Jacqueline Woodson, THE YEAR WE LEARNED TO FLY
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[2:04]Jacqueline Woodson is the author of the children's book, The Year We Learn to Fly.
[2:09]Jacqueline is the recipient of the 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Anderson Award,
[2:14]the 2018 Astrid Lengren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children's Literacy Legacy Award.
[2:21]And she was the 2018 to 2019 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.
[2:27]Her New York Times best-selling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming won the National Book Award as well as the Coretta Scott King Award,
[2:34]a new berry honor, and the NAACP Image Award.
[2:38]She also wrote the adult books, Read at the Bone, A New York Times Bestseller, and another Brooklyn, a 2016 National Book Award finalist.
[2:46]Her dozens of books, Free Young Readers, include Coretta Scott King Award winner before the ever after.
[2:51]New York Times Best Sellers, The Day You Begin, and Harbor Me, Newberry Honor Winners, Feather, Show Way, and After Too Pock, and Defostor, and The Picture Book, Each Kindness,
[3:01]which won the Jane Adams Children's Book Award.
[3:04]Welcome, Jacqueline. Thank you so much for coming on Moms. Don't have time to read books, to discuss the year we learned to fly, and just so much else. Thank you so much.
[3:12]Thanks, Amy. I'm glad to be here.
[3:14]And this is so nice. I feel like I was so excited the first time I saw you on a little Zoom for the Center for Fiction Board meeting. I was like, oh, this is so nice.
[3:22]And now you haven't even figured square on my Zoom. So there you go. We're like trading up in the world.
[3:26]And then we'll be back on that little square again.
[3:30]So hopefully at some point in real life, we'll have a board meeting.
[3:35]That would be nice.
[3:36]I actually saw you with Kwame Alexander, who had been on my podcast a couple of years ago, when he brought the Kwame bust or whatever.
[3:44]Do you remember the bust?
[3:45]Yes.
[3:46]Yes.
[3:47]I guess I'd anyway.
[3:48]Did he bring it to you?
[3:49]No, no, he brought it to the Center for Fiction. So I grabbed my kids and we went over there and watched, and you were on stage, and there was,
[3:55]I remember the other, anyway, there were like two other people.
[3:58]Yeah, it wasn't Jason. Oh, no, no, no, it was people from Kwame.
[4:02]Yes, in print. So it was probably Lamar and someone.
[4:06]Yeah, don't ask me the names. I would recognize their faces, but anyway.
[4:11]Okay. So the year we learned to fly. Let's talk about this book, which is absolutely beautiful illustrated by Raphael Lopez.
[4:17]Talk about the inspiration for this beautiful children's book.
[4:22]Thank you for asking.
[4:24]Yeah, so, so weird to have it out in the world is weird to have a new book out in the world and to be on this quote unquote book tour.
[4:33]I mean, I'm so happy to be able to be home to not have to leave my family and the dogs and Brooklyn and be able to go out into the quote unquote world, but it's surreal.
[4:44]And I think about when I first started writing the, we learned to fly was before there was even a pandemic.
[4:52]And so it was this idea of writing about escape in the way that even when we're getting punished or, you know, having time out that we still have control over our mind and the places that we can go inside of it.
[5:04]And so, you know, I'm writing and rewriting and then at some point I decided I wanted to revisit Virginia Hamilton's the people could fly, which is retelling African American folk tales.
[5:15]And one of the folk tales in the book is about the history of enslaved people and the idea of them flying back, back across the water to home back to Africa.
[5:25]And I thought, well, what if I took that idea and brought it into the 20th century and, and they, and you know, the, the descendants of those ancestors were a part of this narrative and that became the year we learned to fly.
[5:40]And of course, I'm writing it, of course, we all had to figure out how to fly. We all, you know, suddenly we're in the house with our beloveds and with our children and with our pets and with no place, we could physically go.
[5:53]And, and so I'm, I'm chuckling about it, but at the same time I'm like, it's, you know, careful what you write about.
[6:01]That's so funny because I was so sure when I read it that you had written it during the pandemic. I was like, oh, this is perfect. How helpful is this?
[6:08]No, I couldn't have dreamed this pandemic. I couldn't have dreamed so much of this past, you know, this past year and a half.
[6:18]Oh my gosh.
[6:19]Well, this whole notion of sort of escaping through imagination. I mean, that's really the crux of storytelling and writing to begin with, right. And the, the, what you think about and where you take your mind.
