Zoje Stage, GETAWAY

[1:19]Zibby Owens: This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time to Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Zoe Staj is the author of Getaway. She is The USA Today and internationally bestselling author also of Baby Teeth and Wonderland. A former filmmaker with a penchant for the dark and suspenseful. She lives in Pittsburgh. Welcome, Zoya. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Getaway. Thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure. By the way, I thought the funniest part of this book was when the three women were all, you know, hiking, obviously, in the Grand Canyon, and they have a conversation about writing books. And Imogen is saying sometimes books aren't about the writing. It can be a completely different kind of book. This is your life, your words. I'm sure it'll do really well. And she says, If I can write it, it's probably the most daunting thing I've tried to do. Except for this, Beck offered, You might be relieved after this to get home and only have to write a book, which is brilliant and so funny. So can you tell listeners what Getaway is about? Sure.

[2:51]Zoje Stage: So Getaway is about sisters Imogen and Beck and their friend from high school Tilda. And they've all been friends for twenty years or so, except that Tilda and Imogen have some issues between them, some things that have come between them and their relationship is estranged. And Imogen has also recently gone through some sort of traumatic experiences. So Beck, her sister has this idea that she'll take all of them to the Grand Canyon for a seven day backpacking trip. And that will be the perfect environment for them to work their stuff out and sort of get their lives back together. And then very soon after their trip starts, Imogen starts seeing and experiencing things that get her worried. Her sister Beck thinks, Oh, well, this is just Imogen being paranoid because she has these issues. But then at some point, things start to happen that make it very clear that no, something is happening. There is perhaps someone there whose presence is going to imperil their trip. And I don't want to say too much more about it because I think it's nice to experience it as it unfolds and not know

[4:01]Zibby Owens: quite what's going to happen. This book is like why I don't like to go hiking, basically. This is like every fear I have of hiking comes true in this book. I feel like you should talk to have you read Claire Nelson's book? It's her memoir. What was it called? Something like how fear of falling or something. It's about how she falls off a cliff and had to live by herself in Joshua Tree for three days. I have not read that. That sounds very interesting. Yeah. Feel like the two of you would be good in conversation. Maybe if you ever want to do that or have me moderate it, have someone moderate it. You two take that show on the road. Feel like you should talk with the walking sticks and you with your dad not you with your dad, the character with her dad. Imogen, his walking stick going flying and her walking stick. Anyway, I feel like I've been living in the hiking world and I just need to shore up my boots to get going here. But this book starts off interestingly with the shooting, the Pittsburgh shooting in the synagogue. And in the notes, it looks like you're from Pittsburgh and you were Pittsburgh strong, blah. So tell me about your experience of that incident and how you decided to put that real life event as the opening for this novel. Yeah. I live in Squirrel Hill. I'm a native Squirrel Hill resident. I have spent some years outside of Pittsburgh, but whenever I come back to Pittsburgh,

[5:20]Zoje Stage: I live in Squirrel Hill and I bought a house in Squirrel Hill. And the morning that that happened, it just, it was so freaky because had I not had a book event that day, I would not have turned on the news. But it's like I was getting ready to go to a book event. I was going to have something to eat. So I turned on the news and was absolutely shocked to find my neighborhood on the news. At that time, they were telling everybody to stay inside. And I started messaging online because that's what you do. I go out to Twitter. Oh my God, there's a shooter in my neighborhood and everyone's like, stay away from the windows. And had no idea what was going happen. And my sister was driving to my apartment to pick me up. And of course, I'm like freaking out. I didn't know where she was going to be outside. We didn't know where the shooter was. So for something like that to happen in such a small, close neighborhood, it was really traumatizing for this neighborhood. And it was very hard to get over it. It's not something you really get over. And to this day, I was walking up the street just a couple of days ago and we still have these crocheted Stars of David that people sent from all over the country. And they're still hanging on some of the trees and on some of the parking lots. So there was this constant daily reminder for months and months and months afterwards when I would just walk outside of my apartment and go to the supermarket and it made it even harder to process. It was very hard to just put it behind you. And I think that's how it found its way into my book because it was still so present in my mind. I process the world by writing. So for me, it's like, okay, well, let me write about someone else's experience of this and it will help me kind of process it for myself. And I think it did help honestly.

