Jonathan Escoffery, IF I SURVIVE YOU
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[0:58]Jonathan
[0:59]Discovery is the author of if I survived you which was guest hosted by Alicia Fernandez
[1:04]Miranda whose book by what if you're is our first divvy book coming out in February
[1:09]Jonathan is the author of if I survive you as well as the forthcoming novel play stone kilo bird
[1:15]He is the recipient of the 2020 Plimpton prize for fiction a 2020 NEA literature fellowship and the 2020
[1:23]As me award for fiction. He was born and raised in Miami Florida
[1:27]All right, so welcome Jonathan to mom's don't have time to read books
[1:32]We are here today to talk about if I survived you you are absolutely
[1:37]Incredible novel in linked stories that has just been like
[1:42]I don't know it's hard to keep track of how many awards you are getting an denominator for in our winning
[1:46]You're just like absolutely
[1:48]Slaying so congrats and welcome to the podcast
[1:51]Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here speaking with you
[1:55]Well, I mean, I just like completely immersed myself in the book for the last couple of days
[2:01]As I mentioned to you before we started this I grew up in Miami about the same time
[2:05]Not super far from the same neighborhood
[2:08]There is definite accuracy and a lot of that Miami experience. It's beautifully written
[2:13]But it also just really made me reflect a lot on my own experiences growing up
[2:18]I
[2:19]Absolutely bought into that like melting pot of Miami theory my family is Cuban
[2:23]It was extremely diverse where I grew up and was much later in my life that I came to more
[2:28]nuanced reflections on my own experience and that of others around me
[2:31]And I think you just masterfully handled that in this book
[2:34]So I just absolutely loved it. I absolutely loved it
[2:38]But why don't we start for those who have not had the good fortune to read it yet
[2:42]With you telling listeners what I if I survive you is about
[2:46]Yeah, this is that scary part where I
[2:49]Know how to describe my book
[2:52]It is about a family of Jamaicans who immigrate to the US in the late 1970s
[3:00]Specifically they move from Kingston Jamaica to Miami Florida and they move
[3:06]It's a married couple named Topper and Sonia and they move over with their
[3:11]infant son Delano and it's in Miami where their second son
[3:16]Chilani is born and
[3:18]Chilani gets the most
[3:20]stage and page time in the book where
[3:24]We follow him as he's trying to figure out who he's going to be in the world as the recipients of these
[3:29]kind of multiple cultures in the senses
[3:32]You know US culture is Jamaican culture
[3:36]His you know his Miami-ness
[3:39]Culture of its own for sure
[3:41]Oh, go to his own and then nobody who's from Miami ever disputes that
[3:47]But he is having a talk a difficult time figuring out who's going to be in the world and the difficult time fitting in
[3:54]Even within his own family, which leads to a kind of major falling out with his father after
[4:01]Chilani has moved home
[4:03]From college. He's living with his father topper
[4:05]They have a big fight and topper winds up throwing Chilani out of the out of the house
[4:10]And for much of the book we follow along as Chilani is picking up
[4:15]odd jobs as he's trying to
[4:19]Put a roof back over his head. He's living out of his vehicle for much of the book and
[4:23]He's balancing
[4:26]Jobs that are testing the boundaries of his
[4:31]morals I should say or he's put in a lot of complicated positions where he has to decide whether to
[4:39]choose his own well-being or
[4:41]Choose the well-being of others a lot of these jobs are kind of the vehicles for
[4:48]Seeing whether he's going to choose himself or or do what he thinks might be the right thing or the better thing
[4:56]And I mean, I think you don't take the easy way out
[4:59]No, you know, he makes different decisions at different times based on what the situation is
[5:04]I think nothing is simple in in the way of life
[5:07]So I absolutely I totally I totally hear that and I definitely got that from the book
[5:11]I have like a bunch of questions about your process because I thought the format was
[5:16]Sort of perfect for the story that you told but not necessarily like the most obvious choice if you're writing a fictional story
[5:21]So what made you decide to write this as sort of novel in stories?
