these same themes and topics. What's that book like on basically both sides of the fence, so to speak?

Andrea: I work as a publisher and editor in a publishing company. I work at Scholastic and I'm an author. I do have a lot of ideas. They're not always the books that I am inclined to or that I have the right voice to write them myself. Part of what I love to do is think, here's an idea, who would be amazing to deliver this? I'll often contact that person or their agent or ask somebody, first, "Is it a good idea? Who do you think would be a great person to write it?" It works both ways. Let me just say that when I've got my author hat on, my editor switch is turned off. I can't edit myself. When I have my editor/publisher hat on, the author has gone to sleep. I'm there in service to help other writers tell their stories.

Zibby: Wow, amazing. Can we go back now to Loretta Little Looks Back? Now I said it right. There we go. [laughs] In doing all the research for the book, you mention in the note at the end how you had talked to so many people and got real oral histories including many people from your own family. Can you talk to me a little about what that was like and how you conducted that research and investigation?

Andrea: My family and Brian's family as well, our families both come from the South, mine from Virginia, Brian's from North Carolina. I grew up hearing a lot of these stories on front porches, summer evenings, fireflies, sweet tea, hearing about the legacy of Civil Rights from members of my own family. Somehow, those stories stuck with me. The other thing is that I will say that both my parents were Civil Rights foot soldiers. My father marched with King. I was born a few blocks and a few days after the March on Washington happened in Washington, DC. I'm the kid who -- they say, what did you do this summer? We had the same summer vacation which is that my family got in that wood-panel station wagon and in July, we went to the NAACP Annual National Convention every year. We went to the National Urban League conference. Right before school was going to start in September, we went to something called the Congressional Congress. I would hear African American notables giving speeches. My family would have to talk about it. I'd be like, ugh. [laughter] I dreaded, "What did you do this summer?" Everyone said they went to the beach. They went to camp. How often can you say, "I went to the NAACP National Convention"? Looking back, it stuck. A lot of what you read in Loretta Little Looks Back are from those experiences. Hearing Fannie Luo Hamer, the Civil Rights voting activist, plays a role in Loretta Little Looks Back. Those are the kinds of speakers I heard as a kid myself, like Aggie B is hearing in the story.

Zibby: In terms of what was from your own life versus fiction, did someone in your family get cancer from harsh materials that were sprayed in the fields for mosquitoes? Did that happen? Did the MS happen? What was real and what did you make up?

Andrea: There is a part in the book where a parent dies of cancer as the result of pesticides that are used coming on new to the scene in sharecropping. I won't give it away. I will just say that did not happen. I have had a parent die of cancer, so I infused the emotions of that young girl into that experience.

Zibby: I'm sorry, I hope I didn't give anything away. I was just wondering. I like to know.

Andrea: Not at all, no.

Zibby: I'm really sorry to hear about your parent's experience. What about the disease of the nerves, as you talk about in the book?

Andrea: One of the characters has MS, multiple sclerosis. No, that is not my own experience. It's not the experience of anyone I know. Again, people that I do know, family members, have had similar afflictions, and so I infused it in the book. I was really fortunate to work with the Multiple Sclerosis Society to get all the depictions correct and infuse it with the history of that disease. Everything is really on point.

Zibby: Tell me a little more about your actual writing process. For instance, the chapter Billy-Club Bullies which was bam, bam, bam, tell me about sitting down. Where are you typing these words out? Give me a visual of how you're getting it done, how you structured it. Do you have Post-its everywhere? What's the process like? Then where are you when you're pounding these out?

Andrea: No, I'm not sitting in front of a keyboard, mostly. My husband will tell you. Here's an example. I get up at four in the morning. I'm up. This happened today. I go out. I'm walking. It's dark out. I've got a big hoodie with a big zippered pocket in the front and a pen. This morning for example, it was raining. I came in dripping with the big hoodie and stuff in the front pocket, it's like a kangaroo pocket, this little rickety pen and a notebook. That stuff hopefully will end up in a book. That's how Loretta Little Looks Back started and many of the books. I eventually get to the keyboard. My writing is really from four AM to about six or six thirty in the morning. It takes many forms. Yes, I have Post-it Notes, scraps. It eventually gets to the keyboard, but I don't get up, sit down, and start writing.

Zibby: Wow, what a process, four to six. Then you do your regular work the rest of the day?

Andrea: Yes. In a non-COVID moment, I change clothes and go to my office in Lower Manhattan.

Zibby: Then what time do you go to bed? How much sleep are you getting?

Brian: Not enough.

Andrea: I go to bed pretty late. Not enough, yeah.

Zibby: Pretty late, wow. I guess that's one of the perks of not needing as much sleep. There you go. Do you also get up at four AM, Brian?

Brian: No. I maybe roll over when I hear her get up. I get up around seven and usually leave the house around seven thirty, get to my studio these days around eight thirty, and have my own creative process. I'll get to the studio, look at everything I have to do for the day, and then meditate or do yoga. Then I have a whole kitchen here. I make my food and everything. Then I just start sketching and painting. I'm working and meditating and moving all the time. I usually don't even sit in a chair. I'm either walking, moving, working, or taking a nap. I love taking naps, which is part of my work because my ideas come to me when I'm meditating and napping. Then I put them on the paper.

Zibby: How convenient is that? I want to put napping into my workday. Let's see if my kids really go for that. No, I'm working. No, really. [laughter] What are you working on next? I know this book is coming out. Do you have more coming down the pike together, separate?

Brian: Yes, we're always working on several projects at the same time. Some are in the concept phase. Some are in the sketch phase. Some, I'm working on finishes. I have projects that I'm working on that I've written. I have projects I'm working on that Andrea's written. Some, we don't even know yet what they're going to be.

Andrea: The next one, I'll just tell you, is something for very young children. That's all I'll say.

Brian: We can't talk too much about the details of it, but it is in progress and process.

Zibby: When are you going to write your memoir? When is that going to happen?

Andrea: Brian, are you working on your memoir?

Brian: I'm always working on my memoir, a memoir of some sort. It just keeps shifting and changing. It's a lot of my growing up, just being creative and playing with art and images and imagination. Most of the books that I write are about imagination. Most of the books that I've written are somewhat autobiographical.

Zibby: Amazing. You two seem to have it all figured out. I'm incredibly impressed. The marriage and the workflow and the meetings on Saturdays and the creativity and the awareness of how you work best, I'm very impressed, I have to say. What advice would you both have to aspiring artists and aspiring authors?

Brian: My advice to aspiring artists is to make art. Art is to make art. Find a way that feels most true to you to make art. For me, it's with traditional materials, watercolors, gauche, ink. I let myself change. Sometimes I discover a medium I had never used before. Working with acrylic is pretty new. Some artists work on computers. They work on iPads. Whatever feels natural and to just make art. Continue to draw every day. Make art every day. That would be my first -- and look at people that you admire.

Andrea: I would say the same thing. Writers write daily. People say to me, oh, come on, do you write on your birthday? Yes. Do you write on Christmas? Yes. Do you write on New Year's? Yes. Do you write when your house is a mess? Especially, because I don't want to clean it. Writers write every single day of the week under all circumstances and conditions. Is everything I write publishable? Most of it isn't, but I'm in the act of pursuit of the craft. I also say read everything. Push past that comfort zone. I hear a lot of people say, I don't do fantasy. I'm not a mystery kind of person. Read those books. Read everything. Become a sponge. It would be like me saying, I think I'm going to become a ballerina and just do it every now and then. You have to work at that. I would say, writers, just always be in the act of pursuit of doing it.

Zibby: Love it. Thank you. Thanks so much to both of you for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" and for sharing your beautiful work in every format and all your marriage tips. I'll probably have a better day because of it. [laughs]

Andrea: Thank you, Zibby.

Zibby: Thanks so much for your time. Buh-bye.

Andrea: Buh-bye.

Jane Igharo, TIES THAT TETHER

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Jane. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to discuss Ties That Tether, your awesome book that just came out. Congratulations.

Jane Igharo: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Would you mind please telling listeners who aren't familiar with your book or who perhaps are not Book of the Month club members and didn't notice that it had been chosen as one of the picks, congratulations for that again, what Ties That Tether is about?

Jane: Ties That Tether is about a Nigerian woman who immigrated to Canada when she was twelve and promised her father back in Nigeria as he passed -- he was ill. While he was sick, she promised him that when she did come to Canada, she would stay true to her culture by marrying someone who was Nigerian, specifically Edo. Years later, she meets someone who is not Edo. He's of Spanish descent. They have a blossoming relationship. She's still caught between her family's expectations and her heart.

Zibby: Excellent. I happen to have read the essay you wrote on Shondaland, so I know where this story came from. Perhaps you could tell us a little more, the inspiration for this novel.

Jane: The inspiration was my experience as a Nigerian woman. I immigrated to Canada when I was eleven. I've had to deal with what my family, specifically my mother, expects from me and who she expects me to date. Just dealing with all of it and dating guys within my culture and secretly dating guys outside my culture, that inspired this book. [laughs]

Zibby: I think what you touch on in the book is something that people in so many cultures that are tight-knit or who feel that any external influence is in some way a threat can relate to. It usually comes from the older generation. I feel like these days, we don't think twice about, really, anything. Our parents, and particularly our grandparents, are like, no, no, no.

Jane: It's definitely the older generation, for sure.

Zibby: Tell me about your secretly dating the first guy who was not Nigerian and how it was not telling your mom about it and worrying the whole time about her finding out and all the rest.

Jane: That was stressful. [laughter] It happened when I was at university and I got a bit more freedom.

Zibby: Was he in your class? How did you meet him?

Jane: I met him on the public transit.

Zibby: No way.

Jane: Yeah. He was really cute. He was from El Salvador. We just clicked. I dated him secretly.

Zibby: Wait, that's not enough detail for me still. You're on the public transport. Then what happens? You start talking to him? He started talking to you?

Jane: He started talking to me. He sat beside me. I can't really remember the conversation. It was a while ago. We exchanged numbers, started dating. I had to hide my phone and lie to my mother about where I was going.

Zibby: Were you living at home?

Jane: Yes. I wasn't living on campus, university, because I didn't live that far from my university. I was living from home. So much harder to hide when you're living from home. That's tough.

Zibby: You managed to keep that a secret. Then you started dating other nationalities, somebody from Jamaica, someone who was white. Still, your poor mother is in the dark here.

Jane: For sure. I recently told her about this two years ago when I was dating someone who was Nigerian. She was very much content, very much happy. I was like, "You know, I used to date a lot of guys who weren’t Nigerian." She didn't believe me. She thought I was joking. I really had to spell it out for her. I'm like, "His name was this. He worked here." Then she was like, "How dare you." [laughs] She was so shocked, but she got over it.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. This is none of my business at all. Are you dating someone Nigerian now?

Jane: Yes.

Zibby: Okay. So she's very happy.

Jane: You know what's funny? She read my book, and I think she really did change her perspective a lot. A few weeks ago, she was like, "If you bring a guy home, a white guy home, like Rafael," which is the hero in my book, "I will totally be okay with it." [laughs]

Zibby: Really?

Jane: I was like, that's progress. That great. I don't know if he can be like Rafael, but just keep your mind open. That's good.

Zibby: I love how you came to this conclusion that it was really just fear that drove your mom. Tell me a little more about the conversation you had with her because I found that so interesting. We have all these assumptions about our parents and why they make their rules or why they are the way they are. You really uncovered the root of it. Perhaps, that's what enabled her to finally let go of what she had held onto so strongly.

Jane: Sometimes I feel like we don't even care to understand where our parents are coming from. We just get angry. We don't want to figure out their perspective. For me, I gradually realized my mother was coming from a place of fear, like a lot of immigrants when they move to a new country. They're far from home. They're try to preserve what they had back there. It’s so different. It's just preserving it, keeping that culture and tradition so their children can have it and their children can have it and it can still be strong even in the new setting. It's really what motivates them most of the time, a lot of the time, to just say, don't date outside our culture. I just wanted my readers to understand that as fear not prejudice.

Zibby: Also, you talked about how growing up you were happy to read all the books from school and all the rest, but they typically had white protagonists. They were not stories that reflected your inner experience. You feel very strongly about portraying characters like yourself in fiction. Tell me more about that.

Jane: Growing up, I didn't see people like me, black people or specifically Nigerian characters, in books. The first romance I read was Some Nerve by Jane Heller. I love that book so much. I read it multiple times. I could relate to it on some level, but not completely because the protagonist wasn't like me in any way. She wasn't an immigrant. She wasn't black. She wasn't Nigerian. There was still that disconnect. The first book I ever truly connected with was Americanah, and that was just only a few years ago. I first read that book I think two years ago. It was published before then, but I only got my hands on it two years ago. I really felt seen. I loved the themes within that book of immigration and identity. She talked about hair, which people might not get. For black girls, hair is a big deal. I felt very seen in that book. I'm really excited that throughout my career I plan to write about Nigerian women. A lot of people have been reaching out and saying, this is the first romance that I've seen a Nigerian heroine, and it's amazing. I don't know if it actually is because I haven't read every single book in the world, but it makes me feel really happy to know that another Nigerian girl is seeing herself in the words that I write.

Zibby: It's amazing. What made you write? What made you start doing this? What made you write this book?

