Emma Brodie and Morgan Radford

[0:49]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at zibby owens. Today is a two in one episode with two amazing authors. Emma Brody is the author of Into the Blue, a love story, which was a Reese's book club pick and was published by Jenna Bush Hager's imprint thousand voices. It just became a New York Times bestseller as well, and I was honored to interview her right the day after she was picked as a Reese's book club pick. Emma has worked in book publishing for fifteen years, currently as an executive editor at Clarkson Potter. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University's writing seminars, and her debut novel, Songs a Nurse a Major, received the American Book Award. She lives on Martha's Vineyard with her husband and their very good dog, Freddie Mercury. Welcome to Totally Booked Live at the Whitby. I am here with Emma Brody to talk about her book Into the Blue. Round of applause, please. Okay. Not only is this published by Thousand Voices and Pal and Ballantyne, which is Jenna Bush Hager's imprint, but yesterday, it became the Reese's Book Club pick. And a book of the month club pick. Who would add on? Has not picked this book? And what is wrong with them? I know.

[2:52]Emma Brodie: It's amazing. It really is. It's just the most humbling thing, isn't it? I mean, I don't know. I've never been a Reese's Book Lovering.

[2:59]Zibby Owens: I I will be really humble should I be picked.

[3:02]Emma Brodie: No. It's it's incredible. I mean, I've done this before, and I know this is not what normally happens to books. So it's just it's just incredible. Like, I I couldn't love this project more. And so for it to be happening to these characters that I just adore with every fiber of my being, it's just, like, the most incredible thing. I think they deserve it. They've been through a lot. They have. They have been through through so much. Yeah. It's it's really nice. They feel very real to me, I feel like. Me too. Okay.

[3:31]Zibby Owens: Tell everybody I wanna hear your whole backstory. And we haven't met before a few minutes ago, I'm so excited to dive in. I wanna hear your backstory, but I also really want you to tell everybody what the book is about. And why do you think it's it's hitting such a nerve? So crazy. Okay. It's three great questions. So my backstory in a nutshell. No. Don't do it in nutshell. I want, like, the whole thing. So go go straight to what the book is about. It was 1987,

[3:54]Emma Brodie: and my parents were on the vineyard. No. No. I I'm a career editor. So I've worked in book publishing for fifteen years. I work at Clarkson Potter, which is the premier illustrated publisher. So we're known for big cookbooks like Martha Stewart, Ina Garten. I don't work on those. I work on the stuff you buy near the checkout counter or on the coffee table. So we probably have some things in my realm behind us right now. And I've always wanted to write, so it's been a really nice complement where I get to work with lots of visual artists, lots of experts in their field, but it's not fiction editing. So it's it's incredibly complementary and I've gotten a real education on the business, on just creative art in general through my job. And then on the side, I've always written. So I published my first book in 2021, Songs a Nurse Major, and then Into the Blue is my sophomore book. So it's been a really interesting ride for the last five years figuring out how to do it again. I really feel like it's different every time you sit down to write a book. You're bringing different energy to the table. You're bringing your a different set of values in a different past. So that's that's how sort of I got here in the the raw bullet points. Not the not the short shortest version, the second shortest version. Okay. And then Into the Blue is an epic love story about AJ Graves and Noah Drew who meet working at a video store in the year 2000. They form a deep cosmic artistic connection, and then Noah disappears without a word. So the book then follows them for thirteen years and you get to watch them evolve as they go from being these nerds that work in a video store to being people that actually produce the media that's in the video store. So he becomes an Academy Award winning actor. She becomes a writer for SNL. And then along the way, they star in a cult TV show called Into the Blue. Through the thirteen years, they never stop longing for each other. They never stop loving each other. And ultimately, I think this book is about two people figuring out what lights them up and how to make a life around that and whether they can actually find the courage to do it. So it's it's been amazing, like, watching it watching it translate to different people because there are aspects of it that I think are so timeless. Like, I was really inspired by classic epic love stories like Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights. But I was also really inspired by the Force Connection in Star Wars. So there there there's an absolute nerdy edge to this book. But what I'm loving seeing the reception and seeing seeing as readers begin to get their hands on it is that people are finding ways to connect with it that I never even imagined. So I think that's the most incredible thing about art. Like, you can you have your places where you're touching the creation. But there are whole other, like, dark sides of it that you don't even necessarily realize. So I'm excited to see it out there and see what people actually find and discover that resonates with them.

