Shelley Read, GO AS A RIVER
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Shelly B. It is the author of Go as a River, a novel.
[1:07]She is a fifth-generation Coloradoan who lives with her family at 9,000 feet elevation in
[1:12]the elk mountains of the Western Slope.
[1:14]Her debut novel Go as a River is inspired by her ancestors and the wild landscape where
[1:19]she wanders and wonders.
[1:21]An award-winning senior lecturer at Western Colorado University for nearly three decades,
[1:26]Shelly taught writing, literature, environmental studies and honors, and was a founder of
[1:30]the interdisciplinary environment and sustainability major, the Prague Study Abroad program
[1:36]and a support program for first generation and at-risk students.
[1:39]She holds a double major honors being an English and journalism from the University of Denver
[1:44]and an MA from Temple University's graduate program in creative writing and the Temple
[1:48]Rome Seminar in aesthetics.
[1:50]Shelly was also a Dean's Fellow in the PhD program in English at the University of Denver
[1:53]where she studied 19th and 20th century world literature and philosophy.
[1:57]She is currently a board member and writing instructor for Vita Institute for the Arts
[2:02]in the U.S. and Italy.
[2:03]She also conducts writing and literary workshops for the Crested Butte Art Center and
[2:07]is a regular contributor to Crested Butte magazine and Gennison Valley Journal.
[2:11]I wonder if she knows my cousin, I have a cousin who lives there named Louisa Naughton,
[2:16]who makes fabulous pottery and lives in Crested Butte, maybe they know each other.
[2:20]I'll find out after this.
[2:21]Shelly is a mom, mountaineer, world traveler and friend to small creatures and old dogs.
[2:25]She loves a few things more than the first steps of a new adventure and a hot cup of tea
[2:29]after a grand day out.
[2:31]Now that is a great bio.
[2:32]Welcome, Shelly.
[2:33]Thank you so much for coming on Momstone, have time to read books to discuss.
[2:36]Your novels go as a river.
[2:39]Hi, Zibi.
[2:40]Thank you so much for having me.
[2:42]You're welcome.
[2:43]Can you please tell everybody what your book is about?
[2:46]Yeah, so my book is a novel and it focuses on a young woman named Victoria Nash.
[2:53]In the book Opens, it's 1948 and she's a 17-year-old growing up along the banks of
[2:58]the wild Gennison River on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies.
[3:03]And the novel follows Victoria through her life a variety of difficult decisions and challenges.
[3:10]And oh, just a lot of really tragic moments on her life that leads her toward digging
[3:16]into herself more deeply and finally kind of understanding her, the depth of her strength
[3:21]and her resilience.
[3:22]By the time we end the book, it's in 1971 and Victoria has sort of learned to live her life.
[3:30]She's learned to go as a river and that's where the title of the book comes from.
[3:34]It's amazing.
[3:35]And you are like a fourth, fifth generation Colorado and is that I get that right?
[3:40]Yeah, yeah, fifth generation Colorado and super proud of that, you know, really very rooted
[3:46]in place as just sort of fundamental aspect of my being.
[3:50]And I've always loved that, but I've come to realize over time, you know, how rare
[3:56]and special that actually is.
[3:58]I feel like place is one of the key things in your book that differentiates it is how
[4:04]absolutely beautiful and gorgeous and sort of environmentally evocative it is, alongside
[4:09]the development of your characters and everything.
[4:12]It's just so beautiful and just to traverse, so thank you very much, you know, place
[4:20]and displacement become the primary theme of the book, you know, also home and family,
[4:25]where we turn when those are lost and female friendship, motherhood, it touches on a lot
[4:29]of those really fundamental human experiences.
[4:32]But I think because I'm so rooted in place, the novel and Victoria's journey became so
[4:37]rooted in place as well.
[4:38]You love that.
[4:40]Tell me your whole story, like let's back up for a long time, Colorado is, but then what?
[4:47]So you're born in Colorado?
[4:49]Well, yeah, I have been, had the great fortune to live in a family that love is camping
[4:55]and mountain climbing and being out in the wilderness, it's been really defined my entire
[5:00]life.
[5:01]I've lived my entire adult life at 9,000 feet in the Western Slope of Colorado Rockies
[5:06]in Gunnison Valley, the same valley where the novel is set.