Jane: What made me write? Someone asked me this before. The answer is very straight. I couldn't help it. I couldn't not write. The journey to becoming a writer was incredibly hard. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I wrote two books prior to this one in different genres. Trying to get an agent was incredibly hard. It didn't happen until Ties That Tether. Even through that entire process, the idea of giving up never occurred to me. It didn't seem like an option because even through the tears that I cried and the times I wanted to throw my laptop out the window, I knew that I couldn't give up. It just wasn't an option. I write and I will continue to write because I have to, because it's in my blood. I think it's what I'm destined to do.

Zibby: Have you always loved to write?

Jane: I wanted to be a Disney actress when I was younger. [laughter] I really wanted to be that black Hannah Montana. I went on a few auditions, but they didn't work out. It was the summer after I went on an audition and I was really sad because I couldn't progress to the next stage that I wrote a poem called Longing for Spring. It was horrible. I was in elementary school. It was the first thing I wrote, in a purple journal. I kept reading and writing. It just kind of happened. That summer after a huge disappointment -- I found out that I wasn't meant to be an actress because I cannot act. I'm horrible, but I can do something else. I started to explore that.

Zibby: Wow. I know you felt like it wasn't an option, but when you were crying, how did you get back to your laptop? How did you just say to yourself, it doesn't matter, I'm going to do it eventually? Was it just this interior monologue, this faith?

Jane: Yeah, it's faith. I'm a Christian. My faith helped me through this. There's a Bible verse that says a man's gift maketh room for him and bringth him before great men. I wrote that and I framed it. I put it in my room. I would recite it every time because it meant to me that eventually your gift will bring you to a place that you're meant to be if you make room for you in this world where it's crowded and full of so many other talents. Somehow, it will make room for you. Great people will see you. That was in my head. I said it all the time. My family was amazing. My mother, she's an immigrant, but she never pressured me to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, which so many African immigrants or maybe immigrants in general tend to do. I'm so grateful because I can't imagine being a doctor or a lawyer. It's just not for me. I listened to songs that cheered me up. This sounds really ridiculous, but I always listened to that Miley Cyrus song, "The Climb." It's a really good song if you want to be motivated. That helped me a lot.

Zibby: I am going to play that right after this. I'll probably recognize it from my kids. Can you say the verse from the Bible again that you repeated to yourself? Just say it a little slower because you went so fast the first time. I just want to hear it more clearly.

Jane: A man's gift maketh room for him and bringeth him before great men.

Zibby: Cool. I like it. It's great to have a mantra. It's great to have something that you feel like is from, I want to say a higher power but that sounds so hokey, but something that is grounding in that way and that really means a lot to you. It's great. The Bible and Miley Cyrus, who knew? Who knew they would be in the same sentence in this interview?

Jane: [laughs] Who knew?

Zibby: If you were to have kids who wanted to date outside the Nigerian world, would you have any issue at all, or no?

Jane: No, I wouldn't as long as they take the culture that my mother has given me and I have given them and they hold onto it. My main character eventually learns in the book, you can appreciate many cultures, you can practice many cultures and still stay true to yours. It doesn't take anything away from that. That's basically what I would tell my children, to remember where their mother came from and hold onto that no matter what, no matter who they love.

Zibby: Jane, tell me about your writing process. What was it like? Did you outline this book? Did you consider writing a memoir? Did it all just come pouring out? What was it like?

Jane: This is the first book I've ever outlined. As a new writer, I didn't know what I was doing when I started writing initially, like many writers. I just dove into it, sat in front of my computer. That was a huge mistake. I went to a conference in New York with writers. I learned a lot. I learned how to outline my book and plot points and all that stuff, very technical stuff that readers might not realize writers are trying to do. That really did help me, outlining the entire book from beginning to end even though things changed a lot. It gave me an idea of what to do and relevant points to hit instead of just having chapters that were not pushing the plot forward. My writing process since then has been always outlining my book. Sometimes I write the whole thing. Right now, I'm working on a book. I have a whiteboard, but I'm just outlining things as I go because I don't know what's going to happen in the story. Outlining is wonderful.

Zibby: Excellent. Can you say any more about your next book?

Jane: Book number two does not have a title. I'm really struggling with that right now. It's about a biracial woman who never met her Nigerian father. Then she learns that he's passed away. He's invited her to Nigeria for his funeral because he wants all his children to attend. He's this incredibly wealthy man in Nigeria. She decides to go to Nigeria to learn about her father and his family and the part of herself she never knew. She gets there and she meets this unconventional family of his, a first wife, a second wife, a mistress who never made it down the aisle, and children who are basically Nigerian royalty. She's tossed into this colorful, insane family. Most of the characters are trying to find themselves as she's trying to find themselves. I explore themes of immigration and identity and class in Nigeria, the rich and the poor.

Zibby: Wow, that sounds amazing. Oh, my gosh, that sounds great. That sounds like a movie. I'll be tuning into that when that eventually gets optioned and all the rest. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Jane: It's very cliché, but I stand by it. Never give up. If you feel it in your gut that this is what you're meant to do, just don't stop. Not giving up can mean many things. It can mean shelfing a project and starting a new one, which is very painful. Sometimes it's necessary. It could also mean taking writing classes, going to conferences. Writing is so isolating, but it's so amazing that you can meet people who are like you, who are on the same journey, and learn from them. Not giving up also might mean joining a book club and just talking to people who are reading books, seeing what is marketable, seeing what publishers want. A lot of the times, writers don't know what publishers want. That's very important to know. Not giving up, that's my advice.

Zibby: Love it. I have to ask, did you record the audiobook for this? You have the best voice. I'm serious. This should be your side hustle, is being an audiobook narrator.

Jane: Oh, my god, I would love to. I didn't record the voice. I really would have loved to, but I did not. The person who did record I thought did a wonderful job. I really hope to do an audiobook for another of my books.

Zibby: Put that in your next contract. You got to negotiate that up front. Put that in writing.

Jane: Thank you. I will do that.

Zibby: Awesome. Jane, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks for giving the vantage point of the daughter and the mother in this situation because you can relate to both. As a mom, I can relate to wanting to have my kids keep my culture, but see the point of view of the kid. I can feel myself as the kid too. All to say, thank you for your story.

Jane: Thank you for your time and for speaking with me. This was very fun.

Zibby: Good.

Jane: Thank you. Bye.

Zibby: Thanks. Buh-bye.

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Charlotte Wood, THE WEEKEND

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Charlotte. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Charlotte Wood: Thanks for having me, Zibby, so much.

Zibby: I'm so excited to discuss The Weekend with you. This book was so lovely and moving and really well-written. Oh, my gosh, I was just really looking forward to this conversation. I still think about your character sitting on the side of the road whenever I'm getting in my car now trapped under an underpass too narrow to even get out. I'm like, ah! [laughter]

Charlotte: I'm glad they stayed with you.

Zibby: Yes. Can you please tell listeners what The Weekend is about?

Charlotte: The Weekend is about friendship and getting older. The book opens when three friends -- some people have described them as frenemies, but I think they love each other more than that. They're aged in their seventies. Their names are Jude, Wendy, and Adele. They come together on a very hot weekend in Australia just before Christmas, which I know is kind of weird for American readers to think about Christmas being in the middle of the boiling summer. In Australia, that's what it's like often. They come together at the beach house of their fourth friend, Sylvie, who has died just around a year before the book opens. They are there to clean out Sylvie's house. They’ve been friends for a really long time, for around forty years. Their friendship is worn by this stage and worn by grief as well. They’re discovering over this weekend particularly that Sylvie was the one who really held this group together. Without her, they’ve kind of lost the sense of how to be with each other. They just feel lost to one another. It's a very difficult time for them while they grapple with their grief and Sylvie and their grief for their friendship that seems to be dissolving in front of them.

Zibby: What inspired you to write this book? Why these characters? Why this weekend? How did you come up with the structure of it and the whole thing? Why not the month or the long weekend? [laughs]

Charlotte: The reason I wanted to write about these women is that I've always been interested in female friendships and how sustaining they are for so many of us. I've always had quite intense friendship from when I was very young. I have a really nice husband and my own siblings, but friendships are the thing that kind of propel my days. My last book, The Natural Way of Things, was about really young women. It was very dark and nearly brutal book about misogyny. I wanted to release myself and my readers from the darkness of that book. The way to get away from a previous book is almost just to flip it and go to something opposite. That was young women. This is older women. That book was set in the middle of the desert in Australia. This book is at the beach on the coast. It's a much lighter book even though the story is about these women having to face the fact that they're in the last years of their lives. Even if that's another ten or twenty years, it's obviously the last phase of their life that they're heading into. They haven't really thought about that properly. That's one of the things that each of them is grappling with.

One of the things I was interested in is, how do long friendship sustain themselves or not? I have friends that are twenty-five years standing. I love them, but we have changed a lot over that twenty-five years. Sometimes I feel that old friendships, we can just [indiscernible]. We can sort of set them in cement in some way. I feel like we need to be able to have our old friendships move and change and live and be as rich as -- sometimes when you meet a new person, you kind of fall in love with a friend, with this person, because they're facing up with the contemporary you. Whereas sometimes our olds friends, and we all do it to each other, can think, no, I know who you are. You're the person that I met twenty years ago, thirty years ago. I was really interested in casting forward for myself about, what kind of woman might I be if I'm lucky enough to reach my seventies? How will that woman live within the friendships of old? What might be the forces at work upon all of us at that point?

Zibby: Wow. You had a great quote in the book. You wrote, "The thirties were the age you fell most dangerously in love, Adele had discovered after the fact, not with a man or a woman, but with your friends." You write, "Lovers back then came and went like the weather," but you said, "No, it wasn't lovers, but friends, these courageous, shining people you pursued, romanced with dinners and gifts and weekends away. It was so long ago, forty years." It's so true because usually your life is somewhat set, friends. Obviously, you can get divorced and remarried and whatever, but that's one or two major changes in your life. The friends, they come in and out I feel like so often at just the right times for what you need.

Charlotte: For these women, they all met, as Adele says, in their thirties. All of them were quite powerful in their professional lives. A lot of this book is about work, actually, and how women don't just identify with their family identity. They identify with their work. I feel like the ways that we think about older age in popular culture, in television and in books, often older women are just identified by their family roles, by their roles as mothers or grandmothers or whatever, or spouses. The women who I know in their seventies are working or wish they were working. They had very fulfilling professional lives. These women in my book, Jude was a restauranter. She ran the city's finest restaurants. She was one of those very powerful women in the hospitality world. Everyone wanted a table at her restaurant in the city in this book. Adele was a very well-known stage actress. Wendy was a public intellectual and globally known as a feminist academic and intellectual. Her books are still on university lists around the world. In their thirties was the really blossoming time of their cultural power that had this blazing allure for all of them. They came together through various means. They were this shining little crowd in their world.

Now they're looking at each other going, oh, man, I remember when you were so powerful. Now I feel that you might be hiding something. Your health isn't great. You are in a bit of denial about what's going on for you professionally. They all think that about each other while not really facing their own doubts and little crises of confidence. They feel like they can't afford to look at some things that are creeping in at the edges of their vision. This weekend together forces them to look at those things. Actually, just going back to your earlier question about why a weekend, it's really helpful, I've found, in fiction to bring in the boundaries of time and space to create pressure on people. For a book like this that is about -- it's the internal lives of women where not a lot of dramatic things happen. It does build to a big crisis for them, but there are not world events crashing in on these women. Bringing those edges of the setting in time and space in more tightly allows a sort of concentrated focus. It's kind of The Crucible effect, I hope. The pressure builds. Part of that is the fact that they are just there trapped together in this house for three days.

Zibby: Tell me about the writing of it. You started out and you found the structure that would work for you and what would create the most pressure to exhibit all these wonderful things and goals that you had for the book. How was the writing process for you? How did it differ from your first book? Do you write right there? How do you do it?

Charlotte: I write here in my studio in Sydney. I also write at a house at the coast where the town in the book is kind of modeled on. It's a couple of hours north of Sydney. It's a middle-class people's holiday town. That's where Sylvie's beach house is. I wrote it over a few years. My previous book was the first one I had published in the States. This is actually my sixth novel. I had a lot of books published in Australia before that. I start usually with a place. This time, as I said, I knew I wanted to be near the ocean for the -- I felt like I wanted light and air and weather at my disposal fictionally. I knew it was going to be about friendship. Then I just put them in this house together. For ages, Sylvie didn't exist. I just had these three friends. I had them in this house. I don't really plan my books at all apart from this setting. They were having these fractious moments. I needed to figure out, why are they there? If they are having such struggles with their friendship, why don't they just not go? Then I finally hit on the idea of Sylvie. Actually, fairly early on in the process of writing the book a really lovely friend of mine became sick and died. She was a writer. Her name was Georgia Blain. She was very, very loved in this country as a writer.

I was really astonished by my grief for Georgia, the ferocity of my grief. She was my first friend who had died. I've been through grief before in my family, but this was really different. I felt really overwhelmed by the primitive feelings of my grief and the way that I felt like a child and felt angry and so jealous. It was such a weird series of feelings that I needed to work them out. I knew that Georgia would approve of this way of doing it because she wrote very close to life herself. I could pour all my feelings about this unmanageable grief into these women and their feelings for their friend Sylvie. When I said jealousy, it's that thing of feeling that -- early on in the book, Jude confesses in her own head that she was just impatient in hearing about anybody else's death. It was sort of irrelevant. Sylvie was the one who had died. She just couldn't tolerate anybody else whining about people dying. She says, "People die all the time. Of course they do. But Sylvie, this is different."

