Ann Napolitano, DEAR EDWARD
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[0:40]literary agents, and more. I'm here today with Anne Napolitano,
[0:44]who's the author of Dear Edward, which is a December 2019 Book of the Month Club pick.
[0:48]A January-to-day show hashtag readwithgenific, and the Barnes & Noble January pick
[0:54]among many others. She's also the author of novels A Good Hard Look,
[0:57]and within arms reach, she is the associate editor of one story literary magazine.
[1:02]And in 2019, she was long-listed for the Simpson Joyce Carol Oats Literary Prize,
[1:07]and received her MFA from New York University, and has taught fiction writing at NYU,
[1:10]Brooklyn College, and Gotham Writers Workshop. She currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband
[1:14]and two children. Welcome, Anne. Thanks for coming on, Mom.
[1:16]So don't have time to read books. Thank you for having me.
[1:19]Of course. Dear Edward, huge sensation already.
[1:23]Read with Jenna, today's show pick, Barnes & Noble,
[1:27]when I book in the month club, books a million. So amazing. I know. It's very exciting and strange.
[1:34]Congratulations. Thank you. And I'm not at all surprised because it's so good.
[1:39]You've spent eight years writing it. So tell listeners what Dear Edward is about.
[1:43]It is about a 12-year-old boy named Edward who is the sole survivor of a plane crash.
[1:48]And there's two storylines in the book. So the book starts with Edward and his family,
[1:54]his brother and his parents, and several other passengers that we get to know,
[1:57]boarding a flight in Newark Airport, which is bound for LAX. And at the end of the first chapter,
[2:02]the flight takes off. And then the second chapter starts later that same day after that plane
[2:07]has crashed. And Edward wakes up in the hospital and he's the sole survivor. And for the rest
[2:13]of the book, you alternate, I alternate the two timelines. So we do the arc of the crash,
[2:18]or the flight, and the crash. And then the arc of Edward's life after the crash,
[2:22]and how he figures out how to go on. So what inspired you to write this book and come up with
[2:28]the story for this? You had said you'd never thought you would write about a plane crash.
[2:32]Tell me how this all came about. Yeah, I'm a nervous flyer to begin with. And I also
[2:38]fictionally both as a reader and a writer. I generally tend to gravitate towards quieter stories.
[2:44]I don't read thrillers generally, or things with explosions or crashes. So it's unlikely
[2:50]an all manner of speak. But in 2010, I became obsessed with a story that was in the news.
[2:56]And there was a real plane crash. There was a flight from South Africa, bound for London,
[3:00]and it crashed in Libya. And there was only one survivor. And it was a nine-year-old boy, a Dutch boy.
[3:05]And they found him still buckled into his seat like a half mile away from the rest of the
[3:10]wreckage. And he had a punctured lung and a broken leg, but he was otherwise fine. And everyone
[3:15]else in the flight, including his parents and his brother had died immediately. And obviously it
[3:21]was so sad. And they had a picture of him in the hospital. And he looked so beautiful and broken
[3:26]and small. And I was like, how could this boy go on? Like, how do you go on from that? He just lost
[3:32]everyone that he loved his whole life. His aunt and uncle came and adopted him. And they did
[3:36]an amazing job of protecting his privacy, like from the first minute. So I couldn't know that
[3:41]he was going to be all right. And so very quickly, I knew that I was going to have to write
[3:45]a version of this story and try and create a set of circumstances in which a little boy could be
[3:52]OK, a way that with the kindness of others sort of propelling him and the passage of time that he
[3:59]would find a place where he wasn't ruined by what happened to him. But he was rebuilt.
[4:05]Your sons were one and three at the time that you wrote this book and are now 10 and 12.
