Halimah Marcus, HORSE GIRLS: Recovering, Aspiring, and Devoted Riders Redefine the Iconic Bond
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[0:41]Hallam of Marcus is the author of Horse Girls,
[0:43]recovering aspiring and devoted writers redefine the iconic bond.
[0:48]Hallamma's short stories and essays have appeared in one story,
[0:51]bomb the literary review, and was on original stories,
[0:55]the out there podcast, Indiana Review, Gulf Coast,
[0:58]the Southampton Review, and elsewhere.
[1:00]She is the executive director of Electric Literature,
[1:03]an innovative digital publisher based in Brooklyn,
[1:05]and the editor-in-chief of its weekly fiction magazine,
[1:08]recommended reading, which she co-founded.
[1:10]She has an MFA from Brooklyn College and lives in the Catskill region of New York.
[1:14]Welcome, Hallamma.
[1:15]Thanks for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss
[1:18]Horse Girls, recovering aspiring and devoted writers,
[1:21]redefined the iconic bond.
[1:24]Thank you for having me.
[1:26]As a fellow anthology editor, I like have a, you know,
[1:29]pre-red election.
[1:31]Is that even the right word for other anthologies?
[1:33]And I'd love reading essays by and that bring to get in books that bring together
[1:38]such interesting voices.
[1:40]I love Courtney Mom, by the way, I've had around my podcast several times.
[1:43]Anyway, the essays were fantastic.
[1:45]So why don't you tell everybody a little bit more about Horse Girls
[1:48]and why you were the person to put this collection together?
[1:51]Well, I had written as a kid and as a teenager,
[1:55]and it was something that was so important to me during that time,
[1:59]and I loved it and devoted myself to it kind of a big sense of all else.
[2:04]But I always had this little embarrassment or compartmentalization that was going on,
[2:10]where I had my writing life and then I had my other life at school.
[2:14]And when it came time to go to college, I put it aside and thought I would pursue
[2:20]my grand life as a writer and an artist and felt that there was no possible overlap
[2:28]between that writing life and the intellectual life that I was hoping to pursue.
[2:35]And after college, I moved to New York City, started a career as an editor,
[2:40]but always had this kind of niggling feeling about wanting to be around horses.
[2:46]I couldn't believe that it had followed me, and that it was so deep inside.
[2:51]I'd be jogging around Prospect Park and watch the horses go by and just kind of have fantasies
[2:56]that I would need.
[2:57]Like a writer would fall off and someone would say,
[2:59]does anyone know how to write a horse?
[3:01]Jump in.
[3:03]But when I would mention it to me, you're having fantasies about people being completely hurt right in front of you.
[3:10]Okay.
[3:11]Well, maybe they're not injured, but you know.
[3:13]My expertise would be called upon some way, but it just still didn't fit with anything I was doing.
[3:21]And I ended up writing an essay for Amazon original stories about my teenage years and how writing was so important in terms of coping with disordered eating as a teenager
[3:33]and my, you know, had a strict religious upbringing.
[3:37]And as I wrote that essay, I just saw that every bit when I got into writing, I just pulled these threads and they just led in so many different directions in terms of self esteem and identity and girlhood and womanhood.
[3:52]And writing that essay really took it out of me. I was like, I actually hate writing personal essays. I realized.
[3:58]Really, okay.
[3:59]Well, we'll revisit that, but it was a intense experience.
[4:03]But I realized that there was so much to say on the topic, and then I needed to assemble a group of writers to do that.
[4:11]I had said my piece.
[4:13]I was one limited perspective, but I really wanted to get this 360 view of this horse girl stereotype and ask questions like, is there anything here, you know, is there a connection between women and horses or girls and horses or, or is it, you know, more about external factors and
[4:32]what value does the stereotype have, how is it harmful, how can we kind of expand to might be included in the idea of a writer.
[4:42]So that's where I, that's where I started.
[4:44]Interesting.