I think we all, on some level, can feel that sense of ownership and protectiveness of this person. They had a rich and beautiful individuality that shouldn't be just lumped in with anybody else's. I actually think this is one of the saddest things about the pandemic. You've been through it more than anybody. We're sort of lumping all these people in together, and they are not like other people. I channeled all that stuff into the story as well. Then I just observed as much as I could, people around me, people I see in the street, thinking about my own friendships and how they may or may not change over the next twenty years, and about how we -- I used to think that as we grow older we necessarily begin to know ourselves better and better. I'm not sure that's true. I don't think that anymore. I feel like we can carry on illusions about ourselves forever. Sometimes it's our friends who present us with a really shocking assessment of who we are. I was interested in exploring that as well.

Zibby: I'm so sorry about your friend. That's terrible. Did it help? The pouring into the characters of all the emotion, did that actually work?

Charlotte: I think it did. I think it did in a way that it didn't go away. I still miss her. I felt like I honored her in some way, in a way that she would understand because she was a fiction writer. Also, she was a very funny person. She had a very dark sense of humor. I like to think she would've liked this book. It helped to express some of those things that you feel kind of ashamed of. I don't know if other people do, but in my grief for her, I felt like I should be more grown up about this. I've been through the deaths of both my parents. I've been through other deaths. I should know how to do this by now. I was just hammered by these very primitive, savage feelings. I think sometimes that's what literature is for, is to allow space for these kind of things that are unspeakable, feelings we're not allowed to have. Literature is a place where we are allowed to have them.

Zibby: It's funny to think about the bookshelves behind you and everything, that in each one is all the feelings that people couldn't say. We open it up and we're like, oh, my gosh. It's poured out. It's almost like containers, like a wall of Tupperware, almost, for everybody's feelings.

Charlotte: I think that's true.

Zibby: It's like The Container Store.

Charlotte: And it's private. It's a private place for us to go to. Unlike television or film or other media, a book is such a private space for the reader and the story. I feel like that's why reading is so precious to me, because it's only me and the book. I know you can watch television by yourself, but somehow it doesn't have the same effect, because it's in your own head I guess. All the pictures are pictures that you make. The people are people that you make as a reader. It sounds weird, but it's almost a holy thing to me, that space of a book for a reader.

Zibby: It's true. It's the only form of mental telepathy that we have. It's spilling out the insides of your mind that goes right into the insides of someone else's mind. How else would you do that? TV, you're like, I'm on my phone. I'm like, whatever. This, it also requires your complete attention or else you can't actually read.

Charlotte: That's right, the absorption that comes with reading. You can't cook and read at the same time.

Zibby: I guess audiobooks.

Charlotte: That's true, actually. That's another whole discussion.

Zibby: Pretty skilled. [laughs] Are you working on another novel now?

Charlotte: I am. I just started. It's taken me a while to settle in. The pandemic, we've been really lucky in Australia, very, very lucky in terms of scale. Everyone was terrified. We had a big lockdown that has gone on for some parts of the country for a long time. The mental focus was not there for a long time, but I'm getting back into it now. The new one is going to be about, in some ways -- it's so embryonic that I don't really know anything about it yet, but it's going to involve Catholic nuns. I grew up a Catholic. I've never really written about that, the influences on me. I just thought there's some interesting stuff there. That tension between in the world and being out of the world is really interesting to me, the big capitalist world [indiscernible]. It's very early days, so who knows.

Zibby: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Charlotte: My advice would be don't wait to start doing it. Just start because life is short. We know that now more than ever. Just dive in wherever you are even if you don't have time, even if you are working full time in a job. My first several books were written, and I had full-time work. I used to write on the couch at night or on the weekend. You don't need a space to work in. All you need, really, at the most basic is a pencil and a piece of paper. There's nothing stopping you but your own mind. It can be a home to go to. It can be the most thrilling, wonderful, liberating thing to have in your life. I would just say don't wait. The other thing I would say is try and tell the truth. That sounds weird when you're talking about fiction, but write stuff that feels true to you, not to please anybody else, not to impress anybody else, not for the market. Readers will respond when you are deeply connected and immersed in the work. I think a lot of new writers spend far too much time worrying about whether this kind of work will sell, or you shouldn't write in first person because blah. There's so many bits of really silly advice out there. I hope this isn't another one of those. Just start. Be sincere. Put everything into it.

Zibby: Thank you, Charlotte. Thank you for sharing your grief in this way that now comes and helps the rest of us. Thanks for your lovely, wonderful book and for introducing us to these characters.

Charlotte: Thank you so much, Zibby, for having me. I send lots of love to everyone in the States right now.

Zibby: Thank you so much. Thank you, and to Australia. We'll just send love to our entire nations. Why not? Ambassadors for the evening. [laughs]

Charlotte: Thank you, Zibby.

Zibby: Thank you so much. Buh-bye.

Charlotte: Buh-bye.

Sophie Kinsella, LOVE YOUR LIFE

Zibby Owens: Welcome, Sophie. Thanks so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Sophie Kinsella: Thank you so much for having me. It's such a joy to see you. I love it when these things work out and we can see each other. It all fell into place. The universe works. It's great.

Zibby: Sometimes it does. Who knew? Where are you? Are you in the UK now?

Sophie: I am. I'm in my sitting room, which is the quiet room. You will notice there are no children in this room. It's seven PM here. I have to say, this podcast has been the best thing ever because I've had children for the last hour. You know what it's like. We've been doing homework and piano and eat and trumpet practice and, oh, I've got a cart. At seven, I was like, I have to go now and do my really important podcast. I'm really, really sorry about that. What a shame. See you later. Can we do this every night? This would be great.

Zibby: [laughs] I would love that excuse too.

Sophie: I've got to go and have a really essential chat right now. So sorry to miss out on the whole bedtime chaos.

Zibby: It's tear-inducing. It's true. Sometimes we just have to solider on through.

Sophie: We do. So I'm very happy here.

Zibby: Good. I'm so glad. I've left the Zoom school situation in the next room because we're still during the day, obviously. That's also really fun. [laughs]

Sophie: We are back at bricks and mortar school. We are not in that anymore. That is quite the challenge.

Zibby: It's just the afternoons. They go in the mornings. Then they come back, and then there's more in the afternoons. Of course, it's on the iPad, so they're like, let's just play with something fun on the iPad.

Sophie: [Indiscernible/crosstalk] super motivated like we all are in the afternoon. [Indiscernible/crosstalk] after lunch, aren't we? Work is exactly what we want to do right now.

Zibby: Totally. Of course. Yes. [laughter] That's nice. That's all great. Anyway, now that bedtime and Spanish are going on in separate rooms, we can have our adult conversation, which is great. I have been reading your books since, I feel like, you started writing them. I feel like I've grown older as you've grown older, and all these major life events your characters have gone through in the Shopaholic series and all the rest. It's just been great. Now to be talking to you about it is just the perfect ending to this journey through your books.

Sophie: I love meeting someone who has read my words and they enjoyed them. Perhaps they’ve made you smile or whatever. This is a real treat for me. As you imagine, authors, we're on our own most of the time. We send out our words, and we just hope. It's this act of faith. I hope somebody likes it. I hope somebody is whipping over the pages or they smile or they laugh. This is really quite a treat for me just to hear that.

Zibby: I feel like someone like you who's had so much success in the literary world and best seller after best seller wouldn't need that validation or wouldn't even appreciate it anymore.

Sophie: Oh, no, it's the opposite. However long you've been doing it, you start to think, do people still like what I do? How can I put that to the test? Especially this year when I haven't been out and about, it's just really important to connect in every sense, as humans, as family members, and as an author with your readers. We've all missed out on so much connection this year that I think we're all craving interaction of all different kinds. For me, it's lovely. Hi, reader. This is so nice. I feel a bit robbed of contact. I might get quite needy in a minute. [laughs]

Zibby: I'm wondering if I'll be able to actually close this laptop or if you're going to be in there every time I open it.

Sophie: I will. You know it.

Zibby: Oh, my gosh, so funny. Let's talk a little bit about your latest book. Tell listeners what it's about, what inspired you to write it, this hilarious writing retreat that you have your main character go on, which is just so funny with your characteristic sense of humor. I think that's part of why I was so excited to talk to you because this is completely what I find funny, is what you find funny.

Sophie: You think, oh, no, is this just me? Really, looking at the differences between instinct and practicalities of love. My heroine is super romantic. We all go through a journey with a loved one. We meet them. We take in details about them. Maybe these days we've met them online. I think this is what makes it really interesting. You build up a picture. We kind of fantasize, don't we? We fill in the gaps. Maybe you text them or you go on that first date. You've got so many good impressions, but you don't quite know the rest of it. You fill in the gaps. Then gradually, you get to know the real deal. For most people, this is quite a slow process. You're taking in information. You're thinking, does this person match up to what I originally imagined? You have reality checks. I thought, what's the most extreme version of the reality check? I set up this heroine who is a deluded romantic. She just believes in instinct. Then it happens that she's at this writing retreat where nobody uses their name, nobody gives out any personal detail. I have to say, this was slightly inspired by -- I have a friend who went on a yoga retreat, and nobody said a word all week. You're just taking in impressions of people.

She falls in love with this guy. She doesn't know what his name is or his job or anything about him except how he looks, his demeanor, what he says about writing, but nothing else. They don't divulge any details. She falls in love and takes it to the max. They commit to each other. They pledge to each other. It's like your most extreme version of your holiday romance. Then boom, come home, reality. It's the most extreme of, wait, what? Wait, wait, this is not what I imagined. This is how you live? This is your job? She's imagined that he's an artisan carpenter based on very little evidence. She's just got it in her head that this is who he is. She's got the idea that he has a particular name. None of this is the case. Then she's faced with, okay, so this is the guy in my head. This is what I'm presented with in real life. He, by the way, is exactly the same. He had all kinds of ideas of what she might be like. He comes to the end. He gets to the airport. Reality is there. She gets met by her crazy dog and her crazy friends. He gets met by Mr. Corporate Driver. They look at each other in absolute shock, like, wait, who are you? I love you, but I have no idea who you are, and now I'm going to have to find out.

Part of the inspiration was that saying that you read, and it's around the place, love me, love my dog. There's a dog in this book. I thought, I'm going to extend this to, love me, love my life, because they get to know each other's lives from the dog to the friends to weird habits to things which seem small but actually become quite -- there's a moment where he runs her a bath. He says, "I'll run a lovely warm bath." He draws her a bath. This is going to be the healing moment. She gets in. She's like, "What is this? This is not a warm bath. This is tepid. I'm freezing." He's staring at her in utter incomprehension, like, this is a really warm bath. It just signifies how they're on completely different pages. They better get used to this. The book explores, what do you get used to? What can you put up with? At the beginning of the book, she is adamant she is not a deal breakers kind of a person. She doesn't believe in them. She thinks they're the work of the devil. She lectures her friends who are a bit more pragmatic and dating online and having to create profiles. She's like, "I can't engage with this. I could just love any man. I have no parameters. I'd never have a deal breaker." Then she's looking at this guy thinking, okay, I don't like this. I don't like that. I can't relate to this. Your family has these weird customs. The question throughout the book is, what can they get used to? What can they not get used to? What could change? How could they compromise? And hopefully finding the comedy in all of that because that's what I like to do. I like to slightly torture my characters in really terrible, embarrassing, cringy moments at all times. They certainly do go through a few of those.

Zibby: Wait, why do you like to do that to your characters? By the way, then your reader is similarly cringing and holding their breath and covering their face as well. What is that about? Why do you like to do that?

Sophie: I just find it so entertaining. I love to laugh. I love to push it, what I feel is just enough to make you laugh and go, no way, and also kind of be obsessed by turning the page to see, how are you going to get out of this? and hopefully not take it so extreme that it's painful. Although, I do think that sometimes I do torture my readers. [laughs] I just can't help seeing the potential for the extreme version. Everybody doesn't get on with some aspect of their partner's life. I thought, I'm going to just take this to the max. So her flat, he can't get on with her furniture, so many things about their life. At the same time, I do feel like comedy has to come out of reality. There is a real contemporary thread to all this. I read an awful lot online about online dating and, what are people's real deal breakers? How do they go about this? It does cause pain as well as comedy. It does cause some thoughtful processes going on and some development. The characters have to go somewhere in the light of all this. Hopefully, there's a mix. There's comedy, but there's real stuff. I hope there's love in this book too.

Zibby: It's great. I love how you set it up in the beginning when her roommates are online and she's like, "How can you do that? How can you search ten miles from where you live? What if he lives eleven miles away?" They're like, "No, no, no, it's fine. He'll lie about that part." She's horrified. It's true. I think it speaks to this whole crazy falling in love thing in general, which seems completely random. What if you just missed, by your parameters, the guy of your dreams? What if he just walked out of the restaurant before he walked in? What if you never met and if it's your fault? Nothing really makes sense, so you have to just roll with it.