[6:56]Zibby Owens: It's the best part. Oh my gosh. Amazing. Well, you have you have so many themes. There's so much about family. There's family, health, loyalty, risk taking, longing, regret, people getting in their own way. Yes. People trying to find a way. It's like a backstop against pain, which is impossible.

[7:21]Emma Brodie: Love that. You can use it. Taken. Yeah. Heard it here first, folks. I kept kidding. No. It's it's really true. I think control and self protection are two big themes in the book. And I think AJ and Noah come at it from different angles. Like, I think she's very afraid of being exposed and being seen. She's a middle child, from a very large family, and her her mechanism for coping with life is just to constantly make jokes out of everything. And she views herself at the beginning of the novel as this sort of side character. Like, she views herself as the comic best friend. And I think what's so cool about her relationship with Noah is that he sees her as having main character energy. So he's constantly pulling her into the main character spotlight, both literally and figuratively throughout the novel. And then he is and he is so amazing. He is just so hot. And and he's And so tall. And so tall. And he's brilliant. And he feels very deeply, and he's an incredible performer. And he really views himself as a loner. So AJ is constantly challenging his narrative. Like, she he thinks he's on a hero's journey, which is essentially like, I have to sacrifice myself for my values and I will end up alone. And I think her the constant tug between them is she's constantly pulling him into a heroine's journey where she's like, no, we can do this together. And it's very cool watching these two tensions play out between these two people over the course of such a long period of time. Cause they never really go away, but they find new ways of orienting themselves towards it. And it's they feel very real to me too.

[8:57]Zibby Owens: Well, Noah, who, as I think my kids would say, is is giving Jacob a lordy Love. Yes. Love this for us. Noah is from an acting family. Yes. Right. So he is like a Sutherland or something like that. Yes. A very, something like that. And when they have this very deep connection, it happens through acting in the beginning. And his aunt has taken quite an interest in Noah and AJ, who had never acted before. And they have this incredible chemistry and dynamic, and they both just throw themselves into this improv and the acting itself is a through line in the book and how they interact together, how they watch each other act. And even that piece of it, found really fascinating. What does it take to be a great actor or actress? Today is a two in one episode with two amazing cookbook authors and Talk about that through line. And I was as I read it, I was like, is Emma did Emma ever act? Does she wanna act? Does she study acting? Because there there seems to be a, like, a a big lens on the mechanics of that. I love performers. My mom's a performer. My first book is about a musician. I think performance is such an interesting space

[10:16]Emma Brodie: because really performance stories are ultimately about integrity and honor. So it's I love I love those values and I I do think I do think there's so much fun to be had when you have this sort of area in a book that's that's a break from real life, that's built into the storytelling. So I love getting to play with that and we really play with that in Into the Blue. There's so much where there are times where what's happening on stage is actually the truth, and what's happening in life is the performance, and it reverses. And there's a lot of really fun push and pull within the show about that. It's I I had such a blast. I really enjoyed myself playing with all of those dynamics. So to answer your question, one of the other main through lines that sort of goes along with the acting is improvisation. So I think this is a massive motif motif in the book is, like, do you have to follow the script in your life? Like, is there a normal life, and are there benchmarks we all have to hit to to feel good about ourselves, to feel like we've done it, done this thing called life? Or can you just make it up as you go along? And that push and pull is mirrored by them being in scripted productions versus unscripted productions. So it all kind of weaves together, but I think I think it's all an incredible metaphor for love at the end of the day. And the idea of of the long conversation where you meet this person and you just have so much in common. I think there's a lot about fandom in the book that also plays into that dynamic. And they're all different kinds of connections that happen in a contemporary setting where, you know, we meet, we connect about Jane Austen, I can talk to you for an hour, it doesn't matter. You have no past, you have no future, but we both love Jane Austen. I'm assuming that. I don't actually know that. She's alright. But fill in your fill in your blank. And I think having having the ability to fan over something together, like, that's one of the that's one of the truest forces for instant connection I've ever seen. And with improv, it's really similar as well where where if you find someone who's a good partner, who's willing to support you and go with the things that you're saying, and where you can have a sort of deep level of trust where you can sort of let anything come out of your mouth, I've seen that happen in real life too. And it's it's another version of that soul connection happening in a contemporary setting where I just wanted to have every single ability I wanted to have every single venue I could for dramatizing that for these characters. So that's sort of where it all came from.