[4:45]And you point out early on the difference between a horse girl and a horse woman.
[4:49]So tell me, tell, tell listeners about that.
[4:52]So a horse girl, I think is a little bit derogatory. It's dismissive.
[4:57]They are maybe spoiled or, you know, pig-tailed brat or they're kind of clueless about social Mars and they're wearing, you know, pony clothing or horse clothing and, you know, not relating to their peers because they're just so obsessed with horses.
[5:15]So that's kind of some of the horse girl stereotypes.
[5:18]As you get a little older, you might see some sexualization that goes along with that stereotype in terms of a, a dominatrix with a crop and high boots.
[5:28]But then a horse woman is like kind of the equivalent of a cowboy in a lot of ways, like really rough shot tough writing through injury, no nonsense, tough love, all that.
[5:41]And someone who really has devoted their, their life to it rather than someone who perhaps is a hobbyist or an after school kind of writer.
[5:53]But when you try to sort of put down the writing crop, if you will.
[5:58]And, you know, especially in college when you announce yourself as someone who used to be a writer and, you know, some girl who you did not want to be associated with, it's like, I'll be too.
[6:07]And you're like, no, no, no.
[6:08]Right. Exactly.
[6:09]What were you, like, what did you, what filled that void for you until you started fantasizing about people falling off their horses?
[6:18]Well, college was very exciting. I was one of those people who got to college and was like, Oh, my gosh, here's what I've been looking for in terms of friends to relate to feeling like a little bit of an outsider in high school and being interested in things that few other people were interested in.
[6:36]And then getting to college and suddenly seeing not only is every so many people interested in the books and music and movies that I'm interested in, but they can teach me more.
[6:47]So I think it took me a little while to miss it because I had been so regimented as a teenager and given up other experiences in order to be able to be competitive in the sport.
[7:00]It was just like a buffet of experience when I got to college. And then even after that I moved back to Philly. I wrote a little bit there.
[7:09]So it wasn't really until I got to New York City and had lived there for a few years that I really started to miss it.
[7:16]But you know, in New York City, it's a whole other buffet in terms of working really hard meeting people going out getting involved in a literary world, which was just so exciting to me.
[7:27]in rooms with writers who I had admired was like, you know, blew my mind. So there was a lot to take part in.
[7:36]I agree. I still feel that way when I'm around right. My mind is perpetually blown. It's amazing to be have your books come to life essentially.
[7:45]Talk about how you got into the literary world after. I mean, so many people go to college hoping and wishing and yet here you are, you know, head of electric literature and all this stuff. So how did that all happen?
[7:57]When I was in undergraduate, I had a professor who said to me, are you going to get MFA and I was like, I don't even know what that means. I've never heard those letters in that order.
[8:07]What are you talking about didn't entertain the idea until a few years after and then I went to get an MFA at Brooklyn College and the founders of electric literature had also gone to Brooklyn College.
[8:20]So I thought I'd like to, you know, I had had other jobs in nonprofits and this was even a different time when the whole internship.
[8:29]And so we all didn't exist in the same way. So I don't think I'd even really ever had an internship. I've had some other full time jobs.
[8:36]But I thought this would be a great way to learn about literary magazine publishing joined as an intern and then was soon hired as a managing editor.
[8:47]We were at the beginning we were sort of all volunteer. So hired is in air quotes.
[8:54]And over time the leadership change they wanted to work on another project. So I stepped up and eventually moved into the role of executive director and fiction editor.
[9:07]I've been there now 11 years and it's been, you know, my one job and literary publishing, but the reason that I can stay engaged is that if I get bored.
[9:19]Well, it's always hard. So I'm having poor. But if I do get bored, I could change it, you know, change it up. Stay challenged.
[9:29]Have you discovered authors like what point do you get? Do you get all the galley like at what point are you reading and choosing from, is it from published is it pre publication like how those
[9:40]we do a mix of excerpts and original. So I added the fiction series, which is a weekly series and we review submissions.
