Ilona Bannister, WHEN I RAN AWAY
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[1:25]Alana Banister is the author of When I Ran Away, a novel.
[1:28]Alana grew up on Staten Island and lived in New York City, until she married a Brit and moved to London.
[1:33]A dual-qualified U.S. attorney and UK solicitor, she practiced immigration law in the UK before taking a career break to raise her two young sons
[1:42]and unexpectedly found herself writing fiction.
[1:45]When I ran away is her first novel.
[1:47]Welcome, Alana. Thank you so much for coming on Monster Time to read books.
[1:52]As I just said to you before we had a technical issue, so I'll just say again now, your book had the most amazing depiction
[2:01]and emotional expression of what happened over 9-11 of anything I've ever read in any form, you know, article book, anything, fiction, nonfiction.
[2:11]So I'm so curious as to how you ended up writing this book and your own experience with 9-11 and how this became the underpinning of the story.
[2:20]So life story, please.
[2:23]So I fell into writing.
[2:25]I had never planned to be a writer.
[2:27]I didn't know that I was going to write a book.
[2:28]I was a lawyer and I really loved it, but after having to really traumatic sea sections with my sons,
[2:36]I found that I just was not the same person.
[2:38]I wasn't functioning the same way.
[2:40]I always suffered with anxiety, but after these two traumas, I found myself being quite phobic and just having a really tough time.
[2:48]So I had to step away from my career.
[2:50]After about three years and I felt ready to go back to work, I would interview and I just kept not getting the job.
[2:57]I was told it was a really good candidate and experienced, but I would talk about meeting flexibility at work because I had young children.
[3:03]I would ask about the policies for school events and I was always second place and that was really demoralizing.
[3:09]My husband suggested that I look into writing.
[3:12]So I did sort of have heartedly looked at some writing courses.
[3:15]I found the favorite academy work in progress course.
[3:18]So I just sort of, I had a few pages.
[3:21]I had an idea of GG.
[3:22]I just sort of threw it in.
[3:23]I didn't know that I was going to get a place.
[3:26]The week that I got a place on the course, I also got a job offer.
[3:30]My husband and I sat down and we did the math and disappointingly realized that the price of readmission to my career meant that we would only be breaking even on childcare with the new salary
[3:42]that I was getting and I think that's something a lot of women come up against when they try to go back to the workplace and that's also very disheartening.
[3:49]So we decided to take a risk.
[3:51]We agreed that I would do this course for a year.
[3:54]If I had a book at the end of it, amazing, great.
[3:57]I would pursue it.
[3:58]If I didn't or if I had a book that wasn't any good, that would be okay too because at least I would have something interesting to talk about a job interview.
[4:06]I could show that I could work and have kids and do this kind of thing independently.
[4:11]And I would still have a book, maybe no one would read it, but I'd have a book.
[4:15]So we took that risk.
[4:17]I spent the year writing and taking care of the kids and at the end of the year, this is what I had.
[4:23]It was lacking structure, but it was definitely there.
[4:26]So we decided that we were going to go for it.
[4:28]It's very much a team effort in me and my husband.
[4:30]Wow.
[4:31]I'm like, astounded that this lark of like, I've never written before and now all of a sudden you have this fantastic novel.
[4:39]I'm like, oh my gosh, all the people who spend so long toiling their entire lives and can't produce or try to produce something, but obviously you had all these thoughts and think in your head already.
[4:52]I feel like anyone with an anxiety disorder of any kind should just be handed like a pages word document and just be like, here you go.
[5:01]Just start and you will have a book in a year if you just share with us what's going on in your head.
[5:07]And I discovered that the writing was helping me process everything that had happened.
[5:12]I didn't know that I needed that that's what I needed to do.
[5:15]And I hope it was it was a lucky discovery that this was really where I needed to put my energy and it would help me to recover myself.
[5:22]Can we back up to the C sections?
[5:25]Is it you don't have to go into it if you don't want, but I've had three C sections myself.
[5:30]So I'm curious as to what happened.
[5:33]So with my first son, it was just an emergency C section.
[5:37]It wasn't as traumatic as with my second son.
[5:39]She was just, it was just one of those situations that his head wouldn't turn.
[5:44]It couldn't dilate and that's what had to happen.
[5:46]It was just a very exhausting long labor.
[5:48]I think I was in labor with him for three days.
[5:50]So oh my gosh, yeah.
[5:52]So by the time we actually got to that point, I was truly exhausted.
[5:56]And so very fragile.