Sophie: I completely agree. I think that we have an added pressure on us when we have to create a profile and define it in advance because sometimes you don't know what you're looking for. It's a bit like shopping. One of my characters does actually liken it to choosing a white shirt on a website that has so many white shirts. You're bewildered. Actually, I was slightly inspired. I created a fictious website with a million filters. I was slightly inspired by shopping websites where in order to make any sense of it all you just have to filter. This size, this kind of color, this sleeve length. Apply that to a life partner. Even with clothes, you think, wait, I don't really know. What if I saw a great shirt and it did have a longer sleeve but I loved it? [laughs] I'm stressed. What do I want? I can't go through a thousand shirts. You put that to a man, I don't know. Does the hair color -- I don't know. Once you start looking at it, it is quite funny, but it is also quite painful if this is what you're having to do. As you say, it's so arbitrary.

Zibby: Yes, so arbitrary. What it really comes down to is that it's completely out of your control. I think that's what all the filters are designed to fool you into believing, that you have some control over your search when really, it's completely random and out of your control. So I know how you came up with this, but you've been consistently innovating and coming up with new ideas and taking your character through all these times. Tell me about how you decide what books you're going to write, what you're doing with your characters. Does it always come from life? How has the progression of your characters evolved?

Sophie: That's interesting. I think that each book has a slightly different genesis. Sometimes I'll start with a character. With the Shopaholic series, it was very much, I can see this character. Now I want to put her in different situations. Sometimes stuff just happens in life. I'm aware of what we're all talking about. With social media, that became an interest to me because we're all talking about this. I tend to plug into the conversations that I'm hearing. I wrote a young adult book about anxiety and computer games. That was very much picking up on the conversation of the day. When I was writing I Owe You One, I knew I wanted to get two people together and that they would exchange favors with each other. I didn't know what would be the mechanism to bring these two people about. I'm sitting in a coffee shop. This really happened. By the way, people are always saying to me, I bet you pick up things from real life, don't you? I bet you just listen in on conversations and use them all. I'm always like, I really wish that people would just act out a whole novel at the next table in the café and I could write it all down. That would be handy, but it's never happened yet.

Anyway, the miracle happened. I'm sitting in this coffee shop. This guy -- I have to say, he was very handsome, an American, which added a bit of sparkle to the event. He looked at me. He just went, "I have to step outside. Could you mind my laptop for a minute?" I was like, this is it. This is how my characters meet. The coffee shop gods have given me my beginning. That was absolutely given to me as a gift. As I say, each book is different. In this book, there's a very naughty dog who is the bone of contention between our lovely couple. In a similar way, I was looking for a dog. I was thinking, I need a dog. I want a really good character of a dog. I have a dog. I met dogs, but they weren’t quite -- then I stayed with some friends, and I met this beagle. He was such a character that I was like, that's it. Okay, you're going in my book. You get inspiration all around.

Zibby: That's great. I love it. When did you know you wanted to write? Did you always know? Did you know from when you were a child? Did it come later?

Sophie: It wasn't my childhood ambition. I wasn't the child walking around saying, I'm going to write a novel one day. I loved to read. I read obsessively. I read books over and over and over again. Looking back, I think it gives you a real sense of story, how stories work, if you practically know a book by heart, whether it's a classic or whether it's just a run-of-the-mill book knocking around in your house. I loved stories and words, but I didn't even really plan to write until I was in my twenties working as a journalist. Even at that stage, I thought, this is what I'm going to do. It was really going on the tube to work and reading every day. In the days before we were all on our phones, we read books. I read books the whole time. I just had this chord of recognition. Wait, I know I'm writing financial articles and that's my job, but this is what I want to do. I want to make it up. I've never been any good at facts. I still am no good at facts. It's all invented. I just started in my spare time. I sat on the train waiting until I got an idea. The minute I started, I just felt like, yes, now I feel at home. I was lucky enough to get that one published. That's all I've done ever since. I'm fit for nothing else. Obviously, bathing my children I can do. [laughs]

Zibby: Yes, that's a skill we all somehow seem to magically acquire, not so much writing the Shopaholic series. Was that your first book, Shopaholic?

Sophie: I used to write before that under the name Madeleine Wickham.

Zibby: Oh, that's right. I knew that. I'm sorry.

Sophie: Then I switched style. The first one was Confessions of a Shopaholic. That's where I really found comedy and realized how much I like writing comedy. That felt like a new beginning. It was really exciting because it was a new voice. It felt like I was starting my career all over again, which is a great advantage that you have as a writer. You can rebrand, take a new name, start again. It's quite liberating.

Zibby: That is your actual name, though, right, Sophie Kinsella?

Sophie: It's not, no.

Zibby: It's not?

Sophie: No. I know. [laughs] I've been Sophie for so long.

Zibby: What's your real name? Your real name is Madeleine? No way. Sorry, I should've somehow realized that. I apologize.

Sophie: No, it shows how good my disguise is. I answer to Sophie now. I practically feel like Sophie because I live so much of my life as Sophie. All my children know I'm Sophie. It's actually quite nice because I'm anonymous day to day. I go and do my stuff, nobody even tweaks. Well, they sometimes tweak, but I feel quite under the radar, which is quite nice. It's good for being a writer because you can eavesdrop in coffee shops, as previously mentioned.

Zibby: Yes, and come up with all your ideas. Wow, I'm sorry. I think I did know that at some point. I forgot. I'm sorry.

Sophie: Don't be silly. Lost in the nick of time.

Zibby: Do you always have your next thing? Do you know what your next book is already?

Sophie: I always have a few things up my sleeve. I find with an idea for a book, you need to give it a bit of time. I'm working on something at the moment. I've had the shell outline for a while. I have all kinds of ideas. I don't think you know instantly if it's going to have legs or if it's really a book. Is there enough to it? I like to think ahead and have them in different stages of development. Right now, I'm at the nice stage where you're fleshing out an idea. I think this actually will work, so that's nice. The bad moment is when you think, that seemed like such a great idea in the cocktail bar. I was super excited. I wrote all these excited notes in lip liner because I didn't have a pen, and it makes no sense. It's gibberish. It's not a book. [laughs]

Zibby: Wait, how far down do you have to go? How many pages or how much time do you invest before you decide whether it's working or not?

Sophie: For me, I won't have written an awful lot. It's more in planning stages. I obsessively plan. It's when I'm sketching out all my plan and the details and all of that, that's when I know I've got a book. I won't start it unless I feel confident in that. I have friends who, they just start. They just start writing. I'm in such admiration of that. I would love to be that kind of free flow, see where you go, let it grow, but I'm not that. I want to know that I have an ending even if it's not "the" ending. I want to feel that there's a sort of solid plan for me to follow.

Zibby: Do you have it on index cards? Do you just write it out? How does it look?

Sophie: I have a big board with index cards. I always get kind of impatient with that because I can't put all the detail I would like on the index cards. At some stage along the line, I either abandon that and that starts to look a bit sad and unloved and I start to write things on computer. Then I write them on bits of paper. Then I have Post-its. I have a million different systems. My new thing is dictating into the phone, which is just great. A line of dialogue pops into your head and you just randomly say it into your phone looking slightly deranged as you do so. If you're walking through London ever and seeing someone in Trafalgar Square talking into her phone with a glazed expression, that's me. Then I forget what I've put where, so I have to do this go around -- I had one idea on my phone and I had some other scene that I wrote on my laptop -- and try and put it all together into a book. I sometimes forget bits. It's a bit like when you're doing a dinner party. You had this sauce. You had this side dish. Then you get to the end. You're collapsed. You open the oven, and there's that bread you had heating the whole time and you forgot to serve it. [laughs] It's a bit like that.

Zibby: Love it. Just even your mentioning dinner parties makes me sad. I am missing that time of life when we could entertain and see friends and all the rest.

Sophie: It's so weird, isn't it? I just can't believe we're still here.

Zibby: I know.

Sophie: I saw it as a summer thing. I felt psychologically that the new school year would begin and we'd all go, that was the summer, that was weird, and on we'd go. Now, don't know. Very strange.

Zibby: Has it affected your work or creativity or all that? It must, or maybe not.

Sophie: Yes. It was weird. During our extreme lockdown, I was actually really glad. By absolute luck, I finished writing Love Your Life pretty much two days before lockdown. Family was here. We had to do, as you say, the home school and all of it. During lockdown, I edited it. That's a really different process from writing. It's changing what you've already done. I'm so glad because I think that against this apocalyptic backdrop, I don't know how I would've written those final scenes, whereas to edit them was fine. There they were. I could change them. I could amend. Believe me, it was a wonderful escape for me to go back into that world. It felt quite indulgent, especially writing the Italy bits. It's like, I'm not here. I'm in COVID-free Italy right now. I'm on the beach. I'm in this amazing monastery. I'm in love, and the food. It felt like a really lovely place to escape to.

Since then, that kind of obsessive following of the news and every development, I have been unable to keep up with that. I don't have the stamina to be following every development. I just do what I'm told, try and follow the rules, which are quite confusing, I will say. They keep changing. Sit on the sofa is about it. I'm able now to go into another world. My brain isn't constantly drawn back into, wait, what? Pandemic? It was for a while. What I did, actually, during lockdown, is I wrote Shopaholic Lockdown Diaries, just a little fun thing for my readers. A lot of readers, I'm touch with them on social media. They would say, "What would Becky do?" We had tremendous problems in the UK with stockpiling and shopping. You couldn't get this and that. Shopping was topic A for a while. I just couldn't resist it. I thought, this might cheer everybody up. I wrote what Becky was up to. You know, it was a tonic for me. I hope it cheered up some people. It was very of its moment, but it was kind of therapy as well for me.

Zibby: I have to go back and read those. I somehow missed that as well.

Sophie: It was very tiny. It was just her diary of a few days. I put it up on the internet. It was a gift, really, to my readers. Here's something to entertain you today.

Zibby: Is it on your Instagram? No? I'll go back.

Sophie: That was really nice. I'm someone who, I just try and find something to laugh at even in the worst lockdown situation. It took a while. I couldn't do instantly. After a few weeks, I was like, come on, let's cheer the troops up here. Let's find something to laugh at.

Zibby: That's great. So needed, so necessary to find those outlets of not just the end-of-the-world mentality. That's great. Thank you for that. What advice would you have for aspiring authors?

Sophie: I'm someone who has had to find their voice. I started with one kind of writing. I changed into another kind of writing. It's sort of similar but quite different. I would say be true to what you want to write. Don't try and second-guess. Write what is right for you at the moment, but be prepared to experiment because there might be different versions of you. You may not hit on the right voice straight away. Don't worry about that. Just keep trying. I've written comedy now because I really enjoy it. I think that you can tell writers who love what they do, whether it's crafting an excruciating thriller plot that's just so intricate or whether it's making people laugh or whether it's wonderful love scenes. Write something that is going to light your fire because, believe me, you're going to be with this book for a long time. It had better light your fire.

If you really don't know where to begin, something I sometimes say is imagine that you go into a bookshop and you see the perfect book. It's like a visualization. Imagine walking in. You're like, that's the book I need to buy. There are some books, you walk in and it's a no-brainer. I have to buy this. Of course, I am going to read this. Whatever that is, whatever speaks to you, that's the book you need to write. That's the book that you would pick up. If you would pick it up, then lots of other people would pick it up. It'll be different for everybody. It might be the plot. It might be the premise. It might be a character or a style. It could be anything, but make it something really strong that is going to be still exciting in six months' time when you're at chapter ten and you hate the whole book and you forgot why you started and you're thinking of giving up. You need to have that initial inspiration to come back to you to keep you going.

Zibby: Excellent advice. Love it. Shopaholic, is Becky going to make another appearance in a real book, do you think, or you think not? What's the plan?

Sophie: I can never say goodbye to Becky. The book I'm working on at the moment is not a Becky book, but she's always in my mind and in my heart. I don't think we've said goodbye. I never know when. I'm someone who, I have different ideas floating around, but then I always act on instinct much like Ava. It was like, I have to write this book right now. I can't always predict which one is going to grab me, but Becky's not going anywhere.

Zibby: Excellent, phew. [laughs] Thank you, now I don't know what to call you, Madeleine. I started calling you Sophie. Now I'll end this interview calling you Madeleine.

Sophie: I go weeks of my life at a time being Sophie. I feel like Sophie. It's my middle name. It is who I am, really.

Zibby: Whoever you are, thank you for coming on my podcast. I'm sorry to have to say goodbye and release you to your kids. Maybe you could pretend --

Sophie: -- I'm just going to carry on talking to the laptop. Right, that's a very long question. Yeah, I've got to [indiscernible/laughter] great length. This has been absolutely lovely to chat with you.

Zibby: You too. It's been great. Thank you for this comic interlude in my crazy day. Thanks. Bye.

Max Gross, THE LOST SHTETL

Zibby Owens: We are live on Facebook. It took me ten whole minutes to figure out what I was doing wrong, but I finally figured it out. Thank you for your patience. Now I can finally say hello. Hi, Max. How are you?

Max Gross: Hi, Zibby. I'm well.

Zibby: Max was smart to get to our conversation early. Then I messed everything up. Now, of course, I can't really even see him that well. Are you still there, Max?

Max: You can't see me?

Zibby: Yes. Okay, there you are. You just froze a little bit. You're back.

Max: Can you hear me or see me?

Zibby: Yes. You froze for just a second. So we're here today to talk about The Lost Shtetl by Max Gross, which is you. That's the cover, but I have the advance version. This is in conjunction with the JCC's Florida Jewish Book Fest which you will be attending. You'll be a panelist for their fiction forum. That's really exciting. This is a kickoff to that. I'm excited to be with you. Let's talk about your book. Welcome.