[12:47]Zibby Owens: Well, after we develop sort of deep attachments to both characters, we go through some major health family type stuff. I'll just keep it quite vague. But both of them have to wrestle as so many of us do at some point or another with something happening to someone we love or who's a huge piece of our family or our inner circle or whatever. And they both have to handle the lack of control of that Yep. The pain of that for themselves, how to help someone else through, what that means. Like, these are big questions. Tell me about where all this comes from for you, how you put this in the book.

[13:26]Emma Brodie: I've had lots of experiences that feed into the book. And I think what you can see in the book is it it reflects my capacity to sit with pain and grief and also my capacity to sit with joy, which comes from, like like, too much to go into here. But I think one thing I wanted to paint, and I think this is another reason why I chose actors, is how when you're when you are going through a major health thing, like a chronic long health thing, you sort of have no choice but to put on a show. You can't go to work and be falling apart. You can't be falling apart for your kids. You have to you have to be able to put that on a shelf. And I think this is something that we see over the course of the book that some of the deepest performances that are happening in the book are actually coming from a struggle like this, and all the acting is kind of an offshoot of it. And at times, it's actually a vent showing, like, the pain that's actually underneath. And one of the things I wanted to sort of poke out with this is the idea of a safe choice because I think, you know, we all kind of know in Vegas terms that we're not gonna be here forever. But I think there are lots of deals and bargains that we make where we're like, oh, well, this person's young. They'll be around for a long time. Oh, this person's healthy. They'll be around for a long time. And in reality, we actually don't know at all, any of us. And I think that sort of playing around with that filter and having it be something that moves throughout the book where it's not just one character who's affected by health difficulties and challenging the response to it in multiple ways, I think was just a really great way to process a lot of grief that I've been through and to to sort of give a voice to a lot of people who are silently struggling with this stuff because a lot of it happens behind closed doors.

[15:16]Zibby Owens: Do you wanna open any of the doors? No.

[15:20]Emma Brodie: I didn't think so. And that's fine. That's totally fine.

[15:24]Zibby Owens: I have to say, I feel like my whole Instagram is just other people's terrible news all the time. Like, I I I have stumbled into some sort of algorithm where every time I open it, it's like, this happened to this teenager, this happened like, it's like tragedy after tragedy. And in my head, it's like I know there are billions of people or however many, but every day getting shown some terrible things specifically changes how I view the world, view the day that view, you know, the the events of that day. And I feel like in portraying these things that happen here, it's almost like you're you're letting us take the time to process where