[5:58]So my second son, having had that initial experience of my second son, I was really desperate for things to be different.
[6:05]I really wanted to experience it differently.
[6:06]I had really high hopes, but it was a difficult pregnancy from the very beginning.
[6:11]And I had been encouraged to do a V back, which is vaginal birth after I was a Zarian, but it didn't work out that way.
[6:19]And it ended up being an even stronger emergency than the first time.
[6:24]And in that situation, there were other things that happened that made me feel really out of control very frightened.
[6:30]And as a result, quite disconnected for those initial days, because it was the second time in two years that things had just gone terribly wrong.
[6:40]Now both my sons were fine, physically fine, and I was eventually physically fine.
[6:46]But I think it was we're a person with anxiety who has issues with control to have all control taken in that way in such frightening circumstances that are a matter of life and death.
[6:58]My threshold for what I could handle as a person.
[7:01]I think had been reached.
[7:02]So yeah, that's that's what happened.
[7:05]You know, there's not really enough.
[7:07]There's so much written about new motherhood, right, but what you're describing happens to a lot of people and is a serious thing.
[7:15]And people don't often reflect on it because there's so swooped up in the newborn life, right, that there's not enough like, you know, at this horrible thing happened to me.
[7:25]If this was a, you know, appendectomy or something else.
[7:30]Exactly.
[7:31]And it's, it's major, major surgery and it's the only major surgery in which you are then handed a baby and not told to stay in bed and not resting and not given time to a group of thrown directly into caring for a newborn.
[7:46]And it's, I think the mother often gets overlooked and the mother overlooks herself, because naturally, of course, we all gravitate toward making sure that newborn is okay, but as we all know, a baby is not okay if the mother is not okay.
[8:00]That's something that I think when I was looking back in retrospect, and I was writing this book, it was really important for me to get that message across that it is a life changing event that you do not just go back to the pre baby you.
[8:13]That person doesn't exist anymore parts of her do, but this constant message that we get about fitting into the pre baby clothes and going back to your career and.
[8:23]Going back as though nothing has happened to you something massive has happened to you, and that is whether you're an adopted parent or how child by surrogacy or how to birth or see section or natural whatever it is, it is life changing and we should not be expected to go back to who we were.
[8:38]I know you wrote about motherhood and all of its forms and, you know, the need to kind of lock yourself in a random hotel with just all it in your hand and all of that, which I'm sure everybody has wanted to do at some point or another.
[8:52]You've written it in this book when I ran away with you in fiction, but not to say you even want to do any sort of memoir writing or whatever, but I think it would be so interesting to read your experience of what you were just talking about like that sounds like something.
[9:07]I would want to read and I know about a lot of other moms would relate to so anyway, whatever, or maybe you already have or maybe it's too private but i'll leave this topic alone just to say that it's I find it fascinating and i'm sorry you went through all of this, I really am okay back to the book.
[9:23]So, with all of that as back story, how did you, why 9-11 let's start with that.
[9:30]Okay, partly it was to do is when I first started trying to write, I clearly remember the first day when my son was nothing and I sat down and I thought okay let's see if my husband's right let's see if I can write something not as the first thing that came out my memories of that day.
[9:46]I worked at a non-profit organization on Wall Street so we were very close to the twin towers, my building was evacuated, I was with a friend and I saw the towers burning and I was part of that massive wave of people.
[10:00]that were fleeing downtown and going toward the water
[10:02]toward the Staten Island, sorry.
[10:04]So obviously for any New Yorker who was there that day,
[10:08]anyone born in New York, that also was a life-changing event.
[10:12]I did not lose anyone in my family,
[10:14]but I think the sense of collective grief
[10:16]that we all felt at that time
[10:18]for a very long time was still very palpable for me.
[10:22]It still is.
[10:23]I know it is for many people.
[10:25]And when I started writing the book
[10:27]and I knew that Gigi was going to be a New Yorker,
[10:30]I also feel like you can't really write a New Yorker
[10:32]unless you talk about how they feel about that day
[10:36]or where they were on that day
[10:37]or how that day affected them.
[10:39]Because New York has this interesting New York
[10:41]as a character in itself, isn't it?
[10:42]It's a very special city in that way
[10:44]and that it has its own personality.
[10:46]And when you're from there, it inhabits you
[10:48]and you inhabit it.
[10:50]So when this loss happened, it did feel like a loss
[10:53]in my own family.
[10:54]I think it felt that way for many people
[10:56]because it was so devastating.
[10:58]So I wanted to pay tribute to that.