[4:09]How do you think the relationship between your boy is affected, the relationship that you
[4:14]wrote about in this book between Edward and his brother? I wasn't conscious of it at the time,
[4:18]but obviously seeing this little boy in the hospital and then having two little boys at home
[4:22]was part of the emotional connection I had to this story. The other part that I became aware of
[4:27]was that so my sons were one and three. I feel like when they're that age they're like drunk
[4:32]bear cubs. They're not really people yet. They're just kind of like tumbling all over the
[4:36]the place and one of them is wearing a bucket on their head and the other one is like sobbing over
[4:41]something you can't even understand what they're talking about. And your job is to like keep
[4:45]them alive until they have a little more sense and to laugh at them and kiss them because they're
[4:49]adorable, but they're ridiculous. And you don't really know about who they're going to be as
[4:52]people at that age. And they get a bit older. You can start seeing like what their skill sets are
[4:57]or what their person disposition is. But when they're one and three, the only thing that I really
[5:02]knew about them was that they were deeply in love with each other. And my husband and I have
[5:07]nothing to do with that. And they're still deeply in love with each other. It's kind of like
[5:10]unusual. I feel like when my younger son was born, it was for my older son, it was like they're
[5:15]being reunited instead of introduced. They just are sort of soul mates, although I don't like that
[5:21]term. So as I started writing about your Edward in that world, their love sort of baked into the
[5:29]story. I think before I had children or maybe even if I didn't have the children that I have,
[5:34]I would have thought that the loss of the parents would have been the most searing blow. But I
[5:39]realized that it actually was the loss of his brother because he loved him so deeply and also
[5:44]you're meant to grow up with your sibling. We leave our parents when we go to college or have our
[5:49]adult lives. That's part of the natural progression, but you're not supposed to lose your brother
[5:55]sister. So that love and that loss really sort of baked itself into the story. It took you
[6:00]eight years to write this book. Tell me about the process that was involved and how you
[6:04]structured both the plot and the character development during that time. My husband had challenged me
[6:09]the book before this another novel called A Good Hardbook took seven years. And in that book,
[6:15]I always had considered myself an intuitive writer. So like I would start with a scene and then
[6:20]someone would walk in the room and say something that surprised me as well as, you know,
[6:25]hopefully the reader. So it was like an act of discovery as I wrote, which I love. It's so fun. And it's
[6:30]like 75% of why writing is this really interesting, exciting experience. But when I was moving like
[6:37]that, I ended up writing just many, many scenes, many, many hundreds of pages that I ended up cutting
[6:42]because I was sort of like muddle my way, feeling my way through the book. So my husband suggested
[6:47]that I take a year before or as the first part of writing this new book, a year where I didn't
[6:53]write, but I only researched and took notes and thought because actually when I write, it's like
[6:58]a very, as I said, intuitive, but like emotional experience. And my brain kind of switches off.
[7:04]So it's very hard for me to like come up with, you know, critical or analytical or plot ideas while
[7:10]I'm writing. So I spent a year just using my brain, which was really challenging because I love
[7:17]writing pretty sentences. And all I really wanted to do was like dive in and start writing,
[7:20]but it was extremely helpful. So I interviewed a career pilot. I did, I had to figure out why
[7:26]my plane crashed. So and as I said, I'm not a plane expert. I never thought I would write about a
[7:31]plane crash. So I had to learn a lot. I read a lot of national transportation safety board reports and
[7:36]black box recordings and articles about plane crashes. And then the plane knowing that I had
[7:43]these passengers and that they could be anyone because everyone flies. So I could have very
[7:47]different characters than I could have if I was writing about a neighborhood or a set of friends.
[7:51]So that was actually really exciting. So I sort of consciously chose very different people.
[7:57]And then I read a book, certain spokespeople for each one. Like Crispin Cox is the
[8:02]octogenarian billionaire who's on the flight and I read Jack Welch's Straight from the Gut,
[8:07]which is really funny. It's not supposed to be funny, but it's very funny. He is like all this
[8:11]spunk and it's just a very entertaining book. So I read that for Crispin Cox and then I read
[8:17]War by Sebastian Younger for the soldier that's on the plane. And I have a friend who's in the
[8:21]army that I spoke to David Foster Wallace wrote a book about math called like everything and beyond
[8:26]that I read for the pure mathematician. And I also have a friend who's a pure mathematician,
[8:30]so I spoke to her. And then my husband had also challenged me to read outside of my normal
[8:35]genres that year. So it was like a whole year of experiment. And so I read during that year,
[8:41]Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series. And reading that book and how Gaiman plays with time and space
[8:48]and all the boundaries are like gone for him in the most exhilarating way. And that made me
[8:54]create Florida who's a pastor on the plane who believes that she's lived many lives.
[8:59]So it was all baked into that year. So by the time that I started writing,
[9:03]the plane sections came very easily for me because I knew so much already. And also it had a
[9:08]beginning and middle and an end. And they're they're trapped in a like silver bus. So like
[9:13]only so much can happen. The stuff with Edward on the ground was what I wrote and rewrote the most.