[6:31]Yes, you can just fantasize, but then so many so much of that arrives on the page in some way, shape or form. So it's almost like it's like the pre writing, right.
[6:40]It's like the imaginative stuff before it lands that you're really captivating and encouraging, which is so important.
[6:47]Oh, man, it is especially now. I interviewed Brandon Slocum yesterday and I had been telling, I told him about you on his podcast. He wrote the violin conspiracy. Have you heard of him?
[6:58]Yes, yes.
[6:59]Oh my gosh, I, I feel like you two need to meet and do an event together. I just, I told him, I just told that his publicist is too. Not that this is any of my business, but you know, there were so many similar themes of, of what you do when your circumstances are sort of working against you and how do you cope with that.
[7:16]And one way is to like, yeah, it's the power of your mind and optimism and perseverance and all of that.
[7:23]So his was in the context of, you know, being a black young violinist and having so much opposition, but anyway.
[7:31]He's brilliant too. He's so brilliant. So it's amazing. I can't believe he and I haven't met yet.
[7:38]It's interesting because, you know, my God, we have two huge dogs that I have Koodle have German Shepherd. And so they, you can only see one third of him.
[7:47]But the older one who's four years old, it has been sick and we've been trying to figure out what it is. And, and I'm just like, you know, it's, it's fun.
[7:57]So it'll go away and my partner who's a physician knows these things was like, I think it is something different from that. I'm like, I'm going to do my magical thank you.
[8:07]I am thinking about, oh my goodness, I'm blank your name was the year magical thinking who just passed away.
[8:12]Joan did in and remembering her book, the year magical digging and the death of her husband and all that.
[8:19]I am such a true believer of the power of magical thinking of the power of optimism and how it can be a force.
[8:29]If not changing the situation, at least getting us through it.
[8:33]It's so interesting. I feel like your whole thing is looking up, right, even the cover, you know, they're learning to fly. I think you have the sky and I feel like when I'm in really stressful situations, I do the exact opposite.
[8:46]And I look, I have to look down. Like I feel like if I look up, it makes me too anxious. Like all these things coming.
[8:52]So I'm like, if I just look at what's right on my desk or at my feet or right in front of me, then I can get through whatever this is versus, you know, escaping in some way. I don't know.
[9:03]That's so interesting. I mean, it makes absolute sense that, you know, that moment by moment with getting through stuff, because it is overwhelming when you look out there and see how much more work there is to do.
[9:16]So I find when I'm writing, if I go outside, well, not so much anymore, because I'm my eyes are much better because I had ice surgery, but I used to take off my glasses because I wanted the world to be blurry.
[9:28]I didn't want to have any more stimuli coming toward me. So interesting.
[9:32]I can't really do that now.
[9:34]My eyes are starting to get blurry and I'm trying to ignore it. My husband is being like, go to the eye doctor and I'm like, no, no, no.
[9:40]And then I keep holding my menu like over here. He's like, this is getting embarrassing. You know, it's time. Anyway, I'm holding the phone with the light on it.
[9:49]Yeah, for the menu. Yeah.
[9:51]I was literally at a restaurant, obviously straining too much that the guy like the major D guy like brought me over a lantern. Like I was 85 years old.
[9:59]I'm like, this is.
[10:00]So embarrassing. Anyway, you're gonna brought you over a large prick menu. Yeah, I know. It's
[10:05]yeah, just so bad. Wait, so how did you get here? How did you become a number one best-selling
[10:12]author and national book award winner and like all the stuff Hans Christian Anderson award?
[10:17]Like it's amazing what you've accomplished. Like did you always know when did it start? Like
[10:22]how did you do it? I've known I wanted to be a writer since I was seven. I love the physical
[10:28]act of writing. I loved the scratch of the pencil on paper. I mean, it was so visceral for me
[10:35]that physical act and I love it. And I think of it like a visual artist in terms of watching
[10:42]letters form on the page felt like magic to me that and I didn't know it then but I saw the power
[10:50]in it, right? I saw the power in how when you put a word on the page that word became something and
[10:56]that sentence became something and it wasn't just about me anymore. It spoke to other people
[11:01]who could read it or who I could read it to. Yeah, it's seven. I didn't know any of this,
[11:06]but I felt it. So it was it was more of a feeling and I love telling stories. I got in trouble.