[7:14]Zibby Owens: Wow. I mean, one of the I'm so sorry that that's happened and that that's your tone. I mean, I was horrified when it happened to begin with, obviously. And I remember writing about it that night. I was like in the I would gone to a bat mitzvah that day, and, you know, it was such a meaningful emotional moment to sort of be surrounded, hearing all the, you know, the Hebrew and knowing that this had just happened. Anyway, so I'm terribly sorry. But what you said, or no, I keep saying you, Imogen. When we talk about Imogen in the book, the fact that it's in her neighborhood, she feels like she can't get past it. What you're basically saying now is just like, she can't like drive another direction and forget about it. Honestly, I feel like that's happening a lot now with COVID, honestly. I mean, like my husband lost his mother and, you know, it's not like he can get away from COVID news, right? It's everybody's talking about every news thing, everything. So I feel like in some of these traumatic situations that are also shared by so many others and become national things, it makes the individual experience somehow like just that much harder to get over and to cope with.

[8:22]Zoje Stage: It does. I mean, on the one hand, you might think, Oh, well, we're all in this together. Maybe there would be some sense of his shared experience and his comradery, but and there's also like, Oh my goodness, we're all going through it. Are we all going to get out of it? Cause I very much have that with the pandemic experience too. My mom died of COVID. So it's actually like sort of traumatizing to see this big surge of hospitalizations and deaths again. Just think, mom would have killed for a vaccine. It's like this shouldn't be happening. We live in such a strange time and I don't want to make your podcast a downer, but there's definitely this kind of national trauma. I really do feel like we are going through this collective traumatic experience and hopefully eventually all of us can figure out some way to recover from this. I hope be better on the other side somehow.

[9:22]Zibby Owens: That's always my hope. I'm so sorry about your mom. Thank you. You can trade horrific stories later off the podcast if you want to go down that road again. But it's true. I feel like everybody is and the uncertainty, of course, the fact that the numb I just can't believe it's all starting I I don't anyway, that's why I keep like, I'm looking down. I'm just gonna look down. I'm gonna do my podcast and then go through life because, I mean, ultimately, who knows what life's ever gonna bring, but this just feels like such a crazy thing. You can only control your own life and what you do and manage yourself. I was just talking about this to a friend yesterday, and I know she was so worried about the what ifs. But,

[10:01]Zoje Stage: you know, tomorrow wasn't here. We just have today and today we're fine. We're okay today. So we'll make today work. Exactly. I know somebody was asking me about something in October.

[10:12]Zibby Owens: Like, I need, you know, I need to to, like, lock this in in October. I'm like, October is like a lifetime away in today's world. You know what mean? Like, let me get to it's only August. Let me get out of this month. Let me just see. You never know. Anyway, so that leads your characters to go on this sort of massive effort to cope, right, to really work through. And it wasn't even just this trauma from the beginning, but the thing which had happened also to Imogen and things they don't want to talk about and that had interwoven all of their stories and the loss that they'd all had together and the fractured family life that bonded them to begin with. And now here they are, and it's like the ultimate in what you can't control, right? They literally can't do anything. It's like the whole novel sort of speaks to that sense of you can be as prepared as you want and you can pack the backpacks and take pictures of the detritus by your feet and whatever, and yet things still are going to happen where you find yourself completely adrift. And yet you can make it through with your own sort of mind and cleverness and all the rest. So I don't know. I felt like that was the lesson of the book for me.