[9:19]I knew that he was me adopted by his aunt and uncle because that was what had happened
[9:22]to the real boy. And then I knew there was going to be a girl that his age who lived next door
[9:26]and then he was going to sleep on her floor. But that was all I knew for that when I started.
[9:31]Sorry for all the sirens here, by the way, I am so sorry. And if anyone's listening and in
[9:35]their cars, the sirens are from my recording. You do not have to look behind you to see if
[9:40]there's a policeman chasing you. Anyway, my apologies. It's New York City. You did such a great job
[9:44]with capturing Edward sense of isolation and loneliness, especially being sole survivor of this
[9:50]plane crash. Is there anything in your own life that has made you able to tap into these feelings
[9:54]so successfully? I had an experience when I was right after my junior year of college, I got sick with
[9:59]that.
[10:00]virus called Epstein Bar. It's like a big, it's mononucleosis is the smaller version of it kind
[10:06]of. Epstein Bar is the umbrella that goes above that. And having been in healthy my whole life
[10:10]and then healthy after that, I was sick for three years. And it would have did basically
[10:14]those wipes out your immune system. So you catch like everything that comes near you.
[10:19]I get food poisoning all the time and it's not fun. I don't recommend it. But when I,
[10:23]so I got it after my junior year and I actually went back to college my senior year,
[10:28]but I took a half load of classes. It took me an extra year to finish college. And I basically
[10:32]went back to college just so that I wouldn't be deeply depressed to my parents' couch. Like
[10:37]it was like more a social thing than an academic thing at that point because my brain was not,
[10:42]I wasn't able to do the high level work that I had been doing at that point. But so I spent that
[10:47]year at college sort of pretending to be a 20 year old because I didn't have the energy that I would
[10:52]have like three hours of energy a day. So I would figure out where to dole it out. And then I would be
[10:58]with my friends and someone would say something. And I would think, okay, I should laugh at that
[11:02]because that was a joke. Like I was, I was not one with them. I was pretending to be one of them.
[11:09]And so for Edward, he's in a worse and similar situation where he's 12, but he's not a 12 year old
[11:17]anymore. Like if something that absolutely enormous happens to you, it removes you from being a kid,
[11:22]but he was literally still a kid. So he had to figure out how to behave as a 12 year old,
[11:28]even though he didn't feel like one. So I felt I had had that experience before, which fit into it
[11:33]and was very helpful. And then, you know, I think all of us have, for us are terrible things happen
[11:38]to us that feel impossible to get over at the time, even if it's like a huge breakup or,
[11:43]you know, the loss of a parent or, you know, even if it's a grandparent who you love deeply dies,
[11:49]you know, whatever it is that rocks our foundation is completely individual. And we've all had
[11:54]those experiences. You include a lot of different people's stories. What inspires you to come up
[12:00]with all the different stories of all the different characters? Well, I think part of it is I've
[12:04]spent my whole life going on planes and trains, etc. and making up stories for the people around me.
[12:09]Like I find people innately fascinating. So if I go to like a music concert or something,
[12:17]I'll just make up stories about everyone who's on stage and like twice divorced or, you know,
[12:22]like I don't necessarily know. So that's something that I love to do, but also I feel like
[12:28]what ends up happening with the plane. And the opportunity that we all have around us all the
[12:32]time is to make connections. And that we need to make connections. And the people who are on the
[12:37]plane, they don't know that they're going to die until the very end. So they're having a normal day
[12:43]in the sky, like they're flirting, they're taking pregnancy tests, they're worried about their
[12:48]sexuality. Like they're going through their life in a very, you know, day-to-day way. And then
[12:54]whereas what's happening on the ground with Edward is soaked in grief because the terrible thing
[13:00]has already happened. So I think that the people in the air were, for instance, this woman Florida
[13:06]befriends another woman Linda sitting next to her. And it's like there's real power in that
[13:14]connection because we know that their life's about to end and it's so meaningful and sweet that
[13:19]they've reached out to each other in what is for them a normal day. So I feel like it calls to the
[13:24]need for all of us to sort of not only notice the people around us, but like be open to having those
[13:31]small connections because they really do feed us. Talk to me a little about how you can form an
[13:36]impression of somebody when you first meet them. That's like so interesting to me that you can
[13:40]meet someone and be like, oh, I do not like that person. But you're like, I literally just bet you
[13:44]like what is happening with the electrons between us where I'm picking up something that's in,
[13:48]you know, antipathetic to who I am. Or that you meet someone and you're like, I want to be friends
[13:53]with that person. You know, it's just so interesting. It makes life, you know, rich and fascinating.