[11:12]I talk about this a lot relying all the time. I don't make up stories all the time. And I would say
[11:18]I wanted to be a writer. I'm a physical writer. Like I just wanted to write and I think at that age,
[11:25]I didn't know what that meant. I wanted to write. I wanted to physically write every day
[11:31]and the storytelling. So of course, those started kind of coming together as I got older
[11:37]and I was writing poetry and short stories and stuff, but I never knew it was going to be this.
[11:41]I remember being around 10 or 11 and being in my bathroom in the mirror with my hairbrush,
[11:47]giving a thank you speech for the Pulitzer Prize. And all I knew was that this was an award that
[11:54]was given to writers. And so and it was the only one I knew. Like even though we had the new
[11:59]very sticker on our books and school, I didn't make that connection that that was a writing award,
[12:05]but I had heard something about the Pulitzer Prize and writers. So I was thanking, you know,
[12:10]my readers. By the way, I did the same. I did the same thing at the same age, but I didn't.
[12:16]I didn't even know about the Pulitzer Prize. So I would get up and pretend like congratulations
[12:20]you're the youngest person who's ever written a book. And I'm like, thank you. Thank you so much.
[12:27]That's so funny. Oh, man, I'm mirrors and hairbrushes. That's the whole that's a whole other story.
[12:34]Anyway, keep keep going. Keep going. No, no, I know it. I love the connection of fact that
[12:41]I wasn't the only one doing that in my, you know, Bushwick apartment, but I it I didn't have a
[12:49]backup plan. I really didn't have a backup plan. My mom and grandma wanted me to teach or be a lawyer
[12:55]or do hair or something. That was going to earn an income because that was what they knew.
[13:00]They we had been a family of the great migration, you know, we came here from South Carolina
[13:05]and part of that migration narrative is the idea of better opportunities for your children,
[13:12]right? It's the same as the immigrant narrative. You come from a place of oppression,
[13:16]which was the South during and post Jim Crow, and you go to a place where there's opportunity,
[13:21]which was the North New York City. And their idea of of someone making it was getting a job
[13:28]and having a pension or marrying someone marrying a man, you know, it's very heteronormative,
[13:34]marrying a man who would provide for you. And that wasn't in my net. If me, the one of those
[13:41]things that I know interest in this idea, I never I wasn't one of those girls who dreamed of
[13:46]wedding. I wasn't one of those people who thought that I would work the same job and go into an
[13:52]office and punch a clock and have a boss and and get a paycheck and and have a fixed income,
[13:58]which I understood because my mother always talked about being on a fixed income when we wanted
[14:02]something extravagant. And her salary was the salary in the house. But so, so I knew what writing
[14:08]the most joy. And I didn't know how I was going to do it. So I knew like, eventually have to take
[14:13]odd jobs to pay stuff like rent and get out of my mom's house. But but I didn't dream this. I really
[14:20]didn't dream this. I do know that I wanted to do what I loved. And writing was the thing I loved.
[14:28]What were what were some of the oddest jobs? Oh my God. Well, I worked at Hagenbass on on the
[14:34]upper east side. I see third or first, I think it was this. And then I won a 60 something. And
[14:40]first, and I worked on the one of 52nd and third work as a teenager. Of course, I worked in fast
[14:45]food restaurants, even though I didn't eat fast food. I worked as a word processing secretary
[14:50]for a long time, mainly as a 10th secretary. I had different banks, like manufacturers hand over
[14:56]truck. Thanks. I don't even exist anymore. I remember that. And I worked with runaway and homeless
[15:01]kids. I work for Blue Cross, Blue Shield handling insurance forms. And for those of you who
[15:08]have like done insurance claims and haven't gotten your money, maybe now it's different because
[15:13]it's computerized. But back in the early 90s, it was all paper forms. And when I didn't understand
[15:19]them, I just hide them somewhere. So you know, of course, I feel terrible about it now. But I'm
[15:25]like, I can't read that if they were harming copies and sometimes the copies that we got, which
[15:29]were very light were too hard to read. And it's like, okay, this is getting hit in behind. You know,
[15:34]this typewriter or whatever. So I was terrible at that job, needless to say. But yeah, it was a lot of
[15:42]clerical work, data processing, like putting in numbers was terrible. And what blew my mind and still
[15:52]breaks my heart is how hard people have to work for so little money. You know, I would work eight
[16:01]hours, eight hour days at that time for like seven dollars an hour. It was created and I'd be
[16:07]tired and barely able to make ends meet and having to go back in this day and no promise of
[16:15]anything more coming, anything more economically, anything more creatively. And so for me, when I
[16:23]got home at night, there was a desperation to my writing by that time was like, I want to get to
[16:28]the point where I can do this and not have to worry about whether or not I can pay the rent. And one
[16:36]of the first rules of writing is keep a little overhead, which I was very good at, you know, at a very
[16:41]cheap rent and a house made in and ways of making it happen. And then I got a fellowship at the
[16:47]McGowell colony, which is my first, it's not the McGowell colony anymore. It's at McGowell, which was my first
[16:52]writing fellowship. And the first time someone really saw me as a writer and I'm, you know,
[16:58]eternally indebted to McGowell. And that was kind of the like that show on me that said, yeah,
[17:03]you can make this happen and to go there for eight weeks and not have to worry about anything.
