Julia Phillips, DISAPPEARING EARTH
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[0:53]The sponsor for this whole Labor Day Book last week is FirstBook.org. Obviously, the pandemic is crippling education for millions of students, especially those in low-income communities.
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[1:44]They need your support to ensure these children have what they need to learn during this critical time.
[1:49]Visit FirstBook.org to help this episode with Julia Phillips is really special.
[1:55]So each year, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award champions emerging writers and recognizes innovation and excellence in contemporary fiction.
[2:04]This year, the award marks its 20th anniversary of celebrating the next generation of outstanding fiction writers.
[2:10]PSI used to be a young lion, and now I am apparently a very old lion.
[2:14]Anyway, the 2020 Young Lions Fiction Award finalists include Staff Shaw, Your House Will Pay,
[2:19]Julia Phillips, Disappearing Earth, which is the interview I'm about to do here,
[2:23]Kylie Reed, such a fun age, which I've already had Kylie Reed on the podcast, so go back and listen to that one.
[2:29]Shuhan Wang, Home Remedies, and Brian Washington Lot.
[2:33]This year, the library is presenting the 2020 Fiction Award virtually,
[2:37]and you're all invited to tune in each day from Sunday, September 13th to Thursday, September 17th at 3 p.m.
[2:44]The library is posting a one-on-one video interview with each of the five finalists,
[2:48]one of which is my interview here with Julia, and you get an advanced sneak peek as a podcast.
[2:54]Immediately following the final interview, you can stay tuned for a culminating celebration of the finalists,
[2:59]their works, and the impact the Fiction Award has had on the literary community for the past 20 years.
[3:04]Plus, the announcement of the 2020 winner. You can sign up to receive updates about the Fiction Award
[3:10]at nypl.org-y-l-f-a. Again, that's nypl.org-y-l-f-a, Young Lions Fiction Award, YLFA.
[3:25]So go check it out and enjoy this one of just five of the finalists my talk with Julia Phillips.
[3:30]Julia Phillips is the debut author of the nationally best-selling novel Disappearing Earth,
[3:35]which is being published in 23 languages, and in addition to the Young Lions Fiction Award was
[3:40]also a finalist for the National Book Award. A Fulbright Fellow, Julia has written for the
[3:45]New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Paris Review. She lives in Brooklyn, and please enjoy our
[3:50]conversation. So welcome. Tell me about finding out that you were nominated for the Young
[3:56]Young Lions Fiction Award. What was that like? Oh, it was so exciting. It was so wonderful. I'm a big
[4:01]fan of this award and this program in the New York Public Library in general. And because of
[4:08]quarantine, I'm afraid I had too much time on my hands to refresh the library's page and Twitter
[4:14]account and think, I wonder what the we announcing that this year. Just because no particular
[4:20]investment or interest for myself, just because, so I spent quite a few weeks sort of
[4:25]pastoring the account before I got the wonderful wonderful news that I was on the list, and it was
[4:31]so exciting. Uh, that's awesome. So the Young Lions Fiction Award is now celebrating its 20th
[4:36]anniversary. So do you feel like it means even more in the context of being part of the anniversary
[4:42]year? What do you think? I would buy that absolutely. It didn't mean a lot. I got very excited about
[4:47]the 19th and the 18th and the 17th too, so it's hard for me to see that it would mean so much more
[4:54]right now. But actually, I like the way you put that and maybe it does. It's much more meaningful
[4:57]now the 20th. How can you say that? Totally. Number is irresistible. And it's 2020. So it's like,
[5:05]there we go. We have like, it's great. I want to talk a lot about your book, but I also just want to
[5:12]ask if you have an earliest memory of visiting a library. Gosh, a lot of my early memories of
[5:19]visiting libraries blend together a little bit into, I think a library was a big after-school
[5:25]staple for me of doing homework or being dropped off to do homework and not doing homework and
[5:30]just reading books in the aisles when I was a little kid. And so all of those sort of blend together
[5:37]into one happy homework-shurking memory that lasted many years. But I recently found a newspaper
[5:45]clipping from when I was seven that I guess they had a my public library had a right-year-old novel
[5:50]program for kids. So we got these blank books that we filled up with our own stories. And I wrote
[5:56]a very, very plagiarized novel that I think was the plot of a Christopher Pike book. I don't
[6:03]know if you remember Christopher Pike loved it. Like sort of scary teen novels about a dead body
[6:11]found in a snowman. So that was very supported in that by the librarians and the staff. They were
[6:17]really loving and let me write all sorts of wild plagiarized half-baked horror stories. They were
[6:25]wonderful. I feel like I will never approach a snowman in the same way again. You never know what's
[6:30]inside. Yeah, you never know. They're fine. So it sounds like they were really supportive of your
[6:37]development. That's amazing. They help you find books that maybe set you on this path as well or
[6:41]was it more fostering of your love of writing? It was a fostering I think of of all of our love of writing
[6:46]and the fostering of whatever creative direction we need to go in. I think I spent a particular amount
[6:52]of time illustrating the cover and put most of my focus there and wrote about 40 words in the rest
[6:58]of the book. I think I lost my scene for the story pretty quickly. Probably because it had already
[7:02]been written by somebody else better. It hasn't stopped a lot of other people.