[5:10]So people who have read the book have a pretty good sense of what my landscape is all
[5:14]around.
[5:15]And I'm so grateful for that.
[5:17]I lived here in the high in the mountain starting in college.
[5:21]I grew up in the front range of Colorado primarily in Colorado Springs.
[5:25]And we're generations of my family, my great grandparents, my grandparents, my mom and dad,
[5:29]my uncle's and aunt's cousins.
[5:30]We all live there all nearby each other, which was of great value to me.
[5:34]But as soon as I could choose where I wanted to live, I had family here in the Gunnison
[5:39]Valley.
[5:40]So in 1985, as a sophomore in college, the University of Denver, I started living here
[5:44]here in the summers all through college and graduate school.
[5:48]And then I was fortunate enough to get a job teaching at Western Colorado University,
[5:52]fresh out of grad school in 1991.
[5:54]It's in Gunnison.
[5:56]And I've just stayed ever since.
[5:58]And over those 30 some years, this landscape and this place has really become my homeland.
[6:03]And I was a teacher for all of those years.
[6:05]And so the writing journey for me set out to be a writer as a young woman, taught for
[6:10]almost 30 years.
[6:12]And while I was being a mom and focusing all of those things, and I've now come back
[6:16]around to my writing life by finishing this novel.
[6:19]So it's it's been a full circle journey for me in that way.
[6:22]Oh my gosh, that's so amazing.
[6:25]So when did you start this novel?
[6:27]Oh my gosh, it's funny people keep asking me, you know, how long did it take you to
[6:31]write?
[6:32]And I've really had to go back because it was quite a long process of just sort of chipping
[6:37]away at it.
[6:38]You know how it is, you know, being a busy mom, you sort of find time for your creativity.
[6:42]You find time for what matters most to your own soul.
[6:45]Unfortunately, it can be at the bottom of the list.
[6:48]You sort of just find time for it here and there.
[6:50]So I think I chipped away on this novel for at least 12 years or more until I really knew
[6:58]that I needed to clear this face on my creative process on or this book and Victoria's
[7:03]story that I love so much.
[7:06]And clear some of the other things out of my life and really focus on finishing it.
[7:10]So I finally did that.
[7:12]I took early retirement from my university in 2018 and ever since and it's just been a
[7:17]journey of completing the final drops and getting it out into the world.
[7:21]Oh my gosh, where is your favorite place to write?
[7:25]Oh, in the wilderness, absolutely.
[7:28]I'm always, I go camping alone a lot.
[7:31]I love to camp with my husband and my kids, of course, but I love to camp alone.
[7:35]Where I just can clear everything out and I always have a journal with me and I have over
[7:40]years and years written volumes of observations of the natural world.
[7:44]And also we have a generational family cabin that sits on a lake west of here.
[7:49]And I love to write there so much that you know a body of this body memory for places
[7:54]that you do certain things in certain places.
[7:57]The minute I walk into our cabin, I want to write.
[8:00]So I think between those two places, those are my favorite places and my most productive
[8:05]places to write.
[8:06]I love that.
[8:07]That's sort of like since memory, like you're like a rat with the pellets or something.
[8:12]Exactly.
[8:13]That fundamental.
[8:14]Yes.
[8:15]I love it.
[8:17]That's great.
[8:18]And when you're writing your journals, I'm assuming by hand, do you type your work or
[8:22]do you write everything by hand or how do you do it?
[8:26]Well, you know, because the process of writing goes over the river was so kind of wacky,
[8:32]really.
[8:33]I don't people often ask me what's your writing process.
[8:36]And I was like, well, as a full-time teacher and a mom of young children, my writing process
[8:42]was snippets anywhere I possibly could.
[8:44]So right, post it notes, jotting down in a notebook, recorded in my phone, whatever.
[8:49]I'm hoping that's not my real writing process, I know that my kids are older and out
[8:55]of the house, and then I'm actually able to sit down and write this second novel.
[8:59]I'm hoping my process is a lot more sane.
[9:02]But what I find is that I do a combination of writing, hand writing.
[9:07]I have stacks of spiral notebooks that have both notes and sections of what became goes
[9:13]a river, as well as many files in my computer.
[9:16]And so I think, honestly, for this novel, or goes a river, my answer is I wrote just
[9:23]whenever and however I could.