[11:25]Zoje Stage: I think that's a good lesson. I mean, think when people hear about what the book is and they might think, oh, it's some adventure thriller and it's action packed, but it's really much more internal than that. I mean, Imogen really has to think her way out of what's happening. She has to try to analyze Tilda because they don't get along as well anymore. And think about her sister's reaction. They don't have all of this time to talk together. So she has to sort of internally process what's happening, analyze the situation and use her cleverness, as you said, and just her creativity and her mental ideas to figure out how can they get out of this situation. So I don't know. Feel like that's a kind of a different approach for this kind of story where it really is like, how does she think her way out of this?

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[14:39]Zibby Owens: But that's great because that's empowering because thinking is the thing that we can all do no matter what, like you can't take that away, like no matter what else Right, right.

[14:47]Zoje Stage: Know what, Imogen refers multiple times about how she's small and she feels like she's not as physically intimidating. You know, her sister's much taller, and Tilda's big and strong. And, you know, Imogen is a very petite person. And so she doesn't feel physically powerful. And I think she hasn't felt even mentally powerful in her life, but it's like, this is her opportunity to take all of the things, the skills she's learned from writing novels and the things she's learned from studying human behavior and figure out how to make this a survivable experience.

[15:21]Zibby Owens: Well, that's great. It's great to put the power back in our control. Sort of like, take back the canyon or something. Also, I really loved Beck's wife as a character. And I feel like I wanted to see I'll just be your editor. I wanted to see more of that character. So if you do some sort of spin off or something, I feel like there's a whole story behind her too that you sort of dip into a little, but I don't know. I feel like you could

[15:53]Zoje Stage: do something more if you wanted to. I think that's important, you know, to have, like, secondary characters that still seem like they're just as important as the main characters. They're just they're not in those scenes. But, yeah, Afiya's off living her life and doing her thing while they're in the canyon, but she's just as real of a person. Yep. And tell me a little I know, obviously, this happened in the synagogue as your opening, but there was some sort of spirituality Judaism sort of woven in at different parts in the story.

[16:21]Zibby Owens: What is your philosophy on that? There was sort of like the half Jewish, what does that even mean and all of that. Are you half Jewish? Like, you don't have to talk about it or what? I'm just wondering about all that.

[16:31]Zoje Stage: Yeah, I am. Honestly, there's a lot of ways in which I'm very similar to Imogen. I mean, it's kind of funny, like a lot of really superficial ways. We're both writers, we're very reclusive, we're both petite. Yes, we are both half Jewish. As I said, I process my life through writing and that was definitely something that I had been exploring more of in the last couple of years. I did feel very out of place when I was a child. I did not feel Jewish enough when I was with the Jewish side of my family or even in my neighborhood, which is very Jewish. I did not feel fully accepted by my dad's side of the family. And the whole idea of organized religion was kind of confusing to me. I felt like I was a very spiritual person, but I couldn't figure out where that fit in. So by having Imogen explore that, I got to think about some of those things too. And there are definitely ideas. And a lot of the things that she expressed in the book about what she decides it means to be Jewish. Like I definitely, I feel that way. And I'm very attracted to those ideas, you know, that God or an empowering force can be anything and you can change it from day to day if that's the way your feelings for it go. And I really like some of those ideas and the idea, which I don't think I'm giving anything away by saying this, that she expresses later of, you know, this idea that some people have about heaven and hell. She says, you have to live for this place for here and now. And it's what happens here that counts. So

[18:06]Zibby Owens: I believe that very much too. I think I dug eared that. I think I dog eared it. Let me see if well, this is sort of well, this is not totally related, but it is Jewish theme, so I can bring up now. Maybe this was it. Well, anyway, you had this is how Imogen is feeling about Gale. And she's saying she'd wanted to believe in a goodness in him that wasn't there. Anne Frank had done that, but believing that people are really good at heart hadn't kept her from dying at Bergen Belsen. Imogen often thought of young Anne and the tragic irony that her physical life had expired, but the fragile pages she'd written in pencil lived on. How had Imogen been willing for so long to accept the microscopic degrees of Gail's humanity? Things had gone so far because she was weak. Anyway, it's true. And then the next page you had said, let's see, in Judaism. Yeah, here it is. Good. I did get it. Gail appeared to be waiting for her to continue, so she did. In Judaism, it's about what you do with this life, the one you're living. This is the only life that counts. Yeah. Check less for me, Okay, I'm getting the I'll put that down now. No, I agree with that. I'm Jewish myself and I always feel this intense pressure to get the most out of every day because this is it, this sort of it, race to the finish, what can you do? And I'm like, I have all these ideas I want to do and I just hope I don't die. I just need to get them in. Somebody I was chatting with was like, What? I don't think about that ever. And I was like, oh no, I think about life every day, all the time. That's my motivating thing. I think that's a great thing though, because