[7:09]The where did you grow up, by the way, where are we picturing this library that you were in?
[7:14]I grew up in Northern New Jersey in suburban New Jersey about 15 miles outside New York.
[7:18]Do you remember the first time you went to the New York Public Library?
[7:21]You know, I'm putting you on the spot. The first time I went to the New York Public Library,
[7:25]but I have a lot of sharp memories actually more recent years of going to the library as a sort of
[7:31]celebratory event. It always feels so special every single time. Now I've been in New York
[7:36]for about 15 years and still every time I go, it feels like the most. I don't know, special
[7:43]thing. I think it's the lions outside. It makes it feel very, very special every single time.
[7:48]The architecture is so wonderful. Every room is a mystery. Now that you're about to have your
[7:53]first baby, you can you can discover the children's room, which is also really special.
[7:57]Oh my gosh. Okay. That is on the bucket list for post quarantine, baby life.
[8:04]To the children's room for sure.
[8:06]So now that I know you've been writing since you could basically hold a pencil,
[8:11]tell me about how you got from your first plagiarized novel to your
[8:16]award-nominated disappearing earth debut actual novel here in 2020. Like what happened in between
[8:23]with all your writing and the full bright and all the rest that got you here. I always wanted to
[8:28]be a novelist. I was a big reader as a kid and I was really lucky to be supported by some of my
[8:34]early teachers. I remember my second grade teacher, especially being super supportive of I was
[8:39]trying to write a novel in a notebook about think a girl who was raised by wolves and she and I would
[8:45]sort of take up all her time reading out loud from this second graders notebook and she would say
[8:52]keep going. That's great. So I really took that keep going. That's great and
[8:58]chose to hold on to it very tightly and always dreamed of writing fiction. I ended up studying
[9:10]fiction and college and also studying Russian, which was a big copy of mine and the language that
[9:14]I left to study. I had been working on a different novel manuscript that I pictured would be my
[9:19]first book and I'm very lucky that it was not and you thought it went to the drawer it went into.
[9:25]And as I was getting to the end of that process, which was quite a few years, I started thinking
[9:30]about what I imagined would be the second book and I thought, well maybe I can combine this
[9:34]interest in writing in this interest in Russia and set a novel there. So with that sort of big
[9:40]plan in mind, I spent a couple years applying for, as you said, a full bright at this print
[9:45]in creative writing that would fund my living in Russia for a year and beginning to research
[9:49]a book of fiction. I got that after a couple years and I moved to Russia and started researching
[9:54]the project that became disappearing Earth. So that was, that whole process started
[10:00]but it in 2009 and the book came out in 2019.
[10:03]So it was a really educational and challenging
[10:06]and wonderful decade of work on this book.
[10:10]And I'm so glad and grateful to have had this project
[10:15]all this time.
[10:16]It's been a really beautiful thing in my life.
[10:19]So do you think it was those words of your teacher
[10:21]that made you not give up?
[10:23]I mean, that's a long time to persist
[10:25]and feel that like the project was going to come
[10:29]to a good conclusion.