[9:26]And you know, I think it's important to capture ideas when they come to you.
[9:30]Otherwise, I think they can get lost, they can later hours later, you think, what was that
[9:34]wonderful idea that I had and it's gone?
[9:37]And I find that so tragic, like so painful.
[9:39]So I'm a jotter, I jot down everywhere, and then I piece things together.
[9:44]I think that's my process.
[9:46]That's amazing.
[9:48]How old are your kids now?
[9:49]25 and my youngest just turned 20, which is shotgun for me.
[9:53]My baby, no, oh, it's, it's a beautiful thing and also kind of wound up with a sense
[9:59]of loss as well.
[10:00]I don't I don't like that they're out of the house like sure I can right now. That's wonderful, but I'd rather have them screaming through the living room. You know, so
[10:10]You know that whole journey of being a mother. It really ended up playing more powerfully in my novel that I initially anticipated and I think that it had something to do
[10:20]With being in that space of watching my children get older and knowing that this moment was coming and and feeling that connection with them so deeply
[10:28]So, you know, you know, the journey of motherhood is a is a new experience every day
[10:34]No, it's it's interesting how you phrase that, you know, sometimes like oh, well
[10:40]You know when they're when they're all out of the house. I'll be able to blah, blah, blah, blah
[10:43]You know, but then you forget that that is not necessarily the goal
[10:49]It's gonna be so sad. It's like when
[10:51]They're not here for extended periods of time, and I'm like, okay, it's been a week time time for them to come back from my husband's
[10:58]Trump really kind of dig into some of that in the novel because this novel for me started as a spark of wanting to
[11:07]Explore what does it mean to be a woman in the world because there are so many of those
[11:13]Complexities of wanting to reclaim your and hold tight to who you feel like you are outside of motherhood
[11:20]But at the same time, you know, the various characters in my book
[11:24]They're sort of defined by by whether they are or are not a mother
[11:28]I have one character in go who never wanted to be a mother and there are many layers of where we find family
[11:34]How we're defined as women what our possibilities are and certainly for Victoria in 1948 when we first meet her
[11:41]Her opportunities for sense of self her abilities are incredibly limited by societal constraints and the expectations of the men in her life
[11:50]And I wanted to explore that how women have to fight a little harder to
[11:55]Find and assert themselves in the world outside of the context outside of the definitions that are created for them
[12:03]I think that becomes sort of an underlying theme throughout the book now as we follow Victoria and
[12:09]As she develops a sense of self and as she becomes herself through the novel
[12:13]It really is about her figuring out her own identity and her own power for herself as opposed to it being
[12:20]Defined externally. So what are your kids think of your book? They're super proud of me
[12:24]And they're they're really excited for me
[12:26]But you know if kids have a way of just kind of going about their life of like mom's doing whatever mom's doing
[12:32]Hey mom, that's really cool. Can you fix me as an itch?
[12:35]So I think I hope that I'm for any writers who are listening and anyone out there
[12:41]Who really needs to be inspired to stick with something
[12:46]I hope that I've been an inspiration and a model for my kids
[12:50]Chipping away at this book that I really believed in for all those years and actually finishing it and actually getting it into the world
[12:56]I know that they are proud of me for that
[12:59]But what I hope more than anything is that that has become part of them
[13:03]And their own journey in some way that they can believe in themselves and their own dreams and say well
[13:08]You know mom made hers happen. I can make mine happen too
[13:12]I really hope that's one of the legacies for my children of this of this novel getting out into the world
[13:19]Beautiful. You seem like such a nurture. Do you cook a lot?
[13:22]Do you like a great do you love to cook? Do you love to bake like no no not really
[13:27]Okay, originally now that the kids are out of the house
[13:30]I'd love salad
[13:31]So I literally just don't cook it off. I've done it for 25 years if you want food
[13:35]You can just make it yourself
[13:36]But I am a nurture in the land
[13:39]I think I carry on some of my ancestors
[13:42]Love of the land and you know I come from ranchers and farmers and people who
[13:46]Worked the land and loved the land and I have a I live at 9,000 feet elevation
[13:50]But I have a huge garden vegetable garden that we that we eat out of for a portion of the year
[13:55]And I nurture but I nurture and I think in different ways
[14:01]Amazing
[14:02]What is your next novel?