[17:08]And from there, I got a fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Providence town, which was a
[17:13]seven month fellowship. And because my after the fellowship, I ended up staying on for five years
[17:18]because my rent was really cheap. And I could, I could write full time. And I think you thought I
[17:24]graduated, but I did it still here. And I'm not, no, they're sorry, you they give you a place to live
[17:32]for free for seven month. So you have to find your own place. But their whole idea is that
[17:36]they're trying to bring, right? They're trying to bring artists to Providence town to keep that
[17:40]artist community going. So they were happy that when artists came there and I'm like, yeah, I get it.
[17:45]This is where I want to stay. And as visual artists and writers and poets, I don't know what
[17:50]people say writers and poets were all right. Wow. What a story. How did you even know? Like,
[17:58]I didn't even know about fellowships. Like, I wouldn't have known that I've never applied. I
[18:04]was not on my radar. Like, how did those get on your radar? Do you remember? Yeah, I remember
[18:10]having friends who are constantly saying, you need to get an MFA. If you want to write, you have to
[18:16]have an MFA. And I knew I didn't want to go back to school. And I didn't want to pay for anything
[18:22]because I didn't want to risk debt because debt was going against my plan of low overhead.
[18:28]Right. So I remember getting a, I think it was in poets and writers. I had, I would buy a
[18:35]goal to Barnes and Noble and buy poets and writers and look for places to submit to and seeing
[18:41]about, I think it might have been an article at those times, they would call writers colonies
[18:45]and reading it and be wait a minute. This is free. Wait a minute. All I have to do is apply.
[18:50]And I think for McDowell, the first time I applied, I got in. And let me backtrack. I also
[18:57]put my editor at the time, Wendy Lamb, her husband, a composer, Paul, he had been a fellow there.
[19:04]And so she might have also told me about McDowell. And it was one of the few places at the time
[19:10]that was considering people who were writing young people's literature. Because a lot of the
[19:15]places were like, no adults only or whatever, they were stupid. But McDowell was open to all
[19:21]genres. Now, most of those places are. But at that time, there were very few, there were people
[19:26]who looked down on young people's literature is lesser than, which was, which is bananas and sad,
[19:32]but also speaks to the state of our country and the way people think about young people.
[19:37]Very true. Well, I have to say my second grade daughter, I have four kids, but my second grade
[19:42]daughter has been reading your work in her class. So when I took, when I showed her this book,
[19:48]she was like, oh my gosh. Anyway, she's so excited. She went in to school today telling her
[19:53]teacher that I was talking to you. So how does, I mean, how does it make you feel to start from,
[19:58]you know,
[20:00]a pretend microphone to influencing
[20:03]what sure to be generations of children.
[20:05]I mean, that's amazing.
[20:06]A little bit old.
[20:10]It's so bananas because I was at a gathering
[20:13]for people of color and publishing.
[20:15]And there was one woman who was an agent
[20:18]that was one woman who was an editor
[20:21]and another woman who had just written her first book.
[20:24]And they were so excited to meet me
[20:26]because they had read me as kids.
[20:28]And I was like, well, they were in the late 20s, early 30s.
[20:33]So it's interesting to watch the generation grow up.
[20:38]And I think part of why I went back to writing for adults, too.
[20:42]Because I'm like, oh, my readers are growing up.
[20:44]I still have conversations with them.
[20:47]But I love young people so much.