[11:01]I love New York.
[11:02]I miss living in New York.
[11:03]I wanted to pay homage to that and respect to that.
[11:07]I also noticed that as time goes by
[11:09]we're approaching the 20th anniversary.
[11:11]We still acknowledge the day,
[11:12]but we hear about it less and less,
[11:14]which is just a normal part of history.
[11:17]But I felt like it was just,
[11:20]it was a part of me, it's a part of anyone from New York.
[11:23]And I felt like it couldn't really write Gigi
[11:26]unless we knew how she felt about it and where she was.
[11:30]I also thought that I was on the Staten Island
[11:32]for that day with my friend,
[11:34]the water rescue that happened that day.
[11:36]I don't know if people know so much about it,
[11:38]but there were so many boats that came right there
[11:42]to the edge of Manhattan to literally take people off
[11:45]of the edge of Manhattan to rescue them.
[11:48]Talk about sailboats, water taxis, Staten Island ferry,
[11:52]any boat that was in the harbor came there to rescue people.
[11:55]And we don't see too many images of that.
[11:57]And that's a story that's gotten lost a bit,
[11:59]but it's really extraordinary,
[12:00]the bravery of the people who came to do the rescues
[12:04]of the Staten Island ferry captains
[12:05]who kept going back and forth to take people.
[12:08]So I also thought that was an aspect of 9-11
[12:11]that it would be nice to acknowledge.
[12:13]And also as a, you know, I'm from Staten Island
[12:15]is a tribute to my hometown as well.
[12:17]Wow.
[12:18]I know as I said at the beginning,
[12:19]I really, it was like, I wonder if she's gonna be talking
[12:22]in that perfectly coined accent that you have.
[12:26]Perfect.
[12:27]Even when you're like, axed versus asked
[12:29]and how like the character in the book
[12:31]has to like, GG has to be trained to not speak like that.
[12:34]And gosh, well, the image of the boats
[12:37]pulling into the harbor that day
[12:38]that just gives me the chills hearing you talk about it.
[12:41]There's so much not discussed.
[12:42]There's so many images that have become iconic
[12:45]and so many things that we do see
[12:46]replayed over and over.
[12:47]And yet all the individual experiences
[12:50]are not always in the forefront at all.
[12:52]Even like some of the details you put in about Harry's shoes
[12:58]and how the little dots in the wing tip
[13:00]of his nice work shoes were filled in with ash.
[13:03]I mean, things like that just wow.
[13:05]And the papers flying outside the office
[13:08]would know where you're working.
[13:09]Did that really happen?
[13:10]Were you watching the papers fly?
[13:12]Yes.
[13:13]So I was in my office early that day
[13:15]and I saw, before I heard anything,
[13:19]I just saw paper fly.
[13:21]And I was up on the 8th of the 10th floor.
[13:24]There was paper flying.
[13:26]And it was really unusual.
[13:27]You often know the alley is between buildings downtown
[13:30]or so narrow.
[13:31]You often see random things fly up in the air.
[13:34]But this was, that was how I knew something big had happened
[13:38]because it was so unusual.
[13:40]And I think there are millions of people
[13:43]who have millions of stories like that
[13:45]who when they see something even now 20 years later,
[13:48]they will, I'm sure they will see something.
[13:50]And it will remind them of that day.
[13:51]I think we all carry that with us.
[13:53]So that's where a lot of those images came from.
[13:57]Wow.
[13:58]Well, I'm a lifelong New Yorker.
[14:00]And I was not in New York that day
[14:02]because I had just started business school.
[14:04]But my best friend was still in New York
[14:06]who I had lived with before I left for business school.
[14:08]And she had worked in one of the towers
[14:09]and died that we don't even know really what happens.
[14:13]So I was very much a part of all of that stuff.
[14:17]And I came back the next day.
[14:19]You know, we were looking for her back
[14:21]when we thought everybody was just missing.
[14:23]And so I've tried to process that day
[14:27]in many ways myself over time.
[14:29]And I've also been giving thought to the 20th anniversary
[14:31]and how I would want to be even personally honor that.
[14:34]Like it's that for me.
[14:36]And I don't want to talk about,
[14:37]this is your book and your show here.
[14:39]But it has made me a completely different person.
[14:41]There was like the before and after.
[14:43]And it's informed everything I do every day, right?
[14:46]Because it's taught me how to live.
[14:48]It's taught me like there's no denying mortality
[14:52]when you're 25 years old and your best friend gets exploded
[14:56]and disappears, right?