[14:03]Well, I'm trying to work on that now
[14:07]The publicity side of real of releasing a book
[14:09]It's a very different part of my brain helping go as a river get into the world
[14:13]And I'm on a book tour. I'm kind of midway through it
[14:16]I've already done I think 14 stops or something
[14:20]I'm on my way to a European tour because my novel it's being translated into 30 languages and puzzle
[14:27]My gosh less countries, which I'm so so so honored by I'm so honored
[14:32]There's clearly something in the various thematic concerns that's resonating broadly and I'm so grateful for that
[14:40]And and so I'm really trying to just love this moment of getting this book out in the world
[14:46]But at the same time yes, I have a and you know these new characters and a new story and a new novel that
[14:52]I'm just itching to really dig into and you know, I'm sitting with it
[14:56]It's it's kind of percolating and I'm learning and figuring out who these characters are
[15:01]I've definitely learned for me that character in place or what really drives my interest in a narrative
[15:06]And so I want to really get to know those aspects of this new book and then then hopefully it'll all really unfold for me
[15:14]I don't think
[15:15]Awesome
[15:16]When you read is what are some of your go-to novels or genres or all of that?
[15:21]Yeah, well, I love poetry. I read a lot of poetry actually and I
[15:27]I read poetry while I'm writing. It's the thing that kind of bumps me out of writer's block
[15:32]And I really don't read other people's fiction while I'm trying to write my own, you know
[15:36]Because the stories can get muddled but I'm such a reader
[15:40]I need to be reading all the time and so when I'm writing I read a lot of poetry and I read I read nonfiction
[15:46]So my favorite novelists. I love the quiet novels of Marilyn Robinson
[15:52]She's always been a bit of a hero to me and you know
[15:55]My undergraduate degrees and my master's and my PhD work always in literary studies and philosophy and so I feel like I carry this
[16:02]This huge sort of backpack of all of these classic works of literature that I've studied really carefully
[16:07]They've all taught me so much about narrative
[16:10]I love Virginia Woolf and I love some of the classic
[16:13]19th century American storytellers and I you know, I love such a breadth of literature
[16:19]And they're so different like I love environmental writing. I taught that for many years and so
[16:24]I can't even begin to tell you every every one who sort of sits on my shoulders and whispers in my ear
[16:30]As I'm doing my own writing
[16:32]But then to try to make my own as authentic and honest and true to me as I possibly can
[16:38]So yeah, you know, I recently bought a new collection of Lucille Clifton's poetry
[16:43]I've been loving that and Scott Mommade collection is from the Kaiowa Indigenous tribe
[16:48]Called the death of sitting there. I've been reading that poetry lately
[16:52]You know, I read so broadly that it's hard to sum up, but that I guess in a nutshell is what I've been reading lately
[16:59]Excellent
[17:01]Well, if somebody doesn't know you and there was something that was really surprising about you
[17:07]Like that they might not pick up on right away. What would that be?