[20:50]I mean, they exhaust me.
[20:52]And I love their energy and I love their curiosity.
[20:55]And I love being able, I never dreamed this
[20:58]that I'd be having this conversation with them
[21:00]through literature, that I'd be having my own experiences
[21:05]as a young person, legitimized by other young people
[21:09]in a whole different time and space,
[21:13]having those same experiences or being
[21:15]able to engage with me about them.
[21:17]So I feel grateful.
[21:20]I mean, if I had to choose one word,
[21:21]it would be grateful that it feels very full circle.
[21:25]Like I started out as this young person wanting to write,
[21:28]and wanting to write books that were not speaking,
[21:31]wanting to write books because there were so many books
[21:33]in my classroom library that didn't tell my story.
[21:38]And then as a result, write books that tell so many people's
[21:42]stories across gender and class and sexuality and race
[21:48]and all of the different things that seemingly divide us.
[21:53]I feel like any work, I was just saying this this morning,
[21:55]but any work that unites us by our emotions, right?
[22:00]That is the fundamental core to everybody.
[22:03]The same feeling, the same hopes and dreams.
[22:06]And I think people forget or they like to pretend
[22:10]that can't be the case to justify their other beliefs
[22:14]or something, but everybody has the same stuff.
[22:17]It's all the same love, love, all the same love
[22:20]and attachment.
[22:21]I don't know.
[22:22]When you tap into that in a book like this one
[22:24]or your other work or whatever, it makes everybody feel seen.
[22:28]And so true, I'm so glad you mentioned the emotional core
[22:32]because I do believe that's where I start from as a writer.
[22:35]And I think so many of the books that grabbed me and hold me
[22:40]are because the writer has gone to that place.
[22:43]They're not trying to sidestep it by being quirky,
[22:46]the computer are overly engaging
[22:50]or letting the language get in the way of it.
[22:52]They start at that core and just pull me right in.
[22:57]So what's like a book like that that you've loved?
[23:00]Oh, my goodness.
[23:01]I want to be pulled in.
[23:02]Pull me in.
[23:03]That's what book have I read?
[23:07]Well, I'm thinking of the adult book I've read.
[23:09]I'm reading and I think it's on paradise.
[23:12]It hasn't come out yet, but it's by the same person
[23:15]who did a little this little life or a little life.
[23:19]Oh, my goodness.
[23:21]I am so deeply moved by that.
[23:24]Of course, anything Jason Reynolds writes,
[23:27]he's definitely an emotional core kind of guy
[23:29]and Kwame, of course.
[23:31]I do feel like there are a lot of people
[23:33]who write for young people who really start at that point.
[23:37]I go back to someone like Jane Yolan and Al Moon.
[23:40]That book was one of the books that helped me learn
[23:43]how to write picture books.
[23:44]And also I can revisit it again.
[23:47]I can revisit it often and still feel that tug
[23:51]at my heartstrings in it.
[23:53]The tenth thing about Barney.
[23:55]I don't know if you know that book.
[23:56]I don't know that one.
[23:57]Hopefully you'll never have to read it to your children,
[24:00]but it's about a kid who loses their pet and they're trying
[24:06]to figure out the parents ask them to write
[24:10]10 good things about Barney.
[24:13]And it's so beautiful.
[24:14]It is another book that and it's not trying
[24:17]to be sappy at all, but at the same,
[24:19]but it allows you to have that cathartic, emotional release
[24:24]that good literature allows you to have.
[24:26]Have you read Rex Ogle's free lunch or punching bag?
[24:30]Mm-hmm.
[24:31]He's amazing.
[24:32]It's taking notes.
[24:33]No, he's so great.
[24:34]It's his own story of growing up,
[24:38]having subsidized lunch and being embarrassed by that
[24:42]and the abuse that was going on.
[24:43]But he writes, I just love his, I love his work.
[24:47]Thank you for that.
[24:48]So free lunch and then a one's called punching bag?
[24:51]Yep, punching bags, like the continuation.
[24:53]Free lunch is I think middle school
[24:56]and then punching bag is high school.
[24:58]And you just kind of fall in love with him and his abuela.
[25:01]And I don't know, it's, yeah, I love him.
[25:03]So that's my middle grade recommendations back from, you know.
[25:09]So what are you working on now?
[25:11]Right now, I'm working on a screenplay
[25:13]that I'm supposed to get the outline in today by,
[25:16]but it might not happen.