Max: Thank you so much. I really hope I don't have any more frozen moments. I'm sorry about that unstable connection.

Zibby: Who knows? It could be mine.

Max: Here is the actual book. This is the actual book. You have the -- there's the actual book.

Zibby: That's excellent. Very exciting. Please tell listeners what it's about.

Max: The Lost Shtetl, it's about a Jewish village [distorted audio]. It's so isolated that it is completely overlooked by the Nazis during World War II. It's completely overlooked by the Soviet Cold War. It is basically rediscovered in the here and now. I've been describing it as a Yiddish Brigadoon, just reappearing after many years of anonymity. Or you could think of it as an Amazonian tribe of Jews in the middle of the Polish forest. That's basically the plot. It gets all sorts of [distorted audio] clash of civilization when they are reintroduced into the modern world.

Zibby: How did you come up with this idea?

Max: Actually, I'm a big history buff. I was reading a book about World War II. In this book, I just had this very weird thought. I was like, there were so many shtetls in Eastern Europe prior to World War II. How is that they all fell to this horrible war? Why weren’t there any that sort of slipped through, some middle-of-nowhere village? Why did they all succumb to this? This thought occurred to me. Maybe one did. It was an interesting idea, but it took a long time. How would it realistically happen [distorted audio] assemble that whole little [audio cuts outs]?

Zibby: Max, it keeps freezing a little bit.

Max: Oh, no.

Zibby: Just a little, so if I'm not answering. I heard how you were a big history buff and you had to wonder what if. What if something had survived? How could one not have made it? and your research. Did you do any traveling to the actual places and have a site that you imagined it to have been?

Max: I sort of created the province. It was a fictional province. Like in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha, I have my own little fake province in Poland. I did visit Poland. I used to be a writer for the New York Post. I was on the [indiscernible] beat, which is a great beat if you can get it. I convinced my editor, David Kaufman, to send me to Poland for just a travel story. I was pretty deep into the book when I went. I got to [audio cuts outs]. I did visit Auschwitz. I did see a little bit of the countryside. It was definitely a very interesting experience.

Zibby: I've been to Auschwitz. It's really just haunting to even step foot there and think of everything that happened and all the rest. I think your creativity is so great to reimagine what would happen. I love that novelists in general are always like, what if, what if, what if? Then all of a sudden, we have these amazing stories. Now I can just get lost in your story of your wondering what if, what if, especially for this horrific period of time. What if more had lived? It begs the question, what if everybody had survived? What would the world be like? My mind goes there.

Max: Absolutely. It still is sort of crazy to think that it was such an [distorted audio] everybody's life back then. You don't see too many events like that that do that. Actually, a friend of mine who just heard about the book told me about these Russians who had still been living under the auspices of communism years later. He just sent me this story. I haven't looked at it yet. I was like, this is a case of unbeknownst to me of life imitating art imitating life imitating art and all that stuff. [laughs]

Zibby: Oh, my gosh. How long did it take for you to write this book? What was your process like? Did you outline it first? What was it like?

Max: It's funny. When I first thought of the idea, I thought that it was going to take place in the forties. I thought it was going to be something that, okay, they got missed, almost like they'd come out of the bomb shelter. What the hell happened while we were gone? I thought more, why would they have just, in 1946 or 1947, why then would they have all of a sudden woken up? Why in the fifties? I was like, you know what, it should take place now. It was just the lightbulb that went off in my head. It could really grapple with all of the contemporary problems that people face and that are very much on my mind and very much on, I hope, a lot of my readers' minds, stuff like that. I really started going with the book when I started thinking about the characters. The main character, Pesha and Yankel, when they started forming in my eyes, I was just like, let's follow the whole story. What would happen? The town gets rediscovered. The idea of them being missed by the Holocaust, that's almost the starting point.

The real bones of the story should be, what's happening now when they are suddenly introduced to all of this history that just plops down in front of them? I had an outline, but I definitely strayed from it a lot over the course of writing it. I wrote the first draft a while ago. I finished the first draft in something like late 2014. Selling a book is a long process. There was a couple of years of that. Also, there was a period where I was reworking it and rewriting it. I also had a son who's now five. There were just a lot of interruptions in the finishing of the book. The process was, I thought of the idea in 2008, 2009. Really started working on it in 2010, '11. Finished a draft in 2014 and then sat for two years. In 2017, I was like, all right, I have to finish this. Worked on the revised version. I had a very lovely lady named Michelle Brower who's an agent read a version of it, gave me her notes. Her notes were very, very smart. I basically worked around those. In 2017, I started pitching it to other -- long story. Michelle switched agencies, all these other things. I found David Vigliano, Nick Gianni, and Tom Flannery, my agents now. Nick is no longer with the agency. We wound up selling it. That's the whole saga, more than you probably wanted to know.

Zibby: No, I find that process so interesting. I really do. How great that you stuck with it and didn't let it just stay as a file in your computer or whatever, to bring it out. I'm sure every experience like having -- I have a five-year-old son too. I have four kids, but he's my baby. Having kids changes, also, your perspective and adds, I feel, some depth to your writing. You just have a new perspective as if you did anything, if you had a new job or if you adopted a puppy or something. I'm sure that all these experiences can only help, in other words. For anybody feeling bad that they have a thing on their desktop, it might get better with time. Who knows? [laughs]

Max: Absolutely, for sure. If you have four kids, you know what it's like. My god, you can [distorted audio] you have some crisis that has to be addressed right away with your child. I think it was Janet Malcom who called it an infinitely postpone-able act, writing. I'm glad that I finally got back to it.

Zibby: That's so funny. Yes, my kids' urgent thing today is putting things on the wish list for Hanukkah. Mind you, it's obviously still October. Why this is urgent now -- we don't even know when Hanukkah is. I had to look it up today. Yes, the urgency of kids' needs always trumps a beautiful paragraph that needs to be crafted carefully and all the rest. Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

Max: Pretty much. Since I was a kid, I was always writing stories. My parents were both writers. My father was a mystery writer. His most famous book does not have his name on it. His most famous book is The Verdict which became a movie with Paul Newman, the early 1980s. He wrote true crime. He wrote mysteries. He was a columnist for New York Newsday for sixteen years, wrote for People magazine. My mother was a writer and editor as well. She was one of the editors for T magazine, the Times style magazine. There were books everywhere in my house growing up. If you wanted to keep up, you really had to do your reading. You had to do your homework. You had to know what you were talking about. My parents were just not going to tolerate cruddy conversation. That was just not going to be. I grew up a bit of a bookworm.

Zibby: Did you grow up in New York? Where did you grow up?

Max: I grew up in Brooklyn Heights, which was sort of Brooklyn, but it's kind of Manhattan.

Zibby: It's not Manhattan. [laughs]

Max: Look, I feel like I have great street cred saying that I'm from Brooklyn.

Zibby: You do. It's super cool. You have major street cred in the literary universe. You are born and bred in the heart of the New Yorker. I give you credit for that.

Max: [laughs] I grew up in Brooklyn Heights. Went to Saint Ann's School. I don't know if you --

Zibby: -- Yeah, of course.

Max: Even though it's called Saint Ann's School and it was a very, very hippy-dippy place, I was surrounded by Jewish people. Everybody from the headmaster on down was Jewish. It was always sort of a fascination for my parents as well as me, was Jewish history, the Holocaust, but also Jewish literature. I remember as a kid going to this friend of my parents house for weekend -- they lived in Cape Cod or something like that; I was about twelve years old at the time -- and finding Gimpel the Fool on this person's shelf in the little room that was my room for the weekend. I took it off. It definitely was this love-at-first-sight moment. It was a moment where I was like, oh, my gosh. To a certain extent, The Lost Shtetl is my tribute to Isaac Bashevis Singer. There were books everywhere. We were very interested in Jewish topics and Jewish books. We were interested in all sort of books too. I think The Lost Shtetl is also my tribute to Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of my favorite books. Macondo, the town there, was very much a model for Kreskol in a lot of ways.

Zibby: Your parents must be very proud of you. They must be kvelling and excited.

Max: I don't think that they will have figured out how to get on Facebook. [laughter] Maybe they’ll watch it afterwards.

Zibby: I'm sure this is one of many appearances you will be doing, so I'm sure they’ll catch something along the way. When you were saying, I grew up and there were books everywhere, how could I not be a writer? I'm just crossing my fingers that one of my four kids might actually want to write someday. I'm imagining Zoom 2030 when one of them says, I grew up with a lot of books around. I'll be like, yes! I did something good.

Max: I think it's the best way. Just put them in the room with the books. They’ll get it. They’ll take it up by osmosis or something.

Zibby: Exactly. I'm hoping that happens. It doesn't seem to be working, but whatever. I won't give up. So what happened between Saint Ann's and the New York Post and the book? What else in your day-job life? What happened writing-wise aside from those things? Or was that it? Was it college to the...?

Max: No, actually, after college, I went to Israel for a year. I went to a very not-Jewish college. I went to Dartmouth College, which is a wonderful school. Actually, I was talking about this to a reporter, Emily [indiscernible], last week. I definitely think that there are traces of being left alone in the wilderness that sort of gave me some inspiration for this book. When I graduated, I applied for graduate school. As I said, I always wanted to be a writer. Applied for graduate school. I got into an MFA program in Columbia for film, actually. I was going to do screenwriting. I think I was sort of sick of academia. I had been in school my whole life. I was a little exhausted with that whole structure. I thought, [distorted audio] more interesting with the next year. I don't know what it'll be. Then I decided, you know what -- there was this program in Israel, and I don't think it exists anymore, called the Arad Arts Project. Basically, you sit and you work on your art, whether it's painting or music or writing. It's out in Arad which is near Beersheba in the desert in Israel. I went for a year. It was supposed to be seven months. Then I wound up spending an extra five months there.

It was a very formative experience just because I was on my own in a completely different country talking to people who had completely different experiences from me and very, very sharp perspectives. When you're in Israel, you can speak to Arabs. You can speak to Jews. They live together. They live under the same tent. It's so starkly different. That was a great experience despite the fact that -- I was there during the intifada. [Distorted audio] a lot of pain, but it was nevertheless something that I feel very much formed me. Then when I came back, I worked at The Forward newspaper for about three or four years. It used to be The Yiddish Forward. Then about twenty years ago or so, maybe a little bit longer than that, they had an English version of it that they formed. That was a great experience. I was actually talking about this recently as well. When you work at one of these local newspapers, first off, there are so many people who call you because you're the only person that they can call to tell their stories. I had the lowest job on the totem pole in the sense that I was answering the phone. I was getting all the phone calls from every disgruntled person who just wanted to tell me about their evil landlord or about the implants that their dentist was putting into their teeth, real stories. Somebody did call me to tell me that.

I used to actually get calls from the widow of Chaim Grade who was a Yiddish poet who was one of the real luminaries in the world of Yiddish literature. She called me to yell at me every time The Forward mentioned Isaac Bashevis Singer who she regarded as the worst writer who ever lived and who had done such shame onto the Jewish people. It was really right out of a Cynthia Ozick story, this whole experience. It was a great experience. I was talking to people who had a lot to say and who had great stories. That was also [distorted audio]. Then I went to the New York Post which was a great gig. I was working at the home section, the real estate section. I was also just writing a lot food stories. Then because the travel desk was right next to the real estate desk, whenever the travel editor would go on trips, he would ask us to write his headlines and his captions. To thank us, he would send us places. He'd be like, "We have this trip to Italy coming up that we need written about. Do you want to go, Max?" Terrific, that's wonderful. [laughs] Then when he left -- this was an editor named David Landsel -- the powers that be at the Post were just like, "We have to figure out who we're going to hire to be the new travel editor. Until we figure that out, you guys take care of it." We were like, okay, fine, we know what we're doing. After a couple months, they were like, "You guys are doing fine. We don't need another travel editor." It became travel and real estate and food, which was a great job.

Zibby: Do you have a day job now, or are you mostly committed to being a novelist, or what?

Max: I'm definitely committed to being a novelist. The thing that I learned when my son was born, that I could only really get away with doing it if I am committed to waking up before six AM every day to actually get a few pages out there. I'm actually the editor of a commercial real estate magazine called the Commercial Observer, which is, in its way, also an extremely interesting gig just in the sense of the real estate community is almost this shtetl of billionaires to a certain extent. [laughs] The people who own New York, there are so many crazy people in that list. I've met most of them. They’ve all got these incredibly strange, bizarre stories that go with them. I don't know what my next book will be, but I think that’ll be influencing it.

Zibby: Wow, the shtetl of billionaires. That's a cool title too.

Max: The shtetl of billionaires, I'm going to trademark that right now.

Zibby: I have my little team getting the trademark while you're here. No, I'm kidding. I don't even really have a team. I have a tiny team. Anyway, so what are you working on next? Do you have another novel in the works?

Max: I don't know if I'm allowed to really talk about it because I think Harper owns me, body and soul, for the next sixty days or something like that. I'm not sure that I'm allowed to speak of that. One of the things that the long process has allowed me to do has been to just get onto the next thing. I have been working this whole time on new things. I definitely don't want to wait so long before the next thing comes out. There are a couple of different things that could be the next thing. I'm working on all of them at the moment.