[14:58]Like you just things don't go back to normal.
[15:00]So anyway, but I've been searching always
[15:03]for more stories.
[15:06]And Matthew Batchi just wrote a great memoir about it
[15:09]which you should check out called Sway.
[15:11]His dad was in the towers,
[15:12]but he developed like this almost obsession
[15:15]into what happened with his dad.
[15:16]He was really young at the time.
[15:17]But I don't know, there's like,
[15:19]that's another great one I've read recently.
[15:21]But this is like to put it in fiction
[15:23]and then the relationship and the layers of the parents.
[15:26]And then of course the relationship
[15:27]and what happens after and how this affects her whole life.
[15:31]I don't know, it was great.
[15:32]It just, it made me think and, you know,
[15:35]that your characters were developed so well.
[15:36]I love how you not glamorizes the wrong word.
[15:39]But like families from Staten Island
[15:42]don't always get center stage.
[15:45]Certainly not in literary fiction.
[15:47]I just loved it.
[15:48]I love the gold chain and the shirts
[15:51]and the white nikes with the baggy jeans
[15:54]and like just how you really captured
[15:57]what and the laminate, the fake wood on the walls.
[16:01]And you know, I've been to Staten Island.
[16:03]I've hung out in people's homes there.
[16:05]And I don't know, it was just, it was great.
[16:07]So I love all that.
[16:09]Thank you.
[16:10]Staten Island is a very colorful place.
[16:12]It's full of, it's a really vivid place.
[16:15]I think it gets underestimated, you know,
[16:17]with the five boroughs.
[16:18]It's always kind of lasts on the list.
[16:20]You don't get a lot of street cred
[16:21]from being from Staten Island.
[16:23]But I think, I think there's something about it
[16:27]that just really lends itself to really vivid characters
[16:31]because I met a lot of them growing up.
[16:34]And I just think it's a great place to write about.
[16:37]Wow.
[16:37]So once you wrote this, did you write the whole book
[16:41]in the year and then you tried to sell it?
[16:42]Like, what was the publication journey like?
[16:44]No, so at the end of the year,
[16:46]I knew that it needed work,
[16:48]that it wasn't ready to go to agents yet.
[16:51]So my tutor on my course helped me to edit it
[16:53]and help me figure out the structure.
[16:55]It wasn't until the end of that year
[16:57]that I actually figured out the idea of the hotel room
[17:00]as a way of stitching together
[17:01]all of the stuff that I had about Gigi.
[17:03]So after doing some work,
[17:05]I then started sending it out to agents
[17:07]and I just had that long period of time
[17:10]where no one responds to you
[17:12]and nothing's ever gonna happen.
[17:14]And you were like, what did I just do?
[17:15]Just wasted a year of my life.
[17:17]But I gave myself a time limit on finding an agent as well
[17:20]because I knew that I couldn't spend four or five years
[17:25]just writing this book.
[17:25]I couldn't afford to do that.
[17:26]Like, it either had to go or I had to go back to work.
[17:30]But luckily, I did find my agent two weeks before my deadline,
[17:34]which was amazing.
[17:35]And then we worked together on it for a while
[17:38]and she found my publishers.
[17:39]And then we worked on it some more.
[17:41]I mean, definitely for a debut novel,
[17:44]you need to take in all the advice you can
[17:47]from everyone you can and edit and edit.
[17:49]And that's definitely was a big part of the process
[17:52]to get to where we are now.
[17:53]But yeah, and now here it is.
[17:55]Wow.
[17:56]And how do you feel with it out coming in the world?
[17:58]Like, what is that like?
[18:00]I still can't believe it.
[18:01]I mean, I still find it really crazy
[18:04]to see it is a real object that you can hold
[18:08]and that people have and that they're talking about
[18:10]and sending the stuff on Instagram about.
[18:12]And it's a thing out in the world.
[18:14]So it's very exciting.
[18:16]It's scary because sometimes I'm like, oh, wait a second.
[18:19]I just like wrote all this stuff and now everybody knows.
[18:25]But no, it's amazing.
[18:27]I feel really, really lucky that life worked out this way
[18:31]and that I got put on this path because I feel
[18:35]if just feel really fortunate, it's an amazing new career
[18:38]to have.
[18:40]Well, you did a really great job with the character,
[18:43]like particularly with the characters and even Michelle
[18:46]and just all of the, it was, it was, it was great.
[18:51]I really enjoyed it.
[18:52]And it also, I love the issues that it brought up
[18:54]and how it makes you think and feel and the importance of that.