[5:26]I think for each of the different stories
[5:30]You know at that certain points in the the writing of this book it took a lot of years for for me to eventually get this thing right
[5:38]Or as as right as I felt I could get it before I
[5:41]You know, I'd let it off let it out into the world out of my hands
[5:46]But through each of the stories I felt like I needed to figure out
[5:51]What's the best kind of container for a given story and that's why
[5:56]You know once
[5:57]Store or a few of the stories really are told in the second person
[6:01]Point of view of summer told from the third person point of view some refers person
[6:05]Summer first person kind of present tense
[6:08]Some are more retrospective where chilani's looking back on his childhood and trying to figure out
[6:15]You know where things might have gone wrong with between him and his father
[6:19]Or the different relationships with the his his brother and his cousin
[6:24]His family in general and um, but I think had I thought well all of these stories this larger narrative it all belongs in
[6:33]You know past tense present tense
[6:36]a person first person
[6:38]Then maybe I would have wound up publishing it as a novel
[6:42]But I just felt like each of the
[6:45]individual stories needed their own
[6:49]Individual narrative modes and that made me
[6:53]Decide on on on these being links stories essentially
[6:56]Very cool. I just probably like asking you to pick a favorite child
[7:00]But do you have a favorite story of the bunch?
[7:03]Yeah
[7:04]Um, I don't know, you know
[7:07]Sometimes every once in a while somebody will ask me to
[7:10]This is at book readings people ask me to sign not on the title page, but on my favorite story
[7:16]Controversy and I always freeze and I'm like oh my god, and I you know
[7:21]I inevitably I have to choose something
[7:23]And every time I sign, you know, I choose I flip through the book and I choose a page a story
[7:29]And there's always this kind of like really that
[7:34]They're always disappointed in my choice of favorite
[7:37]You know, either the first story influx or the or the title story the last story
[7:43]If I survive you have I'm fond of the the trilani stories though
[7:46]I will say under the
[7:48]Under the aki tree, which is told from the father's perspective
[7:52]Topper
[7:53]That's the story that kind of breaks my heart every time
[7:56]So yeah, okay. Well, I'm awesome. You know everybody listening to this podcast. What's your favorite story?
[8:02]You know, I thought about those before putting together this question in case you're good
[8:05]And I think it was pestilins probably
[8:09]Hmm, I love that. I love that because I think I feel like pestilins is
[8:13]Sorry, why you tell me why you think it's my favorite
[8:20]It just it just put it like I was there like I thought I was just absolutely there
[8:24]The language was really beautiful the description was so beautiful and again like it was a Miami story
[8:28]Do you know what I mean like it was absolutely
[8:31]You know, I could I could feel I could feel being there, but I like them. I love that
[8:36]You know pestilins
[8:38]I almost took pestilins out of the collection because I wondered if it was too
[8:46]Too quiet or too like nuanced in a way
[8:50]Because we have some of the other stories were like these big
[8:54]Violin things are happening. There's kind of you know, there's quieter
[8:59]Viola, I mean there's a loud violence of the hurricane in pestilins
[9:03]And and all these animals being slaughtered. So actually maybe it's not as quiet as
[9:07]I think but I'm glad. I'm always happy when I when I've heard that that is a standout story because I just wasn't sure that it was gonna
[9:17]Get the love that I
[9:19]Feel for yeah, well, it has my love for sure, but they were they were all
[9:23]They were I mean they just it would be it would be really difficult
[9:26]So like actually pick one to cut
[9:28]Did you have stories that you wrote that didn't make it in the book but in this universe of the family?
[9:33]I did the very first story that I wrote about this family got cut
[9:37]And I think it was the right decision
[9:40]But it was the story that I the story in which I discovered who these characters were for the very first time
[9:48]Which was part of a writing sample that I was submitting for my MFA's
[9:53]applications and
[9:55]It just I became a better writer in the process of discovering these
[10:00]characters and going to grad school and it was one of those kinds of stories that I just kept
[10:05]revising and revising and I think it got progressively worse. You know I was like I was just trying
[10:11]to save something that shouldn't have been saved I think. But somewhere the I mean the spirit of
[10:17]that story is very much alive in the book and including in the actual literal like what happens
[10:24]in the book is definitely still there. But that story had to come out and then I had a few
[10:28]like flash fiction pieces that came out that I don't know they in a way they could have
[10:35]still been in the book. But I think a lot of ground that those shorter pieces recovering are
[10:42]also covered in the longer stories that stayed. So that was to me. I wanted to you know
[10:47]making a very as lean and powerful a book as possible. Yeah it's definitely tight. Well so I mean
[10:54]I've like I've done my research. I read the New York Times profile on you. But can you give our listeners
[10:59]like a bit of a sense of your kind of journey to writing and to this you know incredible book that's
[11:05]out now. And you know did you always want to be a writer and you know you grew up in Miami but
[11:10]that's not where you were born. So tell us tell us your give us your like you know your potted
[11:14]history. Oh yes I was born. Houston, Texas. But my family after they they lived they moved
[11:25]from Jamaica to Houston and lived there for a short time. I did grow up in Miami and it's the town
[11:30]I know the best. And even though I've been away from Miami for 11 years I've been moving cities
[11:36]about every two or three years since I left Miami and I'm just tired of moving at this point.