[25:18]I want to go for a run, like run screenplay, run screenplay.
[25:21]And I'm trying, I have another picture book
[25:24]that's coming out this year, later this year.
[25:27]That's all about play that I'm excited,
[25:30]but I love the year we learned to fly
[25:33]for the emotional core of it.
[25:36]I love the next book that's coming out
[25:38]because it's all about the games we played
[25:40]in the 70s and 80s when kids actually played
[25:43]in the street as opposed to now
[25:45]when they're kind of not doing it as much.
[25:48]And what else am I working on?
[25:49]I'm looking around my desk.
[25:50]I have another screenplay I'm working on
[25:53]and I'm working on a nonfiction book for adults
[25:55]and I'm working on a middle grade book for young people
[25:57]that I can't talk about because then I won't go back
[26:00]and work on it.
[26:02]It's like, I'm already given the idea.
[26:05]Yeah, and that's the thing about it, right?
[26:07]When you write, you write the things you cannot speak.
[26:10]And once you communicate them, it's like,
[26:12]well, I've spoken them.
[26:14]I've gotten the reaction.
[26:15]So I'm good.
[26:17]So I try not to speak until we get done.
[26:21]How many days a week do you run?
[26:22]Not in, when during the pandemic,
[26:25]I was really running hard walking
[26:28]or some combination every day just
[26:30]because we were living up at our house in Brewster.
[26:33]And we, and you know, it's right on the reservoir
[26:35]so I could actually go out
[26:37]and I had to escape my family.
[26:38]So it made sense.
[26:40]But now since my family is mostly gone during the day,
[26:42]I don't have to leave the house as much.
[26:44]So now I try to get out about four days,
[26:47]four or five times a week.
[26:48]And I'm impressed.
[26:49]Very good.
[26:50]It's hard.
[26:51]It's hard.
[26:52]Your knees don't hurt.
[26:53]I feel like I'm getting moved.
[26:54]Now it does.
[26:55]And I'm blaming it on the cold weather
[26:57]because I'm a, you know, I'm much older than you.
[26:59]And I'm blaming it.
[27:00]I'm like, it's not arthritis.
[27:02]It's because it's cold now.
[27:04]So I try to do prophylactic stuff.
[27:07]I try to stretch a lot
[27:08]and take out your prophin before I go running
[27:10]to see if that helps.
[27:11]But yesterday I went out to run
[27:12]and I was able to run about a half a mile.
[27:15]And I had to walk the other three and a half miles.
[27:18]Oh, so cranky.
[27:19]Oh, that's going on.
[27:21]Oh, at least it's not just me then.
[27:24]No, not at all.
[27:25]Actually the emotional truth is that all of our bodies
[27:27]are to fall apart in the exact same timeline, right?
[27:30]You know, like it's like, it's like here we go.
[27:32]We're like on this escalator up to, I should say down.
[27:36]It's like an escalator down to disintegrate.
[27:39]It's an agent.
[27:40]Anyway, whatever.
[27:41]You have the thing when you see people move
[27:43]and they're like, you know, they do these dance steps
[27:45]and they go down or how are they able to even do that?
[27:50]Like, I don't even think I can do that when I was 20.
[27:52]Oh my gosh.
[27:53]One of my kids can like move her leg.
[27:55]I'm like, where, how on earth?
[27:58]And she's like, try it.
[27:59]I'm like, I can't even, I can barely sit down these days.
[28:03]I can't even like stand up.
[28:04]Like give me a minute as I haul myself up
[28:07]on the kitchen counter.
[28:08]So yeah.
[28:09]But you play tennis, right?
[28:11]I do.
[28:12]Oh my gosh, thanks for saying that.
[28:13]Yes, I do play tennis, but not enough,
[28:15]particularly not in the winter.
[28:16]Like what am I going to do?
[28:17]I'm not like a, I'm not a bubble person.
[28:20]I'm not a bubble person.
[28:21]Actually, I shouldn't say that.
[28:22]I used to be, but I don't know.
[28:24]These days I've been doing like an app, you know,
[28:26]workout app if I can.
[28:28]Yeah, yeah.
[28:29]I did one this morning, and I'm so out of shape.