[9:49]So this past year we got over 5,000 submissions and we have volunteer readers. We select from there, but we're actually quite good about public.
[10:00]Blushing from open submissions, 50% of our original fiction
[10:03]slots went to unsolicited, unagented submissions, which
[10:08]is quite a high percentage for a living magazine.
[10:11]And then we also are reading forthcoming titles to excerpt.
[10:14]And we focus on short story collections, although we do also
[10:18]novel excerpts as well.
[10:20]But my passion is really when I get to work with a writer
[10:23]and edit a story and kind of get into that mind meld.
[10:27]That's the thing that I live for.
[10:29]So doing that for the anthology was very exciting.
[10:33]And I thought to call up writers that I had, perhaps,
[10:38]edited their fiction before and talk to them
[10:41]about writing an essay instead.
[10:43]My co-founder of Zibi Books, by the way,
[10:45]Lee Newman has a beautiful short story collection
[10:47]coming out in April.
[10:48]I know all about it.
[10:49]You do?
[10:50]OK.
[10:50]OK.
[10:50]Yeah, we published one of her stories.
[10:52]Libi and I are actually, sorry, I've combined.
[10:55]I have a friend named Libi.
[10:56]Lee and I, I combined your names.
[10:58]Lee and I are in a writing group together.
[11:00]And so we're actually not each other well.
[11:03]And I have a here, some are her book.
[11:05]So I'm so excited about it.
[11:06]We published the story about the historical ones
[11:09]that on the Alaskan frontier.
[11:11]Awesome, which is called The Great.
[11:13]I forget what it's called.
[11:15]Well, that's interesting when you said you went out
[11:16]and talked to fiction writers about writing essays.
[11:18]Because when I did that for my two anthologies,
[11:21]I was really surprised at how many fiction writers
[11:23]did not want to write essays.
[11:25]Like, I love writing essays.
[11:27]So I thought that would be an easy ask.
[11:29]In truth, no, did you find the same or not?
[11:32]Well, most of the writers in the anthology do both.
[11:37]Yeah, so you know, just look, take your mat in.
[11:40]I had published a memoir, Carmen Ramechato,
[11:42]just published a memoir.
[11:43]Maggie Shipstead, who I'd worked with on fiction,
[11:46]write this travel writing.
[11:48]So they were able to switch gears.
[11:52]Rosebud then Oni is primarily a poet.
[11:54]And I think that really shows in her prose.
[11:57]So I'd so, you know, there are people that I asked
[11:59]that didn't want to do it, of course.
[12:01]But from this group, they were able to switch back and forth.
[12:06]Did you find any sort of personality trait
[12:09]that predispose people to be in relationships with horses,
[12:13]if you will?
[12:14]Like, is there something that draws a person to it?
[12:17]Like, could you identify ahead of time?
[12:21]You know what I mean?
[12:22]That's such an interesting question.
[12:24]And I sort of asked that question with the project of the book,
[12:27]but from a different angle.
[12:29]Like, I asked it more about, you know,
[12:31]what are horses fulfilling in people rather than, you know,
[12:35]what is the type?
[12:37]I think that there's a couple different types.
[12:40]And I'm hesitant to accidentally construct a stereotype.
[12:43]But I think you see a certain kind of like whimsical attitude.
[12:48]You know, Carmen Ramechato talks about that
[12:52]where she says that her, you know, alter ego as a kid
[12:57]was like fire dolphin or something like that.
[13:00]So I think you see that there's a fantasy element.
[13:02]I think there is a kind of daredevil bravery element.
[13:09]But on the flip side of that,
[13:11]you also see fearful people being drawn to it
[13:16]as a kind of antidote or like homeopathic type of remedy
[13:20]for some, you know, I think you do see a lot of girls
[13:24]were very timid, otherwise being drawn to horses
[13:29]because it's a way to completely get outside of that cage.
[13:36]And I think that's probably the camps that I fell into more.