[11:43]It's been wonderful. It's given me lots of perspective. But Miami the point being you don't
[11:48]know like the ins and outs of the city if you've only lived there two years. So Miami is still
[11:52]the place that I know. It's a place where I don't have to really throw on the GPS to get around town.
[11:58]But I always wanted to be a writer as a kid. I received a kind of balance of encouragement
[12:05]and discouragement in terms of you know like being told things like you better get a job which is
[12:15]true. But I found it discouraging still. And so I'm I'm an all or nothing kind of person. So I would
[12:25]be very much focused like it's going to be all my life is going to be all about writing or I'm
[12:30]just not going to write it all. And to that end of deciding I wasn't going to write it all. I kind
[12:37]of put it aside for for a bit but came back to it when I went to college or returned to college
[12:45]in my mid mid and late 20s and started taking a lot of creative writing workshops. And I really
[12:51]wasn't sure what I was going to do with an English degree. But I wasn't sure I was even going to do
[12:57]an English degree. I was showing up to workshops and I kept showing up to literature classes and
[13:04]that's where I was actually finding the joy in my day in a sense. And I just you know I realized
[13:12]after a while like hey you don't have that many credits left. Like obviously this is what interest
[13:17]you aside from any promised feature paychecks. And I learned about MFA programs while I was in I
[13:25]think it was a fiction. Well some kind of creative writing workshop a grad student came into the
[13:30]class gave a presentation on MFA programs and I thought that was just really useful information
[13:35]because I never heard of programs that especially fully funded programs that might allow you to
[13:42]just focus on your writing while providing enough of a stipend hopefully at least theoretically
[13:49]you to live on. Which is when I started doing a lot of research and after I graduated from
[13:56]after I got my bachelor's in literature I applied to MFA programs and wound up getting into a few
[14:03]and wound up going to the University of Minnesota because they offered the best funding and I was
[14:09]also very familiar fairly familiar with the work of the faculty and had three years in Minneapolis
[14:18]you know again I started to figure out how you write a story you know I think I think I did.
[14:28]And so yeah I don't know like I always wanted to be a writer but I was also someone who definitely
[14:32]needed I needed the education to write anything good. And then I you know I traveled I bounced
[14:39]around a bunch I'm in the Stegner fellowship at Stanford University I'm also kind of still
[14:47]in the PhD program at the University of Southern California so it's been a lot of years of
[14:53]work. I'm just like I'm not physically there. I'm sort of a doctor. Yeah I don't
[15:04]yeah something something I'm all I'm all over the place. I have found it useful to just like follow
[15:10]the funding in one of the house to creating a life in which I can write stories and you know
[15:19]usually that funding not always but oftentimes that funding is attached to some kind of graduate
[15:25]education program. So yeah I think I'm hitting the end I don't know where else to go after
[15:35]after the PhD or whether I finish the PhD or whether I don't finish the PhD I don't know.
[15:40]I mean it does feel like probably you should be teaching classes now maybe.
[15:46]And I do but you know the consequence of moving around the country all the time for years
[15:53]is that I no longer super interested in doing the thing that most people do when they go into
[15:59]academic job market which is put out a ton of applications all over the country to the Union
[16:05]Colleges and Universities that are located all over the country and I think I just at least for the
[16:13]time being I've used up all of my moving energy it's done and so now I'm just I'm keeping my eye
[16:22]out for interesting things in California but I just I don't think I can move anymore. Fair enough.
[16:27]Out of state yeah yeah yeah. So California feels like home now or at least where you want home to be.