[10:30]And I mean, I feel like giving up
[10:32]might have been attempting option along the way.
[10:33]But instead, not only did you finish,
[10:35]but you crafted this award winning beautiful novel,
[10:38]what made you not quit?
[10:40]How did you keep going?
[10:42]Well, it's interesting to think about in the context
[10:44]of the Young Lions award,
[10:46]because I've been learning a lot
[10:48]and reflecting a lot about publishing and about writing
[10:52]and about the creative process recently
[10:55]and about youth and the creative process
[10:57]that for speed, perhaps.
[10:59]And it seems to me, I've been thinking about how in the past,
[11:04]when I wanted to publish a novel at 22
[11:06]and didn't publish a novel at 22,
[11:08]I thought, oh, there must be something very, very magical
[11:10]about 22 year olds who are publishing a book that must be.
[11:13]And maybe there is a magical thing
[11:15]or a magical thing about a 30 year old that published it.
[11:18]But I've been thinking more and more
[11:19]about how integral support is in creating speed,
[11:25]that everyone's writing incredible books,
[11:27]everyone can write incredible books,
[11:29]everyone's doing the work.
[11:30]But if you are supported by the people around you,
[11:34]it makes it a lot easier.
[11:36]And that's as true as it is in second grade,
[11:38]as it is now when you have people around you who say,
[11:44]I believe you can do this.
[11:46]It is motivating and really helpful.
[11:51]And God knows, you don't need this support to all.
[11:54]there are so many folks who do the work
[11:57]with an enormous lack of support.
[12:00]And yet when I look back on my writing ambitions,
[12:04]I really count my blessings and how I felt supported
[12:08]by that teacher or supported by my mom
[12:12]who didn't think it was wacky for me
[12:14]to be studying creative writing or really like,
[12:18]that support was, I think, really huge for me.
[12:22]So important.
[12:23]Yeah.
[12:24]It's tough to not be supported in basically anything.
[12:27]I mean, having the cheering squad can't be underrated.
[12:30]That's for sure, especially in writing,
[12:33]which is much more of a solitary profession.
[12:35]So knowing that once you look up from the keyboard,
[12:38]there are people reading for you to actually finish.
[12:40]That's a huge help.
[12:43]We're all gonna, and it's a selfish road for me
[12:46]toward arriving at the realization of how important it is
[12:49]to support other, right?
[12:51]That when you find people that you're really excited about
[12:54]or find people that are dreaming of the thing
[12:56]that you're dreaming of or have their own dreams
[13:00]or how little it takes and how much it benefits
[13:05]to say, keep going, I wanna support you in this.
[13:09]Tell me how, I wanna do everything I can
[13:11]to support you in this because that is hugely meaningful
[13:16]to folks.
[13:17]It certainly was hugely meaningful for me.
[13:19]So how do you think you so accurately kind of nailed
[13:23]the voice of the two of the sisters
[13:26]in the beginning of the book?
[13:27]Is there like wandering around the beach
[13:29]and the annoyance of the older sister
[13:32]and all of that was so like pitch perfect
[13:35]as a mother of four children, including two daughters,
[13:39]that all of those dynamics, it just seemed so real.
[13:42]When I heard your pregnant, I was like,
[13:44]well, she must have older kids too
[13:45]because she totally nailed this,
[13:47]but not to say you have to have your own children
[13:49]to write children well, but how did you do it so well?
[13:52]What do you think?
[13:53]That's so kind and I'm really,
[13:55]that means so much to me that you say that
[13:56]because that means a lot to me that you say that.
[13:58]I don't know, there's so much doubt in the process.
[14:01]And certainly their voices took a lot of revision
[14:05]and a lot of talk about support.
[14:07]Again, I mean like in community,
[14:09]a lot of feedback from more experienced authors
[14:14]and peer writers and friends who are parents and friends
[14:19]who said, you know, I remember very, very well,
[14:21]a wonderful writer named Dionne Brand,
[14:25]who I had the good luck.
[14:26]She read that first chapter and said like,
[14:28]why don't you go on YouTube and listen to some kids,
[14:30]talk about characters or eight and 11.