[13:40]I was shy and nervous and quiet under many circumstances
[13:46]but under the right circumstances could be very outgoing
[13:50]and could yell a horse across a field without thinking twice
[13:53]about it.
[13:54]I was like that too.
[13:55]I was a little shy.
[13:56]And I did ride for a while when I was a kid as well.
[13:58]But I was never like a riding.
[14:00]I didn't like do any competing or anything.
[14:02]But did you, did you click with it?
[14:06]I liked it, but I never like loved it.
[14:09]But I did love they had this one, you know,
[14:12]probably one of those beta forces you were talking about.
[14:15]That people ride for lessons.
[14:17]Name spots.
[14:19]So spots was like in summer camp, my, you know,
[14:22]the assigned force or whatever.
[14:23]And I was very attached until I was cleaning its host,
[14:27]his, his, I think, host one day and like next thing, you know,
[14:31]he like kicked me in the thigh.
[14:33]And I was like out of a movie like when like flying out the stall.
[14:37]Yeah.
[14:38]Like on my, but like a couple of feet outside
[14:40]and I had this huge hook friend on my thigh.
[14:42]Like the rest of the summer.
[14:44]Oh my gosh.
[14:45]There's the essay with one of the writers showing off the hoof print
[14:49]on her hands as a badge of honor.
[14:52]Yeah, it didn't feel like a badge of honor.
[14:54]It felt bad.
[14:55]But yeah.
[14:56]And then I became very allergic to horses.
[14:58]So that seemed like a good time.
[15:00]Plus I feel like my anxiety was just like manifesting itself.
[15:04]The fear component of like falling or something happening
[15:07]and all of that with the allergies.
[15:09]Like, all right.
[15:10]I'm going to go back to tennis and stay on land.
[15:13]Yeah.
[15:14]My sister-in-law is with competitive horseback writer.
[15:17]And I mean, you know, she's, I don't know.
[15:19]I watched the way she talks about horses.
[15:21]And she recently gave my daughter like all her play horses
[15:24]from when she was a little girl.
[15:25]Why are horses saying yes.
[15:27]Oh my gosh.
[15:28]So now my daughter plays them.
[15:29]Anyway.
[15:30]But with some people it does click to that next element or even
[15:34]goes from a like to a love to an obsession.
[15:36]Yeah.
[15:37]And you know, and with some people it's that there's a lot of women
[15:43]in this book negotiating their attitudes towards competition
[15:48]and figuring out how to enjoy it without being competitive
[15:54]and how to take value from something in adulthood
[15:58]is as an amateur where they were maybe striving
[16:00]to be the best as a teenager.
[16:03]But, you know, I think that competition does have its
[16:08]upsides too, you know, that competitive spirit.
[16:11]So that's another kind of common personality trait that you
[16:14]might see, you know, the person that takes a riding lesson
[16:16]and then thinks like, I want to get good at this.
[16:19]I want the fence is to go higher.
[16:21]I want to do all the things that I see that person doing.
[16:25]But I do think that the fear factor is in constant negotiation.
[16:30]You know, Maggie shipstead writes about like even as the jumps
[16:33]were going higher, she's always felt afraid,
[16:36]but she still wanted the jumps to go higher.
[16:38]And I asked her and edits like why do you think that was
[16:40]and it was even difficult to articulate.
[16:43]But, you know, fear is just kind of a part of it, you know,
[16:47]that feeling in your stomach that you just have to push past
[16:51]and you have to control your body in a way because it's true
[16:55]that the horses notice every little thing your body does.
[17:00]Yeah, it's like a kid.
[17:01]You can like pretend you're not in a bad mood,
[17:03]but they should write through the things.
[17:06]Yeah, can you?
[17:07]You can't hide in.
[17:09]Can we go back to what you said quickly about your disordered
[17:13]eating earlier in life?
[17:14]Can you talk about that a little and put that on there?
[17:16]Sure.