[18:58]I don't know.
[18:59]I just really like it.
[19:00]So what are you working on now now that I've like
[19:02]on your, your praises?
[19:04]What are you working on another novel?
[19:06]Or what are you working on?
[19:07]Yes, actually, yesterday I just wrote the last sentence
[19:11]of my second novel.
[19:12]Oh my gosh, congratulations.
[19:14]That's huge.
[19:16]That, yeah.
[19:17]And, well, yes.
[19:18]And also writing it over this year of lockdown and homeschooling.
[19:24]I, there's, there are large chunks of it
[19:26]that I'm just like, hang on.
[19:27]I don't even remember doing that, but it's there.
[19:30]So that's good.
[19:32]Wow, that it's come together.
[19:34]But that is also a story of motherhood and mental illness
[19:38]and migration, very different characters,
[19:41]but definitely is still exploring what it means
[19:44]to be an outsider, what it means to be a person who's overlooked.
[19:47]I really like writing about people who we don't see
[19:51]or who we choose not to see.
[19:53]I think it's, it's important to get stories like that out there.
[19:56]That sounds amazing.
[19:58]Motherhood, migration, and mental illness.
[20:00]So illness, like sign me up. That's like, that sounds great. And what advice would
[20:07]you have for aspiring authors? Well, I think the biggest thing is to claim your
[20:12]time. It's really important. You don't get paid to write for a really long
[20:17]time, but that does not mean that your work doesn't have value. And if you treat
[20:22]it like a hobby, then people around you will treat it like a hobby. And it will
[20:24]get dismissed. And that's just something that will always be at the bottom of
[20:28]your priority list. But if you say to people in your life, this is my work,
[20:32]and I care about it, and I need to do it, because this is what I'm trying to do,
[20:36]then that's how people will look at it. You know, certainly my kids were
[20:40]three and five. They were never going to turn around and say to me, oh, you know,
[20:44]do you need time off this afternoon to write your book? Because we know it's
[20:48]really important to you like that was never going to happen. I had to take, you
[20:52]know, I had to take the time. So I wrote a five o'clock in the morning. I would
[20:56]write between five and seven a.m. because even though I was exhausted, that
[20:59]was the time I had. So whatever that time is for you, whether that is at midnight
[21:04]or, you know, writing on your phone while you're in the supermarket, whatever it is,
[21:10]take that time because no one's going to give it to you. And I would also say, you
[21:14]share your work. It's I think a lot of writers are introverts. And we get nervous
[21:21]about sharing our work with people, but I think it's so important. I gave my
[21:25]manuscript that to like 20 or 25 friends. Stephen King says you're not supposed
[21:29]to do that, but you know, he's Stephen King. He can, he can do what he wants. But
[21:33]just the feedback, it's really encouraging. And also when people say negative
[21:37]stuff, it's really helpful. Negative comments are what makes your writing better.
[21:41]So don't be afraid to put it out there. Great advice. I love that take, take the
[21:46]time back. Yeah. As if my kids are going to come and be like,
[21:50]you're self mom. Yeah, it's and it's hard to do. It's it's hard, especially, I
[21:56]think for women to do to say no, I need this time, but, but I spent, you know,
[22:02]over the course of this year, all of us locked up in our houses, incredibly
[22:06]difficult to do, but we have to feel it would be a whole
[22:08]another podcast to hear what happened, especially for those of us who value, you
[22:16]know, plans and structure and in control of things and having anxiety. So I
[22:21]am really out of percent. Anyway, but for me, my podcast would have saved my
[22:28]life being able to talk to people and like not feeling completely like isolated
[22:33]and in that feeling. So anyway, so thank you for coming on the show and
[22:37]sorry for the technical issues at the beginning. And it was great to
[22:40]connect and I cannot wait to read your next book. Thank you so much. It's been really
[22:44]great to talk to you. This is really exciting. Thank you. I hope to meet in
[22:47]person someday. Take care.
[22:53]Thanks to Rachel Henna's first sponsoring today's episode. Thanks for listening to
[22:57]this episode of mom's don't have time to read books. Don't forget to follow me
[23:01]on Instagram at ziby Owens and at mom's don't have time to read books. Also
[23:05]sign up for my newsletter at zibyowens.com and sign up for my virtual
[23:09]book club and meet lots of authors on zoom every other week. Thanks so much to
[23:12]Steve and Ryan at texture sound for the sound editing and thank you to
[23:16]morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[23:19]now trim music.