[14:32]She said, why don't you go on YouTube
[14:33]and listen to some 11-year-olds talking
[14:35]and then revise?
[14:36]And I was like, thank you so much.
[14:39]So absolutely trying to channel their voices
[14:44]or get their voices right,
[14:46]was a, whatever a result there is,
[14:49]is a community effort for sure
[14:50]or a community effort to ensure that I was listening closely
[14:54]to how kids talk and express themselves and to each other
[14:59]and not just sort of sitting in my own mind
[15:01]fantasizing about a precocious 11-year-old who
[15:04]is never a resentful or.
[15:06]I am now thinking that maybe there's a marketplace
[15:08]for kids who want to get job experience,
[15:11]helping authors who want to perfect their voices.
[15:15]You could search by age and just like,
[15:17]have a phone conversation with a kid.
[15:19]Look at that.
[15:20]And the thing was upon reflection pretty troubling
[15:23]how easy it was to go on YouTube and search 11-year-olds,
[15:26]you know.
[15:27]I'm concerned.
[15:30]Oh my gosh.
[15:31]So when you were actually doing the writing,
[15:34]obviously you did a lot of research
[15:35]to make sure everything was just right.
[15:37]Did you have the whole format outline?
[15:40]Did you have the different people in the community?
[15:42]Like, how did you outline or did the characters
[15:47]just come to you?
[15:48]What was the driving force of starting the story
[15:52]versus how it ended up?
[15:54]That was a lot of questions, but.
[15:56]I love all of those questions.
[15:58]I tried to make as many decisions as possible
[16:01]about the book and the structure of the book
[16:04]and the sort of arc of the book prior to starting writing.
[16:07]I mentioned that I previously been working on a manuscript
[16:11]and that manuscript, I kind of started with a feeling
[16:16]and a tone and a setting and not a story at all really.
[16:21]And I thought, as I work on it,
[16:23]I'm going to come into the story.
[16:24]I'm going to learn what the story is.
[16:26]And seven years later, I realized not the case,
[16:30]actually, for me, that process,
[16:32]at least with that project, didn't give me clarity,
[16:34]the more I worked on it.
[16:36]I kind of stayed in the same place where I'd started
[16:39]of having a feeling and no concrete decisions around that.
[16:44]So when I started this project,
[16:46]I wanted to approach it differently.
[16:49]I wanted to make some really strategic choices around
[16:54]its structure, who would be speaking in why,
[16:56]what information would be conveyed in each chapter,
[16:58]what the point was, I wanted to have an elevator pitch,
[17:00]which I still practice now, I say,
[17:02]oh, the book is about two girls who go missing
[17:06]in the Russian Far East and how that affects the people around them.
[17:09]Two girls who go missing in this remote,
[17:10]Russian community and how that affects people around them.
[17:12]Over and over, I would say this to myself
[17:15]to try to focus on what the book is about.
[17:18]And certainly from the start, I thought,
[17:21]okay, it's going to be over the course of year.
[17:23]Each chapter is a different month.
[17:25]Each focus character is a woman or girl in the community.
[17:29]I really wanted to sort of approach it
[17:31]with as many decisions made as possible.
[17:34]As I got to the end of the writing process,
[17:37]I spent the last six months outlining even more,
[17:42]heavily, I already had,
[17:43]I was a couple drafts in at that point or a few drafts in
[17:46]and yet went back and re-outlined all of the chapters
[17:50]and the whole project to try to get more clarity.
[17:53]And I found that every decision I made,
[17:56]every conscious decision I could make
[17:57]really helped the work for me.
[18:00]And I find now as I approach new projects,
[18:04]as much outlining as I can do an advance
[18:06]helps me a lot, helps me a lot.
[18:10]And then once you sit down to tackle the actual writing,
[18:13]where is like your happy place for writing?
[18:15]Where do you prefer to write when you can?
[18:18]What do you, do you have any traditions
[18:21]or superstitions when you're writing?
[18:23]Like, just what does that process look like for you?
[18:26]Let's see, I don't have a desk.
[18:28]So I write in bed or on the couch.