[16:32]It does it does yeah. And what is your relationship like with Miami? Do you have lots of
[16:39]hometown love and pride? Do you have a complex relationship with it? I think it is um it's one of
[16:44]those places where people work like I don't know that everybody feels like well I guess everybody
[16:49]has a relationship with where they grew up but just the city of it not just like the home and
[16:53]this is my childhood part of it. I do feel like people are negotiating their relationships with Miami
[16:58]after they leave sometimes and even when they're there. Yeah yes yes yeah. I'm skeptical of people who
[17:04]don't have a complex relationship with Miami. People who just think it's like like wonderful playground
[17:12]and usually it's usually people who are not originally from there yeah but I have to say
[17:25]I was a little bit nervous about going back to Miami with the book like once the book was
[17:31]actually out. Just thinking about from from different angles I mean there's the angle people might
[17:37]think I'm too critical of Miami. Some people from Miami might just think I got it wrong but
[17:45]I've honestly had a really warm wonderful reception from readers in Miami. People keep writing
[17:54]me or I was just at the Miami Book Fair and they come up to me and they say thank you for writing
[17:58]a book about the real Miami which you know it's a real Miami. I'm not saying it's the because
[18:04]there's just might be so complex with all the different communities and cultures there but
[18:11]I've since the book has come out I've never I've never gotten so much love from Miami or
[18:18]as I've been reading this book so yeah I just need to keep writing about books in Miami.
[18:23]I guess I like Miami and then I like Miami more and more because Miami might like me more and more
[18:30]I guess but this is definitely a complicated relationship part of part of the complexity of it is that
[18:41]you know the actually I've had to be in Miami a lot over the last three months
[18:47]and Miami's just such a beautiful place that you can it's possible for you to forget
[18:55]like like the problem. If you are in a position to just look at the beauty or primarily
[19:03]look at the beautiful side of it you can you can forget and and and that I think is a tricky thing
[19:10]you can trick yourself into believing this is a wonderland that doesn't have problems and so I have
[19:15]to remind myself that when the book fair pays for me to fly down and puts me in a beautiful
[19:22]hotel and you know I'm looking at nothing but the most beautiful parts of Miami you know visually
[19:29]like aesthetically. And it's November everywhere else in the community people are freezing.
[19:33]Right right right right in the weather's you know it's been very nice lately yeah yeah it's
[19:39]easy to to believe that you could go there and not deal with the more difficult
[19:47]uh situation such as flooding you know and and when you know when is our city you're going to
[19:56]sink uh finally do you have a date
[20:00]You want to put somebody on this right now?
[20:03]Oh, my God, I'd rather not actually.
[20:06]But no, it wasn't accurate reflection of the complexities of what is a very beautiful place.
[20:11]And a place that gets fetishized a lot, right?
[20:13]Because it is so gorgeous, a lot of people go straight from the airport to South Beach
[20:17]and then they go back and that's kind of all they ever see.
[20:19]So I really, you know, like selfishly really love seeing you tell that story of what it's
[20:25]like in different parts of Miami and to grow up there.
[20:27]And obviously not from, you know, personal experience, it is a novel, but there were
[20:31]certainly a lot of details in there that you could only have written if you had grown up
[20:35]in Miami, everything from Mount Trashmore to the ubiquitous response to that kind of
[20:41]what are you doing?
[20:42]Question.
[20:43]I don't know.
[20:44]Actually, if Zibi lets me curse on this podcast, but I've never heard the answer to that anywhere
[20:47]outside of Miami when someone says, I'm just eating shit, bro.
[20:51]I mean, you tend to leave that if you want.
[20:53]She's never going to have me back on to guess.
[20:56]Was it, you know, but you did, you know, you must have had to reach back into some of
[20:59]those memories to kind of craft the world that you were building.
[21:02]Did you find that easy?
[21:03]Was it challenging?
[21:04]You know, what was that experience like for you?
[21:06]It was, I don't know if I'd use the word easy.
[21:09]I think it was kind of a cathartic maybe just I think when you on one side of the line
[21:19]of reaching back into my memory, it's like I sometimes wonder, is this so
[21:25]specific to my lived experience or is this so specific to a place like Miami, which
[21:31]I mean, it definitely has a global reputation and image, you know, but as you move outside
[21:38]of ocean drive and you start to delve into other specific elements of culture down there,
[21:47]trying to think, will this translate to a larger readership and doesn't need to translate
[21:51]to a larger readership and how do I get this past New York publishing in a sense?