[19:44]Zoje Stage: it is true. We have no guarantee of tomorrow. You can't live for another time or another day or another experience. Know, it's got to do everything you can today that feels like what you want to do. Yeah. I mean, while putting some things in the calendar, I guess, for October with the question. Perhaps. Yes, I do use the calendar, you know, and I hope that all of this comes to fruition, but you never know. You never know. So

[20:09]Zibby Owens: what is coming next for you? Are you working on another book or what's

[20:13]Zoje Stage: in the cards? I do. I just finished the first draft of a new book. I don't think I can really talk about it yet. I just showed it to my agents and I'm talking to my agents about it tomorrow. I'm pretty sure they like it, but like, it's so new. I don't even know how to describe it. It's very psychological. Then the other project that I will have out, I think in spring twenty twenty two, I will be publishing my first novella. And it's going to be, I guess a little bit off brand for me. It's not suspense or psychological in that way. It's a dark fairy tale and it definitely, it works as a parable. So, on the surface, it's a story about this young girl who keeps growing and growing and growing, and she grows into a giant and her father and the doctors are so worried about her and they're trying to concoct some sort of treatment to help her. She's terrified of their treatment. So she runs away and it's the journey of her discovering who she really is. So it's very much a fairy tale, but it's in my mind, it serves as a parable for how patriarchy treats the female body of always having an opinion on it, always needing to be involved in what's happening and just making girls and young women feel a certain way about who they should be and what they should be. Here she is very different than what's considered normal and acceptable. So And she's trying to figure out how she fits in with that. So it's a little different from me, but still kind of dark and a little bit whimsical.

[21:50]Zibby Owens: Interesting. So this is the petite wanting to be tall situation replaying itself in this terrible I'm not really happy being petite now. Oh, how tall are you? I'm five I'm five foot one. Okay. I'm five foot one. I'm five foot two. So I'm like a giant in this conversation. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Okay, so what advice would you have for aspiring authors?

[22:15]Zoje Stage: Oh gosh, you know, that's tricky because I think the advice would vary depending on where you were in the process, whether you were writing your first book or whether you were seeking publication or whether you were about to be published for the first time, there's a go with the flow kind of thing that happens for sure. There's a stick to it and don't give up thing that needs to happen for sure. And one of my other life philosophy is has to do with this idea of balance and opposition. That good things don't exist without bad things and the darkness doesn't exist without the light, etcetera. So I know people very much think of getting published as a dream job, and it is a dream job, but as with anything, it has its ups and downs too. And I think sometimes writers get a little discouraged because of things that happen that are beyond their control, but there are just ups and downs. It's just the way it is. And I think if people can just understand that you're going to encounter a balance of things that are good and things that aren't as good, and just be prepared to roll with that. Hopefully it won't be as disappointing when you have some setbacks.

[23:26]Zibby Owens: That's great advice. That's great life advice as well. From the woman who just took us all through the Grand Canyon for hundreds of pages. Thank you very much. Amazing. All right. Well, thank you so much. This has been so much fun and interesting and all the things. So thank you for sharing Getaway. And I'm excited for this to come out in the world. And I still have not been convinced to hike, but that's okay, because now I'm leaving this conversation feeling very tall and hopefully clever.

[24:00]Zoje Stage: Just feel that you've been there and maybe that's enough. That's enough. That was great. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been fun. Okay. A great day. Bye. You too.

[24:13]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also, sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.