[18:31]I hand write my first drafts.
[18:33]That helps me a lot.
[18:34]That's a superstition for sure
[18:36]because I find writing on the computer
[18:40]to be a little bit more.
[18:41]I can see, I pay more attention to what I'm doing
[18:43]in some way and it is more tempting to delete
[18:46]or to go back or I'm a big fan of drafting over
[18:49]and over and over again.
[18:50]So to just get out that first draft really fast
[18:53]and messy is helpful for me to do by hand.
[18:57]But these things I'm still especially, you know,
[18:59]a few months into being inside my apartment walls all the time.
[19:04]It is, I've been thinking about what a happy writing place
[19:07]looks like and what a productive writing place looks like.
[19:10]And I think how much I've taken from changing my setting
[19:14]before and being on the subway or walking around
[19:16]or having things sort of pop into your head,
[19:19]I've been missing that and I wonder
[19:21]if it is less a specific place
[19:23]and maybe more a sort of state of mind
[19:26]or a feeling of movement or engagement with the world
[19:29]that helps me a lot.
[19:31]I don't know.
[19:32]So still figuring it out, I guess, is it in?
[19:34]Have you been able to do any writing during the quarantine?
[19:37]I've been doing some writing during the quarantine.
[19:39]I've been really motivated and inspired and blown away
[19:44]by some friends who have put together
[19:46]different accountability groups.
[19:47]So like every day, morning writing session
[19:51]or once a week like free writing session together
[19:54]or weekly check-ins, that's been really incredible.
[19:58]That being said, as.
[20:00]You mentioned I'm pregnant like as I get more and more pregnant.
[20:03]I do feel that the fetus is like sucking all desire to move.
[20:08]That's been very, very unaccountable these days.
[20:14]I think you have every excuse in the book.
[20:16]I love what you're saying because that's what I tell myself in my head as I get very
[20:20]behind on the things that you should be doing.
[20:22]Now your body is actually doing like a zillion different things right now that you just
[20:27]can't put your finger on to build another human being.
[20:29]So I feel like if you want to take a week to just let your body do its thing, you know,
[20:33]the work will fall out.
[20:34]It's not like you're getting into the writing world for the past week where I've done
[20:38]nothing.
[20:39]Nothing.
[20:40]Well, you've done a lot.
[20:41]It's just maybe you haven't gotten it on the page.
[20:43]I haven't gotten it on the page.
[20:45]But that's okay.
[20:46]There's plenty of time.
[20:48]Maybe last time once you have a child, but different kind of time.
[20:53]What was it like when you sold your book?
[20:55]What was that moment like after all this time and effort and work and then you sold
[20:59]it?
[21:00]What was that feeling like?
[21:01]What was that experience like?
[21:02]It was the most miraculous experience of my whole life.
[21:06]And it really, that feeling really started when I got my agent.
[21:11]I, with the previous manuscript I worked on, I'd created 100 agents and I was very focused
[21:17]on the agent hurdle and spent a lot of time thinking about approaching agents as I was
[21:22]working on this book.
[21:23]A lot of the sort of strategic decisions I was making from the start were around how can
[21:28]I better, you know, it's important to me to have an elevator pitch because it's also
[21:32]important to put them in a query letter like I was sort of thinking about how I can better
[21:35]position myself in the future for developing a relationship with an agent.
[21:39]I hoped one day.
[21:41]And the experience of my agent taking this book on, I will never forget where I was.
[21:49]I'll never forget how it felt.
[21:51]It was like a total.
[21:53]It was like the moment when dream and reality met, you know, I just felt like I passed
[21:58]out of my real life and went into the life I had fantasized about it was so I just couldn't,
[22:04]I screamed, like jumped up and down, I couldn't handle it.
[22:09]And everything after that felt miraculous in such the same way, you know, it was like
[22:15]such, it felt like my agent had opened the door and let me into the life that I had dreamed
[22:21]about and it all felt like a dream and it still feels like a dream.
[22:27]I actually, I realized that after a few months on social media as I was promoting the
[22:33]book as it came out, I realized that I kept using that language over and over and I kept
[22:38]saying, this is like a dream, this is so like a dream, this is dream come true, this is such
[22:41]a dream.