[21:58]And then one side on the other side of that is, oh, but this is an opportunity for me
[22:02]to show something that it hasn't been, you know, done a million times and it's the same
[22:08]thing.
[22:09]It's like, do I have permission to do a thing because I haven't seen it done already
[22:12]and then leaning into the positives of, oh, this is an opportunity to show something
[22:18]that might come off as quote unquote, like unique and that's actually it's very exciting.
[22:24]And also it's just, as somebody who again is is writing pretty close to what's the
[22:30]term, what's the best, the chest, the sleeve, something like that, I'm so horrible at
[22:35]these sayings, but being able to bring that to the page and I guess it's in a way it
[22:41]is like affirming my own lived experience in a way that's like, yes, you know, I've
[22:47]lived this lived a version of and so and so have so many other people who may not be
[22:52]seeing their experiences in literature and for us.
[22:56]This is a wonderful thing that, you know, before your book deal, you don't really know
[23:01]if it's going to make it out there, but you're optimistic and you're like, when this makes
[23:05]it out, you know, we will be able to see ourselves and that's an exciting thing.
[23:10]So let's talk a little bit about your kind of publishing process and your process to
[23:13]being published, how did that go?
[23:16]How did you find your editor?
[23:17]How did you kind of move into that from having the idea on the page and then to having
[23:21]your fully finished book?
[23:23]Yeah.
[23:24]Well, I think another reason I went with the link story form is I suspected that it would
[23:35]be helpful to start having some kind of presence in the literary world if I started putting
[23:41]out stories, even from, you know, this singular project, again, at certain points,
[23:48]I was thinking of it as a novel and so I was thinking of these stories as excerpts rather
[23:54]than just single stories that I was going to be sending out.
[23:57]I wasn't sure that they all needed to be, I mean, not all, but all the ones that I wound
[24:02]up sending out, I wasn't sure that I needed to be doing that, but it was helpful to start
[24:07]to test the waters of publishing just through literary journals.
[24:12]I eventually wound up having the story under the achy tree picked up by the parish review
[24:19]and I know my editor, Jackson Howard, FSG, I think first came across my writing through
[24:25]that story and started kind of paying attention to what I was doing.
[24:31]And I mean, really, like with that publication and then with, I think it was maybe six
[24:36]or seven months later, they awarded me the Plimpton Prize and a lot of publishers started
[24:42]getting in touch with, between that publication or the award, they started getting in touch
[24:47]with me, they started getting in touch with my agent, Reneeza Zuckerberg.
[24:51]And it was kind of like a moment where I realized that a lot of the people that I would
[24:57]be wanting to query, not query, submit my book to, you know, when it was time to go out
[25:04]on submission, I realized a lot of those people were already waiting on the book in a sense.
[25:09]And I think that was the great benefit of having these stories to send out into the world
[25:16]before, you know, had I just held on to everything and not like people maybe would have
[25:22]had the same excitement, if they gave it the opportunity to actually read it, it's a really
[25:28]wonderful thing when people are waiting on your project before you give it to them.
[25:33]And so yeah, I mean, we had a kind of long list going before we ever went on submission
[25:39]and then we went out on submission in spring of 2021 and it was, it was a really exciting
[25:49]book sale because we had this, I met with like 20, about 20 publishers publishing
[25:57]and then we had a auction that was set up and it was 14 people, 14, you know, houses
[26:04]committed to the, to the auction. And it was just, yeah, it was a really used the most exciting
[26:09]time of my, my wife for sure. But how incredible. Yeah, yeah, it was cool. And like very well
[26:16]deserved. And was this like a, do you, do you feel like everything you've written kind
[26:20]of turns to gold or do you have like a littered pathway of rejections behind you like
[26:26]Oh, that's in the writing field. Yeah, it's okay. By the way, if the answer is no, because
[26:33]I think that's pretty awesome. But no, no, no, not everything I, I mean, that, that I've said,
[26:41]I've probably said this elsewhere. I don't know. Like that same story under the acne tree,
[26:46]I brought it to a workshop a little bit before we sent it out. And though the workshop
[26:51]instructor told me to throw it in the garbage. Yeah. And, you know, I'm thankfully, you
[27:01]know, this wasn't like the first story I'd written or anything like that had, you know,
[27:04]a lot of published stories before that. But I think that is an example of the road where
[27:12]one person thinks your story is worthy of prizes and being published in, you know, places
[27:19]with the biggest circulations. And then someone else might think it's literally garbage.