[17:12]Oh, what would that be? That is a very good question
[17:16]It might be this kind of push and pull that I'm feeling that I that I was just mentioning around being out in the world
[17:24]And being sort of a very public self and being my very quiet self as well because I've been a professor for all of these years
[17:31]And I can walk into a classroom and I can smile and teach and engage the class and and I love my students
[17:38]And I love you know encouraging their ideas
[17:41]And I'm perfectly comfortable out on this book tour stepping onto a stage and talking to people
[17:46]You might not know that what I really love is to actually be left totally alone
[17:53]Solitude. I love time and the wilderness. I love time in my own mind
[17:57]I'm actually far more of an introvert. Maybe than I come across
[18:01]And so what I find is being a very public self is very exhausting. It's really tiring
[18:06]I can't do it, but it's very tiring when I'm at my happiest is when I'm alone in the wilderness with good hiking shoes and a pen and a notebook
[18:18]I might not come across as that's what I'd really rather be but that is always where I'd rather be. Yeah
[18:23]Oh
[18:24]It's so funny. We can like love the same literature and have all of that in common and connect on some levels
[18:30]But I would not be my happiest
[18:37]But I would be very happy like on the couch behind me, you know, reading
[18:42]Also alone alone. I'm okay with alone, but maybe with someone I feel a little safer
[18:46]Not really with the bear, you know, kind of like
[18:51]Spin trees. Yeah, I guess if I knew it as well as you
[18:55]I don't know part of mine is like anxiety and the wilderness of like all the things that can go wrong and
[19:02]You know, fear. Whereas if I'm at home, I have no fear
[19:06]Well, that's true, you know, I tried to pull some of that into at the point in the novel when Victoria flees into the wilderness
[19:13]I didn't want to romanticize being in the wilderness. It's it's scary for me sometimes as well. It's it's incredibly humbling
[19:20]It's very vulnerable, but in that way. It's also very instructive. I think that for me
[19:25]I've learned probably more about
[19:27]Life and about life and death and about being my best self and about perspective
[19:32]Probably more than anything by being in wild landscapes and that is not always because I've been entirely comfortable
[19:39]I've had certainly in my fair share of
[19:41]Near death experiences on various mountaintops and whatnot
[19:44]But I think that the lessons for me and and I channeled some of those lessons into my character Victoria
[19:50]A lot of those lessons is that there's that sense of humility and that sense of something so much
[19:55]Grander and worry eternal than myself really a lot of powerful lessons to be
[20:00]learned there. And because it's been so much a part of my own journey, I wanted it to be part
[20:05]of Victoria's journey as well in the novel. Well, I wish you were my teacher. I would love to take
[20:14]class from you. We offer zippy classes if you ever have any interest in teaching it. I would take it.
[20:21]That's so kind. Thank you very much. Because I, you know, like I said, I love the university
[20:25]to focus on writing. And I do, I do miss it. I miss teaching. You should do a class. You could
[20:30]even do it just once, like a workshop on writing about plays or I don't know whatever you want to do.
[20:35]Well, thank you. Okay. You have a wonderful energy about you. And I just love listening to you
[20:42]talk. And it's just so very special woman. You can just like radiates off of you.
[20:49]Oh, thank you, Zibi. I appreciate that very, very much. Thank you. It's super kind.
[20:54]That's true. Anyway, thank you for all of your time. Thank you for goes to River. Congratulations. Good luck
[21:00]with the rest of your amazing tour. And congrats. And all of your success. Oh, I didn't even mention that
[21:05]it's also in development, as he said, as a as a film, is that right? Yeah, it is. In development is
[21:12]the phrase that I've been taught to use at this point. Because, you know, it's all an alien world to me.
[21:17]I've had a huge learning curve about the publishing world. And now I'm on that same learning curve
[21:22]about the film world. But yes, currently there are plans to turn goes River into a film. And it's
[21:28]in the very early stages. But I am so excited about that. I've had people say that some of the
[21:34]writing and some of the images that is rather cinematic and that it might translate to film in a
[21:40]rather beautiful way. And so yeah, I'm really excited to see how that's all going to play out
[21:46]and how that will happen. So yeah, stay tuned for that. We'll see. I am staying tuned.
[21:52]You're like, I'm on a wild ride on this whole thing. It all as far as surpassed my expectations.
[21:58]My goal with writing this book was to just tell Victoria's story as best as I possibly could
[22:03]out of respect for her. And so the fact that, you know, all of this is happening with the book is
[22:07]really, I'm so grateful. And I think I'll never stop to being so kind of shocked and surprised.
[22:14]And Victoria is a fictitious character.
[22:22]After in mind myself of that, I was just confirming that for anybody else.
[22:27]So I'm getting confused at this point in the conversation.
[22:31]I believe fictitious her setting is a real setting and that his viola Colorado is a real history
[22:36]but yes, Victoria is an entirely fictitious character who simply because I've lived with her so
[22:42]long and lovers so much. I sometimes forget that myself. Oh my gosh. Oh, there it is. All these
[22:48]characters, everybody makes up who like, dance around. I don't know. Maybe they're all living somewhere
[22:54]together. I will happily hang it out in their fictitious world. Anyway, okay. Bye, Shelley. Thank you so much.
[23:01]I did. Thank you so much. Have a great day. Bye bye.
[23:06]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[23:10]Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read
[23:14]Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibiowans.com and sign up for my virtual book club and
[23:19]meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[23:24]for the Sound Editing. And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this
[23:28]fantastic intro and outro music.