[13:57]It's like there's all these emotional microfibers, you know, making up all the minutes of our lives.
[14:03]And if you become aware of them, it makes life more interesting. But it also, I'm much quicker to
[14:09]love now. Like, like, y'all meet someone. Like, I met my editor and I was like, oh, I love her.
[14:17]Like, and I don't even care if she loves me back. Like, because it's like a such a boon for me
[14:22]to be filled with love. Whereas when I was younger, I used to, I used to like get stuck on like,
[14:28]you know, do they like me? Is my hair look weird? Like, am I talking strangely? Am I talking too
[14:33]much? You know, like all these sort of thoughts, but all the like emotional tracks in me now feel
[14:39]like, I think, largely just because of aging are cleared out. So like, I will meet someone
[14:43]and very quickly be like, oh, I love that person. And like, what, what a benefit to me. I don't
[14:48]even care if they love me back. You know, because I'm the one who benefits from the love.
[14:53]And I think the openness that you have Edward feeling, what is your path? Like, he feels like he needs
[14:59]because he survived, right? That he's been, he has something more to that he has to do in life,
[15:05]there must be a reason I've been chosen. What should I do? And really, as you point out,
[15:10]he just has to live his life. You know, that he just, he doesn't have to follow a certain path.
[15:14]And like, that none of us have a path that we have to really.
[15:19]Well, he's in this like very stark situation where he's the sole survivor, 191 people died. And
[15:25]so all the spotlight is on him. But in truth, that same spotlight exists on all of us.
[15:31]He has to figure out how he wants to live his life and who he wants to be and
[15:36]how he wants to connect and love and what that looks like for him. And it's only because of
[15:42]the sort of barren landscape that he stepped out of that everyone's paying attention to that.
[15:46]But we all have the same on us on each one of us. And to be like, this person's more important
[15:51]than this person is completely untrue.
[15:54]Did writing this book make you a less nervous flyer? You have a quote in there about how it's all,
[15:59]it's a normal to all of us that we're, we're just sitting in the sky. Yeah, that's just part of
[16:04]our daily lives. Do you feel any better about it? Or do you feel like all the research you did on
[16:08]flying makes you less confident? Or I have like a list of planes that I prefer to fly on that
[16:15]like my publishing house has. Yeah, if you could just email those, try to say that.
[16:18]I don't think anyone needs to know this kind of information. I know a lot now. But I feel
[16:23]actually pretty much the same as I did before. It is the thing where I think I was always like,
[16:27]oh my God, we are a bus in the sky. And that's amazing. So it's amazing that humans invented
[16:34]such a thing and that it works and that we do it casually all day long, all year long. But I'm also
[16:40]hyper aware that I'm in a bus in the sky, which is not, I don't think we should feel comfortable
[16:46]in that situation. But it did not, you know, it didn't give me a phobia. I also, I'm just more aware
[16:51]of the people around me even than I was before. So I find it all interesting.
[16:55]Did you always know you wanted to be a writer? Yes, basically in fourth grade, you'd get those
[17:00]vocab lists that would get sent home the list of words. And there was one week in fourth grade
[17:05]where the teacher said, now I want you to write them into sentences that connect. They're like all
[17:09]part of one thing, which had never happened before. And I sat down to write the homework. And I
[17:16]finished it and I looked up and I thought five minutes had passed and 40 minutes had passed.
[17:20]And that was the first time as a child I had ever experienced time disappearing not in play.
[17:26]And I was just like, I just remember thinking like this is magic. Like time just went away
[17:32]and I was doing homework. And so like I think the next day I started writing a novel about a
[17:38]wartime orphan. And then that I wrote about 15 pages. And then I wrote about a wartime nurse.
[17:43]So like, you know, that also was about 15 pages. I think I had like very serious literary
[17:47]aspirations for the first minute. I thought it had to be during a wartime in order for it to be
[17:51]like a serious piece of work. And then there was always what I wanted to do.
[17:55]And have you always been drawn to fiction only? Yeah, I can't even write short stories. They just
[17:59]got longer and longer. So I mean, they're pros and cons to all of that. It just means that also
[18:05]I never published anything until I was 30 years old, even though it was my main preoccupation.