[27:24]Okay. I love that. I have that person is listening to this podcast or having like,
[27:31]cool. I mean, surely you want to go back to that person. Just be like, you know, there's
[27:37]no huge mistake. No, no, I'm sure you're bigger than that. But, you know, I think it's more,
[27:44]I think it's like a learning, I mean, I think that was a terrible thing to tell any student.
[27:48]But, but, but, which I did tell her actually, but besides that, like, I've had, I've had those
[27:56]experiences where, you know, I sent, it weren't taken me like a really long time to get pieces
[28:04]published. And I think in a way, it's like you, I suspect for some of us, we have to actually
[28:13]teach the, the literary magazine community how to actually read our work. And that at times can
[28:22]take a long time. And so even like some editors who actually have published me, it's like,
[28:28]the first time they came across my writing, like they didn't understand what it was that I was
[28:31]trying to accomplish. And then, you know, by maybe the fourth or fifth submission, they're like,
[28:37]oh, I kind of get it. And then it also helps that other people have been publishing you along
[28:42]the way. Yeah. Sometimes, and then sometimes those stories that they rejected go on to win awards and
[28:47]things like that. And then it's like, maybe, you know, maybe I should actually like read it more
[28:52]closely and try to figure out what it is that I've been missing. So yeah, I haven't, I would say
[28:58]not everything I've written as turn to gold. The shorter answer. All right, I love that. So what's next
[29:06]for you? What are you working on now? And what's kind of ahead besides finishing your PhD eventually,
[29:10]maybe, or maybe not? Yeah. Yeah. Working on a novel that is set in Miami. Excellent. Yeah. Yeah.
[29:22]I don't know what else I could say about it. The thing is like, anything I could say right now,
[29:26]my, my change. But it's early early to earlyish days. It's earlyish days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
[29:36]yeah, you know, promoting a book takes a lot of time. And the better a book does like the more
[29:41]time you have to spend promoting it. And so I'm just sneaking time with the, the novel that I'm
[29:48]working on, which, you know, I'm writing a lot on my phone and then copying and pasting that into
[29:55]the book. Okay. Um, yeah, if you can do.
[30:00]That, that's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's like more out of necessity, I think,
[30:07]like, you know, like now the idea is coming to me and I just don't know that I'm going to actually
[30:12]sit down in front of the computer and take the time to, to remember it. So I'm trying to, to do that.
[30:17]And I don't know if there's something that's kind of fun about it. Because, because this way,
[30:22]I'm not having to actually face the blank page about it. We have like the, the writing and the
[30:27]ideas. And even when it's bad, it's like, I would say, like, bad writing is a gift because
[30:33]now you can make it better. What you have blank space is just terrifying. And so this is, yeah,
[30:39]this is the process I have going on right now. Well, that's awesome. And I know I'm not the only
[30:44]person who will be eagerly anticipating your next project. And thank you for sharing some of your
[30:49]stolen moments with us on mom's don't have time to read books. We always finish with what your advice
[30:54]would be to aspiring writers who are listening to this. Yeah. Trust the process, I think,
[31:00]even though I can be like salty and bitter about people who didn't pick up certain stories
[31:04]that I submitted. Sometimes, you know, you look back and it's like, oh, I'm so grateful to know and
[31:10]picked up, you know, that story and that I had to work towards making stories that were undeniable,
[31:18]which only made me a better writer, which has led to better outcomes in my writing life. And,
[31:25]you know, learn to understand what it is that you're trying to accomplish on the page. I think
[31:31]that could be a really helpful thing to you so that you understand. And one way you learn that
[31:36]is by reading people whose work appears to be in conversation with your own. That way, when you
[31:40]meet the workshop leader who says, you know, you can't do this in writing and you'll say,
[31:45]of course, I can because I have 10 books in which writers are striving to do the same thing.
[31:50]And that will give you the confidence to just know when to move forward with your,
[31:54]your super awesome stories. I love that everyone's going to get.
[31:59]I love it. Thank you so much, Jonathan, for your time today. So thank you for having me. It's been a
[32:04]joy. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't
[32:10]forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[32:14]Also sign up for my newsletter at zibi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet
[32:19]lots of authors on zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[32:24]for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic
[32:28]intro and now trim music.