[17:17]Yeah, I mean, so that's why riding that,
[17:20]that essay that I mentioned was such a,
[17:23]which leveled me because I was kind of revisiting that time
[17:27]and I had an idea for the essay that was very neat and tidy
[17:30]and then it got messier, but it was a rewarding piece to write
[17:36]and I think hopefully to other people.
[17:38]But, you know, as I also mentioned, I had quite strict parents
[17:43]and I think it kind of began in some ways as a form of rebellion,
[17:50]you know, being so controlled and then not to be crass about it,
[17:54]but then kind of being like, well, watch, watch what I can control.
[17:57]And I was riding at the time as well.
[18:01]And basically what got me out of it was that my instructor said to me,
[18:07]you can be thin or you can ride.
[18:09]And it was all whatever else anyone had said to me,
[18:14]which was not much actually.
[18:15]I think people were very avoidant of engaging me in the issue
[18:18]and I wasn't getting, like I had gone to my pediatrician about it.
[18:23]You know, I hadn't gotten actual proper talk therapy help or anything like that.
[18:28]So people were very avoidant of the issue kind of not wanting to mention it.
[18:32]And I was having problems with my horse running away with me
[18:35]because I didn't have this strength.
[18:38]And she talked about horses know everything about your body.
[18:41]And I'm like, that she's insignificant up there.
[18:43]I can do whatever I want.
[18:45]And she just said that in front of other people.
[18:49]And I think there's many different ways to read it.
[18:53]It's that tough love that I'm talking about.
[18:55]I mean, that was not kid gloves.
[18:57]That's like laying out here is what it is.
[19:00]And I thought, you know, I'm not going to be a person that chooses being thin over riding.
[19:07]Like, is that a choice I'm going to make?
[19:09]Someone's laying it out to me like a choice.
[19:11]And it's not to say that it was immediately over.
[19:14]But that was a major turning point.
[19:17]Wow.
[19:18]That was when I was about 16 or something.
[19:21]It's hard to know what to do when you see people struggling to know how much you should intervene.
[19:27]You know, you said people were avoidant.
[19:29]And to feel like, you know, with most complicated things like loss.
[19:32]And I don't know.
[19:33]A lot of times people just don't know what to do or what to say.
[19:36]Do you wish more people had said something to you?
[19:38]Well, there's there's the people that make comments.
[19:42]Lots of people make comments.
[19:44]And that's different.
[19:45]Yes.
[19:46]You know, where people say, oh, I don't recognize you or.
[19:49]Oh, you're wasting away.
[19:51]And you might take that even as you might take it as a compliment or you might take it.
[19:56]Even if it's negative attention.
[19:59]I mean,
[20:00]some way in which any attention about your body is negative attention, even if it's a compliment.
[20:04]But in that situation, in my own experience, I might as
[20:10]light that or gut fed out. Not like to but fed off it in some perverse way. But I think that I,
[20:18]you know, I wish that the people, my parents had been more equipped to actually have conversations
[20:24]because I think, you know, you really model, if if someone in your life like that is uncomfortable,
[20:32]we're talking about kind of intuitive reading of people. You, you internalize that. So I mean,
[20:38]it's hard. It's a hard subject. Like I'm not sure. I would be great at talking to someone about it.
[20:44]And I know I've made comments about if someone has lost a shocking amount of weight. I know I've
[20:50]sort of inadvertently blurted something out before. So it's not to say that it's easy or there's
[20:57]any kind of like simple way to deal with it. Yeah. And I know recently, I don't know, I probably
[21:03]handled this wrong, but somebody I know and I'd even that well. I was like, well, actually,
[21:08]now I feel like I shouldn't even admit this. I can't do it so badly. I don't know. Anyway,
[21:13]I was literally like, you know, are you okay? Like, are you eating? Do you want to talk about it?