Zibby: I feel like this is just the beginning for you of your lifetime of talent in this area. It's very exciting to see someone's debut and where it's going to go from here. It's just very cool. Now I love knowing that this green cover is all about Dartmouth. Who knew?

Max: You're not an alumnus, are you Zibby?

Zibby: No. I went to Yale. Although, I did spend a week at Dartmouth doing a tennis camp when I was in high school, so I feel like I can say I went to Dartmouth, right? No. [laughs]

Max: I feel like I can say I went to Yale because before I went to Dartmouth, [distorted audio].

Zibby: Great. So actually, we did all our schooling together as it turns out.

Max: Schooled together. [laughs]

Zibby: I had tons of friends who went to Dartmouth, my former sister-in-law. I've spent a lot of time there. Then my ex. Anyway, whatever, I won't go into it. Yes, I've spent a lot of time up at Dartmouth. I know that feeling of being in the woods. I could imagine being lost there in a community all unto yourself. Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?

Max: One of the things that I will say was I made a resolution in late 2016. I am going to finish this. I don't know what is going to happen to it, but this is going to be as good a piece of work as I can do. I am going to not stop every day until this thing is finished. I would wake up at five AM when my [distorted audio]. I feel like there's [distorted audio]. I am going to take something to completion. I'm not going to just have a good idea. I'm not just going to throw some things on the page. I am really going to think about it as a complete thing. I am going to work at it every day. It took a lot of time, but it paid off. My advice would be, get up early. People work better at night, but I personally work better in the morning.

Zibby: Me too. Yes, those morning hours before the kids wake up are sacred.

Max: Me time.

Zibby: Congratulations again on your book. I hope you have a great time at the JCC Book Fest, the Jewish Book Fest. It's so great you're going to be there. For all your upcoming stuff, I'll be rooting for you. Good luck.

Max: Thank you, Zibby. I hope it was just that one thing that I was frozen. I apologize.

Zibby: It's not your fault. It's technology. This happens all the time. There was in and out. This will be a podcast on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" as well eventually, not too long, but not today. I will take out all the bits and pieces that were not perfect. We will make it sound like we had no trouble at all when it's on the podcast.

Max: I love it.

Zibby: So there's that.

Max: There's that. Great. Zibby, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Zibby: No problem. Sorry again for the beginning introduction of stress.

Max: No worries.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Sara Seager, THE SMALLEST LIGHT IN THE UNIVERSE

Zibby Owens: Sara Seager is a Canadian American astronomer and planetary scientist. She's a professor at MIT known for her work on extrasolar planets and their atmosphere. She's the author of two textbooks on these topics and has been recognized for her research by Popular Science, Discover magazine, Nature, and Time magazine. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2013 citing her theoretical work on detecting chemical signatures on exoplanet atmospheres and developing low-cost space observatories to observe planetary transits. I really don't know what any of that means, but obviously she's super impressive. A graduate of the University of Toronto with a PhD from Harvard, she is also the author of memoir The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir, called a luminous memoir about how she had to reinvent herself in the wake of tragedy and discovered the power of connection on this planet as she searches our galaxy for another Earth.

Welcome. I'm so honored to be interviewing you today for "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books." Thanks so much for coming on.

Sara Seager: Thanks for having me.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. The Smallest Lights in the Universe is perhaps one of my favorite books I've read recently. It is so good. The parallel lines of the space race with your own grief, it's just amazing. I just wanted to let you know how powerful I thought it was.

Sara: Thank you. I really appreciate that.

Zibby: For listeners who don't know what The Smallest Lights in the Universe is about, would you mind telling them what it's about? Then what inspired you to write this memoir?

Sara: The Smallest Lights in the Universe is about the journey of exploring outer space, but also the journey of exploring inner space. By outer space, I mean the stars. I hope you have a chance to look up at the dark night sky filled with stars because each one of those stars is a sun. We have evidence that each of them have planets. We're looking for another planet like Earth, one that might have life on it. By the way, I just wanted to capture in the book that science is truly a journey of exploration. Just like the people who first went to the North Pole or to Antarctica in the South Pole, we are trying to push the frontiers of exploration. All of us in our everyday life often eventually get to some kind of crisis. In my case, this was a death in my nuclear family of my first husband. It was like hiking in the outdoors and imagining falling off a cliff where at the bottom you're just broken and isolated. It feels like an incredible journey to have to make it back out of that lonely canyon. In my book, I interweave both of those stories. My goal is to just show people what science is like and how we can try to inspire ourselves to do big things.

Zibby: You're one of the most preeminent astrophysicists and have just really blown the records off of so many things, discovered new things, achieved things throughout the course of your career. Why a memoir too? Having read your story so I know how busy your life is, when did you find time to do this?

Sara: The whole thing started, actually, when my first husband died, which I can talk about now without being really upset about it because it was almost a decade ago. When I was going through this incredible journey of inner exploration, I just was like, wow, I haven't read about this or seen about it. I was so lucky to meet another group of moms, widows. I asked them, "Aren't you writing a book about this?" It seemed like something the world should know about. That was partly my motivation. It's funny because they say busy people can get more done. In my field, people are allowed to take a sabbatical. Every six years or so, you take some time off your everyday busyness. Repeatedly, those folks get less done on their own personal private work. I did have to squeeze things in on evenings and weekends. It was definitely tough.

Zibby: Wow, I'm very, very impressed. Your writing on grief, would you mind if I just read you this excerpt? Maybe you could comment on it. It has stayed with me so much. You write, "Everybody dies instantly. It's the dying that happens either quickly or over a long period of time." Then you go on and you say, "I understand intellectually the need for the distinction between dying and the instancy. A car accident and cancer are two different strains of death. It's the difference between dying as a whole all at once and dying piece by lost piece." Then you say -- I'm jumping around two pages because it's all so good. "Either way, the buildings end up gone, but the way it vanishes isn't the same, and we need a word to make clear the difference in process. It still felt to me as though Mike died instantly. Yes, we knew his death was coming. We could get his affairs in order, whatever hallow comfort that is supposed to bring, as though the most important thing when you die is that you die with a tidy desk." Then you say, "The dying time that Mike and I shared didn't make his death any less of a horror, and it didn't make my loss feel any less sudden. Mike took a breath, and then he died. He was alive, and then he wasn't. In one moment, I was a wife. In the next, I was a widow." That is so powerful. That's amazing. Tell me a little more about that difference and how it felt in that moment and this distinction that people tend to make as if the dying slowly will somehow blunt the trauma of having someone you love suddenly die.

Sara: I know. Now I do feel like crying.

Zibby: I'm sorry.

Sara: It's okay. What happened was he was diagnosed with cancer. He became terminally ill pretty quickly because the chemo didn't work. He definitely went on this downward slide where eventually he was bedridden. We both wanted him to die at home, so we had set up a hospital bed. We had home hospice. It was all very helpful. He was just hanging on like you wouldn't believe it. His home hospice nurse, Jerry, had explained to me what would happen and what to look for. Jerry would come back day after day, week after week, and go, "Wow, we haven't seen a forty-year-old man do this before. It's only the twenty-year-olds who have a brain tumor whose body is so strong they’ll hang on." I took care of Mike. I was just waiting for him to die because he was basically dead. He couldn't communicate. I was just taking care of him, helping him on that final journey. I honestly expected that I had come to terms with his death already because of those extended days and few weeks when he should've already been dead. He was just hanging on somehow. Then after he died, except for a short period of relief, my life just fell apart.

Zibby: I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for your loss. It's such a gift for you to be sharing it in this way.

Sara: One thing that I tried to convey in the book, I'm not wanting people to have a loss at this level, but sometimes a catastrophe can lead to new, beautiful things. Think about this. In the spirit of mixing science with personal, when the dinosaurs became extinct, we think a giant meteorite hit Earth and destroyed not only the dinosaurs' life, but lots of other species by creating just pure chaos in our atmosphere and enabling volcanoes to spew out ash. Everything became darker and probably a lot colder. Because of the dinosaurs dying out, new life could flourish, including what led to us humans being able to rise on our planet. Although as sad as my loss was with Mike, it definitely gave me new opportunities.

Zibby: That's a very healthy way of looking at it. There's the difference between what you know intellectually and then the feelings that you have when you're going through it. You know it might lead to something good. In the moment, as you described so well, it's hard to internalize. I'll just read one more quote on the grief. You wrote, "The tears ran down my face in steady streams. I knew intellectually that the widows were right. I needed to make forward progress. I couldn't spend the rest of my life drowning in grief. I had to kick my way back to shore. But when you lose someone, you don't lose them all at once, and their dying doesn't stop with their death. You lose them a thousand times in a thousand ways. You say a thousand goodbyes. You hold a thousand funerals." Now I'm crying, oh, my gosh. Oh, this book. Tell me a little more about that passage.

Sara: As you go through grief and life starts to rebuild, there are, sometimes constantly, other time occasionally, striking reminders that you've lost your loved one. You're going along. I was taking my kids somewhere to stay overnight. I was still really depressed back then. Just seeing the happy families or going to take my two boys to soccer where it's all coached by mostly soccer dads and seeing all these healthy dads supporting the boys, you just feel the loss all over again, again, and again.

Zibby: I wish there was some way to make sure that didn't happen. I think that's part of why grief is so unpredictable. It comes and clocks you on the head when you are least expecting it even if you're having a good day, and then something happens.

Sara: It's so true.

Zibby: The widows of Concord, I felt like that could've been a name for a book as well, the widows of Concord. That's such a perfect thing. I loved how your sons got so into it that at one point when you started dating, one of your sons said, "No, you can't get married again because then we'll be out of the widows group." [laughs] I know you touched on this earlier, but tell me just a little more about the power of getting involved in a group like this. I know you were so initially resistant thinking everybody was in much better shape and all the rest. The power of being with people in a similar spot, tell me how that worked for you.

Sara: It was just an incredible experience, honestly. When I talked about how death could give rise to beautiful things, this small group of women in my town -- my town only has about twenty thousand people. There were six, and then we had one woman from a neighboring town. What was amazing is that at least for the first couple years, our mindsets were all so similar. Admittedly, we're of the same kind of demographic. We all had kids ranging in age from about four years old to thirteen at the time. It was amazing with these women because they didn't judge. No matter what our differences were, our widowhood, our fresh grief was so common that it brought us together. The widows were so funny. You don't really associate humor with grief, but you kind of have to counterbalance the huge depths of despair. These women had a shocking sense of dark humor. The stuff we joke about -- sometimes we were in situations where there'd be other people who weren’t widows, and you should've seen the way they looked at us. We got together really regularly on the so-called "important" holidays like Father's Day, Halloween, Valentine's Day. Then we'd meet for coffee where our first topic would be how to stay afloat financially. I was the only working widow at the time, but it's still tough, actually. Then the second topic, equally treacherous, was on dating because you've got a lot of baggage. Any single person at that age usually has some baggage, but I feel like we had more heavy baggage.

Zibby: Wow. I love the continuous proof that there are beautiful things that come out of this, and your friendships. I know you wrote a lot in the book about your difficulty finding your crew, basically, in the past and how you were almost relationship-averse, that is was a fluke that you fell in love with your husband and that you could connect in that way. Do you feel like now this has opened you up to all new kinds of friendships, or are you just committed to your widows' group and that's kind of it?

Sara: Oddly enough, the widows' group kind of dispersed. We had a lot in common for the first couple of years, but we all went back to our new normal. The moms whose kids are in college now, they're doing different things than those of us who still have kids in high school. People seem to get busy with their own hobbies. Ironically, we started meeting again. They had a socially distanced outdoor book party for me. I gave each widow a copy of the book. We're at least planning to start meeting regularly again, but we'll see how those go. I try to be open to new experiences.

Zibby: That's amazing. Let's talk a little bit about your really unbelievable and inspiring career. I had never really read anything about what it's like in this industry, and especially as a woman in this industry, and all the discoveries and how people doubted your research at first. Yet you kept at it. Your HuffPost article when you were pointing out to people who didn't realize it that the demands of having to meet, say, quarterly in person is really tough for a working mom who lives across the country. Tell me a little more about how you keep finding the resilience and the confidence to just keep plunging forward into literally the biggest unknown there could possibly be in the universe and not letting the naysayers and the setbacks throw you off course.

Sara: There's a few different things. One is, I've always loved exploring. I grew up in Canada where canoeing is a thing. We don't have mountains in Eastern Canada. If you're going to take up an outdoor sport, it's going to be something other than mountain climbing. We would go canoeing and do big, adventurous trips in the north of Canada. I feel like science has that same spirit of, wow, wanting to do something new. Don't you hate it when you want to do something new, whether it's small or big, and someone says, you're never going to be able to do that? Has that happened to you?

Zibby: Yes.

Sara: How does that make you feel?

Zibby: Actually, it happened with this podcast.

Sara: There you go. Doesn't it make you feel angry, like, I'm going to do it, I don't care what you say?

Zibby: Yeah, to spite them. It's like, well, watch me go. [laughs]

Sara: This fuels the fire if someone says, no, I don't think that's a good idea. I think a lot of people share that feeling. Finally, I do have a specific visualization tool to do this. I do share this with younger women I work with. It's very common in my field to have the imposter syndrome where you think you don't belong and you don't have belief in yourself. What I tell them I also do myself. I try to focus viscerally on my past accomplishments to give myself that inner confidence that I can succeed at anything. How many times as women or moms or whatever are we always kicking ourself or berating or just saying, I could've done that better? How many times do you say -- this is what I tell my kids -- I did the best job I could with the skills I have? Then how many times do we say, wow, I did a great job? Never, right?