[18:11]I worked as a personal assistant. I mean, I went to graduate school. I, you know,
[18:16]I was making a living, but I didn't publish anything for that long because I could not write
[18:20]stories. And my first two novels that I wrote didn't get published. So it wasn't until the third
[18:25]novel that I wrote that was published when I was 30 or 31. How did you regroup after those
[18:31]rejections and just sit down and write another book? The first novel I wrote was during
[18:35]graduate school. And I think it was terrible. I mean, I think I think for many people and certainly
[18:41]for me, I had to write a book in order to figure out how to write a book. Like there's no way
[18:44]to just know how to write a novel, like the pacing and the just how long it is and how it works.
[18:49]And that one was rejected by like 80 agents. And so I put it in a drawer. And then I finished graduate
[18:54]school and I was working as a personal assistant. And I wrote another novel. And that one I got
[18:58]an agent for, but she couldn't sell it. So I ended up putting that one in a drawer. And at that
[19:02]point I got depressed. I was like 28 years old or something like that, 27 maybe. And I had never
[19:08]published anything. I built my whole life around. I was working as a personal assistant so that I
[19:13]had time to write. It wasn't like that was a career track or whatever for me. And my father was
[19:18]sending me pamphlets for law school in the mail. And I realized that the only way out of my depression
[19:24]was writing. So like I started writing again to feel less depressed. And at that time I realized that
[19:31]I was going to write for the rest of my life, whether I published or not. And at that point I
[19:35]assumed I wouldn't. But that's like huge weight lifted because I realized that it was part of me.
[19:40]And even to this day, I mean, I won't stop writing because I am not like a whole human being,
[19:46]if I'm not writing. So, you know, it took the choice away from me, which was good.
[19:50]And I'm interested how at the beginning of our conversation you were talking about how your husband
[19:54]insisted, you know, suggested you do this year and all this. Tell me about his relationship to
[19:59]your writing.
[20:00]and how YouTube works together to have great to have some
[20:03]specific personal coach of your time and everything.
[20:06]What's that like?
[20:07]He would love to hear that.
[20:08]He doesn't, well, so I have two writers
[20:10]that I'm Helen Ellis and Hannah Tinty,
[20:13]who wrote the 12 Lives of Samuel Holly and the Good Thief.
[20:16]We met in graduate school and we've been each other's
[20:18]first readers since then, so that's like 22 years or something
[20:22]like that.
[20:23]So they are the only ones who read my work,
[20:25]like say for Dear Edward, for like seven and a half years,
[20:28]they were the only ones who read it.
[20:30]Then I gave it to my agent and my husband, like at the end.
[20:33]So my husband is very helpful with like big picture issues.
[20:38]If I have a problem I want to talk through,
[20:40]then he is very helpful in that way.
[20:42]And he also, he's very helpful in looking at
[20:44]and being like a problem solver,
[20:46]where he's on more like in the muck.
[20:48]So in the literary world at all.
[20:50]No, he used to be a filmmaker and now he's a tutor.
[20:52]So he's very like academically, he's brainy,
[20:56]which is not like where my brain is.
[20:59]So it's a very helpful combination.
[21:01]And I read on your Instagram about your daily routine
[21:05]and how you sit in your kitchen and have like an oat milk
[21:08]latte or all the rest of it.
[21:09]I kept reading and I'm like, oh, she's like so healthy.
[21:12]She's having like oat milk and a vegan muffin
[21:14]and this is like so Brooklyn of her.
[21:16]It's like the whole thing.
[21:17]They're very warm.
[21:19]So do you always, you always like to write in your kitchen
[21:21]while boys are at school or?
[21:22]Yeah, I mean, that's the ideal.
[21:24]But I mean, ever since I had kids right wherever I need to
[21:27]and whenever I need to, I've become much more flexible.
[21:30]I mean, I used to write every morning first thing
[21:32]and then like not let myself leave my apartment
[21:35]until I'd written three pages or something like that.
[21:37]And I would like hang little carrots for myself,
[21:41]through the day to get things done.
[21:43]But none of that exists anymore.
[21:45]But I mean, now I think then I was like, it was younger
[21:48]and I was more nervous about it and more ambitious
[21:52]and wanting to like have a finished product
[21:54]and have it be published.