[21:19]You know, anyway, and then I left. And that might and it might have been that might have been
[21:23]the right thing to do because you know, just who knows. I mean, I guess there's probably
[21:28]professionals out there who yeah, anyway, who could have. I don't mean to I don't mean to put you
[21:32]on like in any sort of a no, because I know I don't. I'm just I'm really just I was a teenager and
[21:39]but it comes up in other in several other essays in in the book, you know, you have a
[21:43]seen organ bats writes about it, Alie Robodum. And it is, I mean, I kept encountering all these
[21:50]paradoxes between, you know, why would you want to be so thin and weak when you when your job is
[21:58]to deal with this extremely powerful, strong animal. But yet there's these feminizing pressures,
[22:06]you know, in terms of like wearing the outfits and looking prim and put together and slim. And so
[22:13]at the same time that you're kind of doing these incredible athletic feats, you're supposed to
[22:19]you know, put your makeup on, put do your hair. And that's something that in several,
[22:25]it was a pattern that I saw across several of the stories here.
[22:29]So what is coming next for you now that this is done. And by the way, I meant to ask sorry earlier,
[22:36]did you ever do an event? And maybe you have and I didn't research properly enough, but
[22:40]there's another author Sarah Maslin near who wrote a book called Horse Crazy to do to an event
[22:44]or anything. Yes, we did. We went to Gallup NYC, which is this great nonprofit in Queens where they
[22:51]have, it's kind of we pass it on the way to LaGuardia. They're stables. You wouldn't see it from
[22:56]the road, but it's back. And it's a proper horse stables. And then they do lessons for kids with
[23:01]disabilities and neighborhood kids. So it's a great nonprofit stairs on the board. And she put
[23:08]together a really nice event there with a couple other authors as well with horse books. So
[23:15]she's been wonderful at advising me throughout because she, you know, had all the, you know,
[23:22]she worked so hard to get her book out in the world and gave me some great advice about that as
[23:27]well. Okay. Well, then I won't connect the two of you. Anyway, so now what's coming next,
[23:35]would you want to do another collection like this or? I thought about it. I mean, you know,
[23:40]because you added an anthology. It's a lot of work. The spreadsheets alone are just
[23:47]with in terms of, you know, the revisions that you go through with each essay. And it was very
[23:51]important to me to be the primary point of contact with all the writers for everything. I didn't
[23:56]want them getting emails from all different people in the publisher. So I was anytime there was
[24:00]copy edits approved. I was sending them out individually. I had thought I would also a runner,
[24:06]although a little lapsed during COVID. But I had thought about doing a similar anthology about running
[24:14]and, you know, writers of all genders on, you know, there's so many writers who run and some of
[24:22]written about it famously like who can their comedy Malcolm Gladwell. And so I, you know, the thing,
[24:28]the question that I have to answer before I would even embark on such a project is,
[24:32]are there enough angles? You know, like you can't have 12 essays wherever every writer is like,
[24:38]I go running to clear my head or whatever the thing is, you know, you have to find out
[24:43]what could be the stories that you could tell through this theme. You know, it could be cool with
[24:49]running is to sort of connect the tracks, like to connect the paths across states,
[24:55]right? Like it's a location. Like they're making progress. It like Zena Arafat, for instance, is a
[25:01]like someone who runs a lot. But she did it like I want to say in Massachusetts or something like
[25:05]that. And then there's Katie Arnold, who wrote a beautiful book on running. But she's like
[25:09]in Santa Fe or someplace in the, you know, like if you could somehow make it almost like a travel,
[25:14]like you're running across the country and that would be beautiful. And that's what I thought
[25:20]about that for this book, too. I wanted the authors to live in different places. And that might
[25:24]be a kind of difference in perspective that people don't notice as much. But you know, I wanted,
[25:30]we have Texas and Pakistan and East Coast, West Coast, you know, just kind of getting the full
[25:35]yeah. So we'll see about that running anthology and, you know, trying to find time,
[25:41]I'm a fiction writer as well. So trying to find not just time exactly, but headspace for it.