Zibby: Yeah. [laughs]

Sara: We should be spending as much time or more being proud or being complimentary to ourselves as being hard on ourself. I feel like doing those things consciously really helps me reach my goals.

Zibby: It's funny. Someone who had helped me do something asked afterwards how it had gone. I typed in a text, "I did a really good job." Then I sat there with the phone in hand and the cursor blinking being like, should I delete that? That sounds terrible. Then I was like, well, I feel like I did do a good job. I want to thank this person and let them know that I didn't let them down. There's all this inner critic not allowing ourselves to say that things went well. You're right. How much better off would we be if our inner voices were constantly encouraging rather than discouraging us?

Sara: Yes, I really, really think that's important. As a mom, I know my kids wanted -- I don't know if this is going to sound good or bad, but my kids wanted me to be more nurturing. One of them would always say, "Mom, moms make chocolate chip cookies. Moms do this. Moms do that." Instead of feeling bad, I would just say, "You know, I don't do that. But you know what? Even though I don't make cookies, we do all these other things." It is praising ourselves, but it's also not beating ourselves up for something that isn't who we are.

Zibby: That's true. That's such a good idea to show that to the kids. Otherwise, they’ll think they can do everything. It's impossible, so why set them up for failure?

Sara: One time, this big tree branch had fallen on our garage. I had to get rid of it. I remember my kids expressing doubt that I could do it. One of the widows had come over very fashionably dressed in leather pants and the high-heeled boots with a chainsaw and instructions on how to use it. I decided not to use the chainsaw because I wasn't totally sure I could do that safely. That's the widows empowering each other. I did have a handsaw. I sawed it, sawed it, sawed it. Finally, it came down. It was so heavy. Honestly, I could've really got hurt. You know how heavy even a tree branch is? So heavy. I jumped out of the way just in time. That helped the kids because they were skeptical I could actually take care of that.

Zibby: Wow. I feel like a chainsaw is one of those things you should not be reading instructions for. [laughs] It should come with some required training instead of a YouTube video. Oh, my goodness. So how long did it take you to write this book? I know you said you did it in found time, basically. What was it like going back and reliving all those emotions again?

Sara: It took a few years to write. It was definitely cathartic. It was incredibly emotional at times. Wow, I would just cry my eyes out sometimes, but it was a good feeling, really good.

Zibby: Would you want to write another book on any topic?

Sara: Maybe someday, yeah. It was one of those things that brought -- there was a creative process and narrative process, a storytelling process. It was definitely a lot work, though. I had a fantastic team set up by the publishers. Once the first draft is done, the book is only half done, actually, because they come back and reorganize it or say, do this, do that, do that, do that, total reorg. That happens two or three times, actually. Then the editor will go through it with a finer tooth comb. Finally, we had this absolutely outstanding copy editor. That's the person who's just checking for grammar. That person went so far above and beyond and would say, "This sentence makes no sense because a few paragraphs before you said this." It's not just the writing itself. As you know, the publishing process took way longer than I ever expected.

Zibby: Your publisher is Crown, right?

Sara: Crown. Right.

Zibby: That's great. Not everybody has such a great experience with their editors and publishers and everything, so I'm glad that that worked so well. A lot of people do, but not everybody.

Sara: I think I was of the mindset that they know more, so I should just do whatever they say. I did push on a few -- there's a few specific sentences they really didn't like because they weren’t literal. They were just figurative. There's one where we're describing this incident at one of our widows' get-togethers. One of them is telling us this crushing story that her husband who had died of cancer, the day before he started chemo, she had found in his pile of stuff, he had bought tickets to go to Paris.

Zibby: That was such a sad part.

Sara: Airplane tickets and hotel. He never told anyone because it was a bet against cancer. People do these defiant things. My own husband, he never cared about good clothes. His one and only suit was given to him by his father who happened to be the same size and who had worn it for a few decades. For some reason when my husband was terminally ill, he went out and bought a brand-new suit. Does that make any sense? It's defying against that prediction of death. She found all of this, literally, I think it was just a few days -- she found all of this stuff. The date on the ticket was a few days after he had died. When I wrote this part in the book, it's one of my favorite sentences in the book because the kids were just playing and they didn't notice that we widows were telling this story and crying. It ends the paragraph saying, it's something like, Paris was in full flood. That means we were crying so much about this trip to Paris. The editing team didn't want that sentence because it doesn't make sense, really. We were crying, but we're not in Paris and there's no flood. It's just so poetic. Rarely did I really push back. I think my experience was good because I mostly just did whatever they requested. By the way, the widow in question, later on in her life she actually did manage to take her two kids to Paris and had a great time.

Zibby: Aw, that's such a great coda -- is that the right word? -- to the story. That's amazing. I know your kids must be older by now. I know how old they were in the book. Seventeen or something?

Sara: That's right. The older boy is seventeen. The younger one is fifteen.

Zibby: Have they read your story? Have you shared it with them? How do you feel? No?

Sara: I actually asked them not to read the book until they are adults, like twenty-one, because it's pretty upsetting. Kids, actually, are resilient. People have died, parents have died for millennia. Kids get over it. I really believe having gone through this with not only my own kids, but watching my widows friends' kids as well, that in order to be resilient kids brains are designed to forget. A lot of the details in the book, they won't remember. It might be upsetting for them. A couple other things, before I submitted the book or at some stage, I told them everything that was in the book about them. In one case, I toned something down because the kid requested it. It's the opening where he has the meltdown on the sledding hill. He thought it sounded worse than it actually was. I went through just as a courtesy because I didn't want them being embarrassed by anything that was in the book. Then another thing was that one of them, after I said, "Look, I think you shouldn't read this until you're twenty-one --" You know how kids push back. If you say you should read it, they’ll never read it. If you say don't read it, they’ll want to read it. He just said, "Mom, if everyone else in the world gets to read it, isn't that kind of weird that your own kids who are in the book aren't supposed to read it?" I said, "Sure. Okay, fine." We go by logic. If my kids have a logical argument, I don't say, no, you can't do it because I said. I always respond to logic. I'm like, "You could, sure. I'm not going to prevent you from reading it, but I just want you to know that sometimes things aren't as upsetting to people if it's not about them personally."

Zibby: That's true. What advice would you have for aspiring authors?

Sara: Let me think for a second. I do have a piece of advice that someone gave me early on. For your story, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, there has to be an arc to the story. This might sound obvious, but it's really harder to implement than it sounds. There has to be a start and an end, but also a rise and a fall and then a rise. In a mystery novel, there's a plot. Something happens. The characters are trying to solve the mystery. They can't solve the mystery at the beginning or there's no book. They have to solve it towards the end, but not right at the end. It's the same thing. Whatever the story is, and the narrative, there has to be an arc to it.

Zibby: Interesting. One of the things I loved about your book is the way you used time and how you went back and forth in time and how you structured each chapter. However it is you did it, it really worked well in propelling the narrative arc forward. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time.

Sara: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me on your call.

Zibby: I absolutely loved your book.

Sara: I wanted to just say, I know your mother-in-law died. It must have been a really crazy few weeks. I'm sure it's tough.

Zibby: Thank you. Honestly, your book really helped. It's one of the things that helped the most, so thank you.

Sara: You're welcome.

Zibby: Buh-bye.

Sara: Bye.

Elizabeth Lesser, CASSANDRA SPEAKS

Zibby Owens: Elizabeth Lesser is the cofounder of Omega Institute and the author of Marrow, The Seeker's Guide, and the New York Times best seller, Broken Open. She has given two popular TED talks and is a member of Oprah Winfrey's SuperSoul100, a collection of one hundred leaders who are using their voices and talents to elevate humanity. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her family. This is her book, Cassandra Speaks. Basically, she talks in this book -- I'll let her explain it more. It's a collection of her own thoughts and feelings and responses to how history has shown women to not have the most advantageous position in the narrative, but it's not an angry book at all. It's thoughtful and considered. Cassandra, the myth that she's referencing in the title of the book, is because -- I can't remember all the details, but something like Zeus gave Cassandra the power to see the future but not be able to enact any change or really have anyone believe her. In a way, that's similar to how some women feel that they know everything, and they say it and people don't listen. Here we go.

I'm live with Elizabeth now. Hi, Sam. Thank you guys for watching ahead of time. Hopefully, this will work. There are so many quotes and so many sections that I wanted to talk to Elizabeth about today, and the fact that at the beginning of most chapters she has these little quotes, which I always love.

Hi.

Elizabeth Lesser: Hi. Oh, boy, here I am.

Zibby: The problem with Instagram Live is that everybody who eventually gets on is completely flummoxed and frazzled because it never works right at first. I'm sorry.

Elizabeth: I'm on my iPad sitting in my living room. Thank you for having me on.

Zibby: It's my pleasure. Thank you for coming on. Your book was so good. I was showing the people here, I dogeared like every other page. Usually if I find something interesting, I just turn it. Maybe there'll be two or three things where I'm like, I have to talk to this author about this. In this book, this page and that page. Now of course, you're here, I'm not going to be able to remember what I wanted to ask. Anyway, thrilled to talk to you about it. If you wouldn't mind, for everybody watching, I read your bio already, but if you could explain better than I did what Cassandra Speaks is about and what inspired you to write this book, that would be great. You can bring in any family members, anyone in the background. Totally fine. [laughs]

Elizabeth: My husband just walked through the room. Ask me the question again.

Zibby: Here, we'll start again. I'll pretend that this is a podcast only. There's a dog barking in my house too. My sister-in-law is here with my mother-in-law's dog. Welcome, Elizabeth. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

Elizabeth: Thank you.

Zibby: [laughs] You're welcome. You're the author of Cassandra Speaks, which I told you is amazing. Subtitle, When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes. Could you please tell listeners what your book is about and what inspired you to write it?

Elizabeth: In a way, I've been preparing to write the book my whole life. It's my fourth book. People often say, how long did a book take you to write? I'd say my whole life. This one, not the other ones. I'm the daughter of a feminist mother and a domineering father. I have three sisters, so four girls. From my earliest age, I was like, what's going on here? How come men told the story and women's values and who we are don't also get expressed in our myths, in our movies, in our literature? I studied literature in college. I love books like you do. It's not just that so many books that we consider the canon of Western literature are written by men. So many of them are about what men care about. It's not that women also don't care about the hero's journey and adventure and war and sports and things like that, but we also care about things like family and relationships and talking. These get put into women's literature as if that's a genre, as if women are a genre of writing. I always wanted to explore, what would've happened if women's storytelling had also been valued as much as men’s? How would history have changed? How would culture have changed? I go back into the old stories of Eve, Cassandra, Pandora, Hester Prynne, a lot of the old literature, and newer movies. I also explore the canon of power, books about, what is power? like Machiavelli, The Prince, and Sun Tzu. How did we come to define power as what we do? I also tell a lot of stories about my own life as a mother and a wife and a daughter because I'm primarily a memoirist, so I can't help but do that too.

Zibby: I loved those parts. All of it was super interesting, but I found myself wanting to fast-forward to, when's the next little snippet she's going to share about herself?

Elizabeth: I know. Isn't that so? My first book many years ago was about how America was changing the way people did their spiritual searches, the democratization and diversifying of spirituality. It was primarily research, but I told a few of my own stories. People would always say, that was interesting, but I really liked your stories. My next book was almost completely memoir because I think people -- see, that's the point. People learn through stories. We've learned everything about humankind through stories written primarily by men. Not that there's anything wrong with male stories at all, but we'd left a huge part about what it means to be human out of the human story.

Zibby: You show how all the statues are of men, how everything is about war, how even our vocabulary, the way that we talk, like no-holds-barred, and all these things refer to things that have the meaning of power that isn't necessarily the best meaning of power.

Elizabeth: An imbalanced meaning of power.

Zibby: And how we can change it even with little things like the way we use our vocabulary. I love how you started it off tiptoeing down to procrastinate and you're going through your son's boxes and finding his whole canon of literature downstairs where you start going through some of these books. It was so clear in the book, but just tell people watching how when you were down there and going through the books, you were like, can you even believe that it says this in The Prince, or all these other books that you had been opening? Tell me about that moment a little more.

Elizabeth: My youngest son went to a college called St. John's College. It's the Great Books school. It's an amazing school where every student reads the same one hundred books over four years. That's all they do. They read the Greeks in ancient Greek. They study math through reading Pythagoras, no interpretation. They just read the original texts. The students lovingly call it the dead white man's curriculum. Whenever I'm trying to do something, especially writing -- maybe you can relate to this. All you writers out there can. The way I procrastinate -- because writing is hard. Even if you've written a lot, writing is hard. I procrastinate best by cleaning. I love to clean things, closets, my car. The basement is particularly, according to me, not my husband, disgusting in our house, just tons of old boxes and everything. I was about to start this new book. I thought, oh, my god, I got to clean something big. I went into the basement and I started going through boxes. One was a box of my younger son's college books. That was the first box I opened and, PS, the last box. I just got completely caught up in the books.