[22:42]And I was trying to get a bit disturbing that I was sort of saying, like, help me.
[22:46]I totally disconnected from any sense of reality, but certainly a lot of, a lot of dreams
[22:56]of my life have come true and that has been bewildering and magical and does feel impossible.
[23:03]That's so nice.
[23:05]And by the way, if I were your agent right now hearing this, I hope that whoever it is, she
[23:09]is listening to this.
[23:11]I would be like swooning that is so nice, I mean, I love her and I tell her every
[23:16]second.
[23:17]I'm sure she knows.
[23:18]Dan's like, you're pretty expressive, but still, do you have any advice for aspiring
[23:25]authors?
[23:26]Yeah, I do.
[23:27]And I don't think my first advice, I guess, would be to be patient with how you
[23:31]heard this before because it is not, it's not outrageously novel, but my three go-to pieces
[23:36]of advice are three things that I tell myself over and over and over again and keep forgetting
[23:42]to act on sometimes.
[23:43]And upon reflection, I think if I just do those things more, things would be better,
[23:48]which is right as much as possible, read as much as possible and build a community or embed
[23:54]yourself in a creative community, writing as much as possible just to practice and lower
[23:59]your own inhibitions and sort of un-paralize yourself and see what works.
[24:04]Reading is the best possible education and writing, I think, for which there is no equivalent.
[24:09]community, it seems like, I mean, my book is so much about community I keep on talking
[24:15]about, but to be able to connect to other people and learn from them, learn from their work,
[24:22]cheer them on, be in communication with them about what they're working on, to be part
[24:28]of a creative team, and that can be in person or it can be online or it can be on Twitter.
[24:33]It can be just to connect with other people in this pursuit of something that is, as
[24:39]you've said, it can be very isolating and is so personal and so strange, this channel
[24:45]that you're trying to tap into of creativity in yourself.
[24:48]It's such a bizarre thing and to connect with other people through that is really the most
[24:54]beautiful and helpful in inspiring activity you can do it.
[24:58]It motivates your work and it makes it much better, in my opinion, earn my experience
[25:03]for sure.
[25:04]That's the only person I was asking, so you know, it's all of you here from right now.
[25:09]Not only about it, yeah, I mean, who else?
[25:12]Not in my little square.
[25:14]I actually listened to your book instead of reading it, usually I read, but I downloaded
[25:19]it and listened to it over a series of trying to actually get out of my house and run
[25:23]and walk and all the rest.
[25:25]When you have your baby, God willing everything is great and you go one day on a walk
[25:31]with the baby when everybody is out of the oven, I want you to go back and listen to
[25:36]the first chapter, where you're going to be filled with this sense of panic that I was
[25:42]filled with anxiety.
[25:45]So anyway, that's my little assignment for you at post post post post post.
[25:51]My writing group that helped me so much with this book, I remember very well a woman in
[25:57]my writing group reading it.
[25:58]She had at the time, her two kids were just about the same ages as the two sisters who
[26:03]got missing and she came to the group and she slid the papers across the table and she
[26:07]was like, I think your first chapter is pretty effective.
[26:10]I will not read anymore of this book, and I don't think it's so much possible to be
[26:16]back.
[26:17]Thank you.
[26:18]All right.
[26:19]Well, when you do that, you have to like DM me or something.
[26:21]Well, thank you, Julia.
[26:24]Thanks for being a part of this conversation for the young lion and your public library.
[26:29]And all the rest.
[26:31]So and congratulations on your nomination and all of your success.
[26:35]Well, these are just me.
[26:36]I, this was so wonderful to get to be in conversation with you.
[26:38]And thank you so much to your public library.
[26:40]One of the best places, if not the best place in the entire world.
[26:43]Thank you.
[26:46]Thanks so much to firstbook.org for sponsoring this Labor Day book last.
[26:51]Please consider giving to firstbook.org to help their network of 475,000 educators serving
[26:57]children in need.
[26:58]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[27:02]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at ziby Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[27:06]Books.
[27:07]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[27:11]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[27:13]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[27:18]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.