[25:47]Do you do mostly stories or do you long? Yeah, mostly mostly stories. I'd love to write a novel,
[25:52]but I don't know. I never have, never have the novel idea that I can stick with for long enough.
[25:59]I kind of think in short story line that seems awesome. I love short stories. I mean,
[26:05]I like anything I can accomplish. Sometimes in a day, that's all I can do is, you know, get
[26:12]through an essay or a short story. But when I'm reading for a true, I read a lot of short stories
[26:17]for work. I write short stories. So when I'm reading for a true pleasure, a novel, it's like
[26:22]nothing and better to me than just like living inside a juicy novel. Has there been a particularly
[26:28]juicy one lately? Well, I just finished. I was late to read it, although we should normalize reading
[26:34]books after the two weeks when they come up. Yes. Yeah. I just finally read the woman upstairs by
[26:40]Claire Masud. Yes. Which is so fantastic and rich and, you know, the kind of novel that doesn't,
[26:50]there's so many novelties that I think of as like everything but the kitchen sink novels where
[26:54]you read the description and then it's just like, there's a heist in three generations and
[26:59]across four continents. And sometimes I like those, those novels as well, but it's just,
[27:07]you know, focus on a certain time period with, you know, three, three or four primary characters,
[27:13]a slow burn, a slow build, and then an ending that is kind of greater than the sum of its parts
[27:19]that makes like it all worth it. It was really, I found it really thought provoking.
[27:23]Have you read Saint Eva by Joanna Hirschon? No. I think you might like that. It's very literary
[27:29]and it takes place with just a small castor characters over a weekend with a surprise ending.
[27:34]Oh, I do, I do like a, a what it probably might not be a wedding, but I do like it all.
[27:41]It's not a wedding. It's called Saint Eva. You should check it out. I have a feeling you'll like it.
[27:45]Okay. Okay. I'll check it out. But I was so excited to get James smiling to contribute.
[27:49]Yeah, that was cute. I just thought of that because a thousand anchors to me is one that's like the
[27:54]greatest novels ever written in terms, you know, like a true, a truly traditional novel in the sense
[28:03]of character and story and like emotional heft and all that. Yeah. I haven't read that lately.
[28:13]I feel like when did that come out? I wasn't that. Oh, in the 90s, I think.
[28:17]Right. Yeah. I feel like when it came out that I haven't. Yeah. I mean, and people might
[28:21]overlook it because I think it gets inside in schools. You know, when people face something,
[28:25]it's a sign in school. And then I like forgot it for kids. Wow, amazing.
[28:31]Oh, so I should just write down that book. Yeah, write down the book. And yeah, thank you so
[28:36]much. This has been great. Yeah. It's great to meet you. Yeah. Great to meet you. Tell
[28:41]Lee. I said hello. Actually, that essay I was talking about the Amazon one. I wrote it at her house.
[28:47]Oh, so I, you know, I don't know. I don't talk to her about like who I'm interviewing. Oh, no,
[28:53]I don't know who, you know, who she knows or whatever. Joanna,
[28:57]Kirishan, and what was the title? Same Evo. I have an Evo. So when, you know, in my introduction,
[29:03]I talk about seeing that graffiti on the rock. Yeah. That's it. That's from Lee's house. Oh, my
[29:08]gosh. Yeah. So it was, I don't know if she still has it. It was like, this tiny little bungalow
[29:15]that she had in peak scale. That was like a little summer cottage. And she let me use it to write
[29:19]that essay because I was having a needed like to go and lock down to write it. But
[29:25]I saw that message. Yeah. So thank you so much for having me on. Email her right now.
[29:29]So, great. All right. Well, good luck with anything. Everything is great to meet you.
[29:34]Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I touch. Okay. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of
[29:40]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at ZB Owens and at
[29:46]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at ZB Owens.com and sign up for
[29:51]my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve
[29:55]and Ryan in fact, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon.
[30:00]Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.