[21:56]And for this book, I loved writing this book,
[21:58]even though it was very sad.
[21:59]Like it was a joyful period for me in the work.
[22:02]And I think a lot of it was just that I realized
[22:04]how much I love writing.
[22:05]And I let myself love writing without worrying about it.
[22:09]So that also lifted other restrictions
[22:11]where I didn't matter where I was or what time it was.
[22:15]Although I can't write at night, I have no brain.
[22:18]I am more than warning person.
[22:20]Do you feel like having a 12-year-old son
[22:22]as this book is coming out about a 12-year-old boy?
[22:24]It's just like, it's so sweet.
[22:26]I had only occurred to me recently that he was 12.
[22:28]And he came to both my readings this week.
[22:32]The 10-year-old came to the first one
[22:34]and then was like, I'd rather go to soccer practice
[22:36]and go to the second one.
[22:36]But that 12-year-old is like very excited.
[22:40]It feels so nice.
[22:41]I mean, it just obviously worked out that way.
[22:43]And it is like it's a really lovely age, I think,
[22:46]where there's still children,
[22:47]but they're on the cusp of,
[22:49]and they're so interested in adults
[22:51]and at least he is and what we're talking about
[22:54]and getting information from us
[22:56]so they understand the world better.
[22:57]And it feels very sweet to walk Edward into the world
[23:00]with my son, Maliki, sort of cheering.
[23:04]So nice, it is nice.
[23:06]And what do you have coming next?
[23:07]Are you working on anything else?
[23:09]I'm in the first year process for the second book
[23:11]where I'm not letting myself, right?
[23:13]Actually, it'll be like a year and February
[23:15]or March, some taking notes and thinking and researching
[23:18]and I think Edward and Shay are in it
[23:21]and it's 10 years later.
[23:22]Oh, that's exciting.
[23:24]We'll see, we'll see.
[23:25]Yeah.
[23:27]Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?
[23:29]Well, when I was young,
[23:31]there was really only MFA programs.
[23:34]Now that's no longer the case.
[23:36]There's so many great classes that you can take.
[23:37]I mean, I think what I would urge is for people
[23:40]to find a community, a writing community of some kind,
[23:43]even if it's one or two other people.
[23:45]Like Helen and Hannah have been the most important part
[23:48]of my writing development.
[23:49]And I have, you know, I met them in an MFA program.
[23:52]But now you can take classes.
[23:54]One story where I work has online classes
[23:57]and in-person classes, there's Gotham Writers Workshop,
[24:00]there's Sackett Street, there's catapult,
[24:02]there's a lot of sort of national,
[24:04]not just in New York programs
[24:06]where you can take like a five week workshop.
[24:08]And it's so important to have other people read your work
[24:10]and to read other people's work.
[24:12]You can learn so much in that dynamic.
[24:14]So I think a lot of people close themselves off
[24:17]because they're worried that it's not good
[24:18]and they just do it by themselves for like 15 years.
[24:21]And you can make so much more progress
[24:24]if you allow other people into that space.
[24:26]So I would urge you, if you think it's terrible,
[24:28]that's fine.
[24:28]Like I was terrible, we're all terrible.
[24:31]My dear Edward was terrible in the beginning.
[24:34]You have to keep going and having other people look at it
[24:36]and like tell you the truth about it
[24:37]is I think the most helpful thing.
[24:39]Well, thank you for coming on the show
[24:41]and congratulations on all the success already.
[24:43]Just even in the beginning, it is launch month.
[24:46]So I feel so honored to have talked to you
[24:48]because this book is really one of my favorites.
[24:50]Thank you so much for having me on.
[24:52]This was very nice.
[24:53]You've been listening to moms
[24:54]and have time to read books with Zibi Owens.
[24:56]Please make sure to sign up for my newsletter
[24:58]at zibiowans.com to get more updates about episodes like these
[25:03]and also lots of live events.
[25:04]Thanks so much.
[25:05]Today's episode has been sponsored by poets and writers.
[25:09]Visit pw.org to get inspired,
[25:11]connect with other writers
[25:13]and explore a treasure trove of information
[25:15]about writing contests, literary agents, and more.
[25:17]You can follow me on Instagram at moms don't have time
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[25:21]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound
[25:24]for the Sound Editing.
[25:25]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[25:27]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[25:30]Thanks for listening.
[25:31]You can always email me at zibiatzibiowans.com.