Here I was about to start writing a book about women and power and stories, and I start reading through these hundred books. I felt so naïve. I opened the first book. It was The Prince by Machiavelli. Now, I doubt any of you have read The Prince. Maybe you have. I never had. I knew his name. I knew he said something like the ends justify the means, but that's about all I knew. I start reading this book. It was shocking, some of these quotes about how you do power by making sure people are either enemies or followers. He said something like a leader should be feared more than loved. I was just like, really? Why wasn't I informed of this? Then I opened Sun Tzu's The Art of War, same stuff about fear and love being for wimps. There I am in the basement. I'm actually sitting in an old rocking chair that I nursed my kids in in a dark basement reading these books about men and power thinking, wow, there actually is a primer for the abuse of power. Why wasn't I informed of this? I took all those books upstairs. I made a deep study of the history and the pathetic way that we've reduced power down to either dominating or aggressing. All the newer forms were [distorted audio] women come into more power of vulnerability and inclusion. None of that's in the old doctrines of power.

Zibby: It's so true. Then of course, you led a big retreat, which started off small and, as you say in the book, grew and grew and grew, called Women in Power. You have all these high-powered women come in and strut their stuff and do everything from getting people away from their phones to regroup to having great speakers. Tell us a little more about your Women in Power conference and how that came to be and what the goal of it is, especially vis-à-vis men in power and the imbalance that exists today.

Elizabeth: I'm the cofounder of an organization called Omega Institute which is a conference and retreat center in Rhinebeck, New York. I helped start it in my early twenties. I've been at the same place for forty years running this conference center. Even as I say it, I can't believe it. What? I'm not telling the truth. Forty years? Actually, it is. As such, I have organized hundreds of conferences over the years in everything from holistic health to poetry and sports, because it's a holistic learning center, all sorts of ways that humans can learn and grow. As a woman in power, I had been aware yet confused and scared about how I was learning the language of how to be a leader with all these men. I was grateful for what I was learning, strategy and some form of holding my own and ways of being powerful that I was eager to learn. My way of expressing -- let's say I was a leader in a meeting and I was emotional and it was making me want to cry, I would stuff that and try to be a guy among the guys, like locker room putdown or stoicism or whatever. I felt, I am losing a whole part of myself to be powerful. In many ways, I'm losing the best parts of myself: my empathy, my ability to listen and include, my desire to empower people as opposed to dominate people. I'm losing that part of myself. I don't want to lose that part of myself. What do I do? Help.

I looked around. There was no one to help me. I thought, I'm going to start one conference. The first conference I organized, I had Anita Hill and Eve Ensler who wrote The Vagina Monologues. I just picked anybody I could who would be like, who are women doing power differently? I don't want just women who are out manning the men. I want women who are actually trying to bring some of their best qualities into leadership, changing leadership from the inside out. Not that men, bad; women, good. Look, the world's a mess. We need something new. Could women do it differently? I brought this first conference in. Usually, I do one conference on a subject, and that's it, but people were starving for it. Women were so hungry just to be a room and to say things that we can't usually say. One thing we can't usually say is, I want power. We're not supposed to want power, but I don't want that kind of power. I want a different kind. Twenty years later, the conference is still a vital, amazing gathering where we've brought women leaders from all over the world and every discipline, an astronaut and artists and actors. Also, the women in the audience are so fantastic. A lot of that informed the book. A lot of the keynotes addresses I've given informed my Cassandra book.

Zibby: I love when you were backstage at the TED talk. Who were with? Madeleine Albright or something. You were all nervous about going out and giving your big talk. Tell me more about that experience and how you've found your way to lead in the way that you wish other people could lead.

Elizabeth: That was funny. I was giving a TED talk. If you'd ever like to actually almost have a heart attack, you should give a TED talk. They figured out a way to make every speaker incredibly nervous. The person who's about to go on and the next person and the next person all go in the greenroom at the same time. The person before me was this amazing speaker who actually founded an amazing organization called A Call to Men which is helping men actually become more vulnerable; and then me, I was going to give my talk; and Madeleine Albright who, of course, had been the secretary of state and brokered peace in Serbia. She was so nervous. The reason I told that story is because as the founder of Omega, I've had a chance to meet so many powerful people, men and women. People often ask me, what's the best thing you've learned from being around all these people? I would say that they're all scared children inside just like you and me. It doesn't matter what's on your resume. It's doesn't matter. Everyone has that core, super strong dudes, women athletes. It doesn't matter. We all have that part. We just all hide it from each other in different degrees of success. That is a very helpful thing to remember as anyone wanting to do power differently. Part of the skill, to me, of being a new kind of leader is finding that place in another person. The best way to find it is to admit our own, to be our vulnerable selves with each other. I do believe that is something women have a little more skill at than men do. It's what the world needs now.

Zibby: This is validating my personal confessions on Instagram all the time. You're making me feel better about that. [laughs] Another part of why I think you told the story from the TED talk was that the man who had gone before you talked about how one of the young people he had coached or mentored had said that should somebody tell him he threw like a girl, he would have been more than upset. He would have been destroyed by that comment. You were saying, what kind of gender roles do we have if being compared to a girl would make a boy feel destroyed inside when girls want to, perhaps, throw like boys or whatever else? What does that say about what our genders are defined as these days?

Elizabeth: It's very interesting. I'm a grandmother now. Right before I signed on here to Instagram with you, I had picked up my eight-year-old grandson at school. With COVID now, he goes to school just two hours every morning. It's crazy hard for parents. You just start working, and suddenly you have to go pick up your kid again, so I've been helping them. I picked him up. He's eight. He likes every now and then to wear dresses to school. I'm thinking, this is so cool. This is so amazing. Often, it's just like, is this okay? Is this okay that my little grandson wants to wear a dress? It's so amazing what's going on now. I'm not saying it's easy for any of us as all of this merges and melds and changes. The fact that if a girl is called a tomboy and she feels good, it's kind of cool to be called a tomboy, but a boy is called a sissy or a mama's boy, and that's an insult. What does that say about what men think about girls and women? I'm insulted if you compare me to a girl, but if a woman is compared to a dude, we feel cool. Unpack that. Just think about it. It goes all the way back to the ancient stories. The fact that there's some fluidity now [distorted audio] strong kid boy and still like beautiful things, I'm so fascinated with this.

Zibby: My son likes to wear all my daughter's stuff a lot of the time, all her nightgowns and whatever. He wants to be her. She's so cool. He doesn't have the type of school that would allow anything but uniform, but whatever. Just the fact that he can paint his nails and we can have the greatest time and that's just the way it is, it's fantastic. I love it.

Elizabeth: That's new. That's also not universal. In other cultures and in houses down the street, we are still under the influence of a double standard of what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman and what kind of values are seen as primary.

Zibby: You illustrated that so well with your support group of the 9/11 survivors and how even though you were like, it's okay, you can all share, I'm here, everyone's like, we're not doing that. [laughs] No matter what you did, no matter how skilled you were at eliciting feelings and confessions and all the rest, the men were too set in their trained ways to break through all that to be able to share the trauma that they had been through. Tell me a little more about that.

Elizabeth: I've been a teacher of mindfulness meditation for many years. After 9/11, people who had that skill, many were asked to come and help first responders who were having trouble integrating what they had seen and experienced. They were forced, if you can enforce mindfulness on someone, it's doesn't really work, but they had to take these courses so they could learn better how to deal with their reactivity. When you're traumatized, your reactivity, you can get triggered very quickly. Somebody gave money for first responders in New York City to take mindfulness classes to learn how to take that pause before you react, which is what meditation is so good at teaching. I was trying to teach mindfulness to wounded warriors, all guys, who were firemen who had rushed into the buildings on 9/11. I loved these guys. We had a wonderful, fun repertoire. As you say, every time I would have them -- often when I teach meditation, I have people start just by, put your hand here right now on your heart. There's something very powerful just about that. Just stop, pause, and breathe. What's in there? There's varying degrees of -- some people put their hand on their heart. I ask, what's in there? They just start to weep because there's grief in there.

We're not trained in grief. We've got this bizarre idea that you get one day off when your mother dies, from work. Whereas in the old cultures, the women wore black for a year. They'd walk through town and they'd get great respect. Oh, she lost someone. Now you get over it, closure, my least favorite word. Some people are afraid to go in because if you go in there, uh, oh, what else is in there? I maybe would cry for a year and never stop. Some people are like, feelings? Wimp. Get over it. They're just going to slow you down and confuse the matter. That's for the girls. Those guys were like that. I'm not going in there. I'm not talking about it. I'm supposed to get over it. That's what Tony Porter, the guy who gave the TED talk before me, he calls that the man box. Not only men are in the man box. To some extent, we all suffer from patriarchy, for lack of a better word. We've all been trained. That's Cassandra's story. Cassandra tried to tell the truth of what was going on, but no one believed her because she was a hysteric. We have this mixed up idea that if you feel deeply, you're a hysteric. Men don't want to be hysterics, so they lose out on so much, such depth of feeling and intimacy and all the juicy, good things that are in here. They're the strong and silent types. I tried to help them feel that you could be soft and communicative, and that is also powerful and good and helpful. It'll heal you. You'll actually get over what's bothering you quicker. We made some progress. We made a little progress, but it's deep. It's deep inside of men and many women.

Zibby: Do you think it's too late? What about this new breed of female empathetic world-changing leaders that nobody might be ready for? In your Omega Institute, how do you walk into a room full of men who aren't of the new mindset? How do you affect change when you're still a minority in that sense?

Elizabeth: Hard, but it's being done. I'm super hopeful even though it looks alarming at the top right now. It looks like we have backslid back into the neanderthal caves, without naming names. Look at the leaders who have handled COVID best in the world. They're women. They're Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand. They're Angela Merkel in Germany. They're in Taiwan and Finland. I think the top seven countries who've dealt the best, the least deaths, the least new infections, are women. They're in power. They're obviously doing something different because their countries are handling it different. In neuroscience, they talk about, for years, you've heard the way humans deal with trauma and stress is flight or fight. Those are the only two ways. There's been a lot of new studies done on women. Now they're calling it tend and befriend. There's fight and flight, but there's other ways to deal with stress too. Women have millennia of dealing with it through tending. There's a trauma. You tend to the old. You tend to the children and befriend. Instead of making someone an enemy, hey, can we do this together? Can we all create a goal we want to solve? We may have different opinions, but can we move together toward something? This is how the COVID women leaders have been dealing with it, by tending to the most vulnerable and befriending the different ideas of how you deal with it and trying to create a community as opposed to dividing people. Those studies, both the medical studies and the studies done sociologically in organizations about tend and befriend versus fight and flight, are so fascinating. I really recommend people reading them.

Zibby: Interesting. I love that, tend and befriend. That, I can do. Those come easy. On the writing side, can you tell me a little more about your process of writing the book and then also if you have advice for aspiring authors?

Elizabeth: I'm the kind of writer -- when I wrote my first book, I kept trying to be a different kind of writer. I kept trying to write what, I think it was Anne Lamott calls shitty first drafts. I write sentence by sentence, word by word. I can't leave a sentence until I love it. I can't write big, huge things and then go back. It makes for an extremely slow and tedious writing process. I'm not a very fast writer. I just work those sentences. I love words. I love language. The construction of a sentence tells me a lot of what the next sentence needs to be. There's a poetic sense to my nonfiction. It's the way I do it. I've tried not to do it that way because it's slow and torturous, but that's just the way I do it. I keep telling myself, well, you wrote a book, so I guess you can do it this way. When I'm writing a book, I'm very, very disciplined. Other parts of my life really suffer. My friends don't understand me. I disappear. At the end of every book, I'm like, I am never doing that again. Why would I do that again? Just last night, I'm laying in bed thinking, when this virtual book tour is over, what will I do? I have a book in my mind. I'm like, no, don't do it. [laughter]

Zibby: You clearly know what you're doing. Now I can't wait to go back and read your memoir now that I was just trying to pull out all the bits of you from this. You really are a beautiful writer. I underlined so many things. I don't, for sure, always say that, so I mean it.

Elizabeth: Thank you. Thanks so much.

Zibby: Any parting advice for aspiring authors?

Elizabeth: I'm a nonfiction writer. I did try to write a novel once. I think probably all nonfiction writers try to write a novel. My agent, when I showed him the first couple hundred pages, he said to me, "Well, your dialogue kind of sounds like a stilted civics lesson." I was like, ouch, run away. I put it in a drawer. I've never looked at it again. This is advice for nonfiction writers because I'm not a fiction writer. I just think people learn through stories. The stories people mostly learn from are not the sweet and happy and "isn't my life so perfect" stories. They're the stories of mistakes and really poor behavior and learning through just everyday crap. I end up telling those stories. I always say the book made me do it. People are like, you're so brave. I'm like, no, the book made me do it. I would just say be brave about telling your own story because that's what we want. We want you.

Zibby: I love that. That's great advice. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me a part of your publication journey. I know you have so many notables interviewing you. You had Dani Shapiro and Maria Shriver and all these great people on your tour.

Elizabeth: You're a great people. [laughter] Thank you for teaching me how to do Instagram Live. I learned I can't do it on my computer.

Zibby: I should've put that in the email. It's my fault.

Elizabeth: No, no, no.

Zibby: Now you've got the hang of it. You'll know how to do it from now on.

Elizabeth: I do. I know now. Thank you.

Zibby: You're welcome. Take care.

Elizabeth: Bye.

Zibby: Bye.