[28:31]I should stop talking on the, but I did my first podcast today
[28:34]that this author, Nicole Perkins, and I like was so sweaty
[28:38]from unanticipated sweat from this, what should have been easy
[28:41]workout that I had to like do the podcast on my knees
[28:44]because I didn't want to sit on a chair.
[28:46]Anyway, pathetic, so pathetic.
[28:48]Oh man.
[28:49]What are Nicole Perkins, right?
[28:51]That name is familiar.
[28:52]She wrote, sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.
[28:55]Oh, that's a great title.
[28:56]Yeah, it's good.
[28:57]It's a collection of essays.
[28:59]Okay.
[29:00]Not to keep promoting.
[29:01]Yeah, you can write that down to a lot of sexual undertones
[29:04]and, but really interesting and talks about like pop culture
[29:07]and how she didn't, you know, she didn't see herself
[29:10]in pop culture the way you're talking about in literature,
[29:13]you know, the breakfast club and all these movies, John Hughes
[29:15]and like where was, you know, anyway.
[29:18]Okay, off topic.
[29:19]Okay, okay, last question and I'll stuff to chatting.
[29:22]What is your advice?
[29:23]This is fun.
[29:24]What's your advice for aspiring authors?
[29:26]I would say read lots of picture books.
[29:29]I think it's really important.
[29:31]One great thing about a picture book is it's a very short novel,
[29:34]right?
[29:35]And it gives you narrative arc.
[29:37]It gives you character arc and metamorphosis.
[29:41]It shows you how to get into a book quickly at the beginning.
[29:44]It shows you how to get out of a story.
[29:46]And the same way you can learn that from a book
[29:48]at 300 pages, but it's going to take you a lot longer.
[29:51]You're going to have a lot more text to study.
[29:53]So I always encourage young writers of all ages
[29:57]to read lots of picture books.
[29:59]Well written picture books.
[30:00]So, you know, they don't need to run.
[30:02]I mean, look for the ones that have a story.
[30:05]And right every day, if you can.
[30:09]And even if it's writing down an idea
[30:12]or writing a poem or writing a memory
[30:14]or just write something to,
[30:15]because writing is a muscle.
[30:17]And if you don't use it, it actually feeds.
[30:20]And if you use it, it gets stronger.
[30:22]So that's where I would begin to give advice.
[30:26]If I was still teaching, it would be a lot more advice
[30:29]than a lot longer.
[30:30]And we talk about the hero's journey
[30:31]and the importance of reading poetry,
[30:34]which I will say, it's very important to read poetry.
[30:36]And if you don't have poetry at home,
[30:38]poetry is a site of America, poetry foundation,
[30:41]you can go to various sites and find really depolums.
[30:44]I read this beautiful poem by Sharon Olson today
[30:48]that it was about motherhood.
[30:49]You know, a lot of her stuff is about,
[30:52]it's very emotional in this way.
[30:53]And I just saw him my day has done.
[30:55]Oh my gosh, wait a minute.
[30:56]I want you to send me the email.
[30:58]I want you to send me the thing, put it at the home.
[31:01]Yeah, it's a poem.
[31:02]I'm excited to read that.
[31:04]Amazing.
[31:05]Yeah, I actually, I just did this roundup
[31:07]of the best poetry books that have come out recently.
[31:09]Oh, wow.
[31:10]Very kind of direct media, Sam.
[31:11]Wait, where can we find a list
[31:12]because I love reading poetry?
[31:14]It's, I can send you the link,
[31:15]but I wrote it for Katie Kerr Media.
[31:17]I do these roundups for her on her website.
[31:20]I don't know.
[31:20]Every week, every week, so.
[31:22]Yeah, but I'm always looking for good poetry books too.
[31:25]So anyway, well, thank you so much.
[31:28]Go for your run.
[31:29]Don't let me hold you back,
[31:30]and I hope you feel good doing it
[31:32]and have better luck standing up tonight than I do.
[31:35]Thank you, so fun talking to you.
[31:38]You too.
[31:39]All right, have a great day.
[31:40]Take care.
[31:41]You'll see me.
[31:42]Bye.
[31:43]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms.
[31:45]Don't have time to read books.
[31:47]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram,
[31:49]at Zibi Owens and at Moms.
[31:50]Don't have time to read books.
[31:52]Also sign up for my newsletter at Zibi Owens.com
[31:54]and sign up for my virtual book club
[31:56]and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[31:59]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan,
[32:00]at Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[32:02]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[32:04]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.