[16:04]Emma Brodie: we're not just being bombarded by the bad stuff in the world ourselves. So it's like we get a chance to metabolize it through the story. I love that so much because one of the things that I think is really beautiful about science fiction, which is one of the decorative pieces of this novel, like I would say that the novel's an epic, but there are science fiction sort of decorations throughout, is that it it's a it's traditionally a genre that allows you to examine very terrestrial terrestrial problems but mapped onto distant worlds. So it's safer and it's you're able to do that. And I think to your earlier question about, like, why is this resonating? I think books about yearning and longing are about grief. Like, I think they're a safe way to process things the same way that it's safe to process aggression while watching sports, or it's safe to process a need for control while watching a murder mystery where every single clue buttons up nicely and doesn't that feel so good. In stories about longing, I think you are processing your unprocessed grief and you're able to get some closure when the characters find their closure or their catharsis because I'm not giving away the ending. We don't know if they find closure. You're gonna have to read it. But but I think that that is a piece of it as well. Like, I think to your point, there's so much ambient dread and sadness, and there's so much need to find a way and a safe corner to process that. And I do think books are an incredible an incredible resource in this time where there doesn't seem to be a lot of safe corners.

[17:31]Zibby Owens: Yes. Amen to that. Okay. So tell us about either or how about both? Having Jenna pick the book for the publishing, what was that like? And then fast forward to January where you found out you're at Reese's Book Club Vic. Both were very exhilarating.

[17:49]Emma Brodie: So we sold the book to Ballantyne in December 2024. Jenna was in from the beginning. So the way that her imprint works is that she's a part of the acquisition process. So she was on our very first phone call. I was so impressed by her seriousness and how game she was because we're talking about a lot of the deep themes in the book. There's also a space whale in the book. Like, there's a lot of whimsical crazy stuff that is so fun, and I think you're really gonna enjoy it. But I wasn't sure. I'd I'd never met Jenna. And she jumped in with both feet. Like, our first conversation, we're having chats about the space whale. We also cut several characters. Like, we she was really involved in the shaping. So she really came to this as someone who had the right values about the book, really wanted to help translate it to the largest number of readers possible, and she had great feedback. So she's been an incredible support, an incredible resource. Like, I've worked with a lot of publishers as an editor, and it's great to have one who has such a strong eye for these themes that you were talking about. Like, she has such a great bone and instinct for the family relationships and what's gonna sink in on that more primal level. So she's been such an incredible advocate and partner. And then, yeah, because Jenna was involved, I didn't even know I didn't think we were eligible for book clubs. So this wasn't even remotely on my horizon. I found out on January 13, we had we were supposed to get a washing machine installed, and they didn't unplug the propane. So I was at home with five dudes who were arguing about how this washing machine is gonna get installed. And I get a crazy text from my editor who's like, can you get on the phone? And I was like, what now? And then it was this news that Reese wanted to make it the April book. So that was a complete shock. I think I burst out laughing and told Jenna to shut the fuck up. It was it was an absolute shock and just the most joyful unexpected boon to this publication. So I I was so grateful. And then it was it's a lot of work to pull up a book. So my team was unbelievable. Because they all had other books slotted for April 7. So they found the time to work on this campaign. And we we had we were through the editorial process, thankfully, but the cover wasn't finished. So these amazing end papers that are in here that you'll get to glimpse at some point, they were produced in, like, forty eight hours. It's just everyone. It was all hands on deck, and it's been a blur the last few months. And not getting to tell anyone has been interesting because you have to keep it completely confidential. Isn't that beautiful? Yeah. That's great. So the comets are sort of AJ and Noah coated. There's a pink one for AJ and a blue one for Noah. So pretty.

[20:32]Zibby Owens: So, yeah, it's been my setting. FYI, these the light blue navy. Oh, love that. Okay. I'll lend them to you. That's wild and exciting and amazing. Were you and you were free. You were okay to do all this stuff in April instead of the summer.

[20:47]Emma Brodie: Of course. Of course. Of course. It it it actually it worked out great. Like, my biggest fear was that I was gonna have a book on the day that I was publishing. And luckily, I it was in a free week and that's amazing. And, yeah, my colleagues have been very supportive and it's it's just been a complete whirlwind, but how thrilling. Right? What was your writing ritual? Like, take us through your writing setup. Do you have, like, special snacks that you like? Or do you have, like, hideout that you like to write in or I have an office. So I do my my job on my in my desk and I do my writing on my couch. So I'm sort of facing a different window. And because I work full time, I don't have a set hour or anything like that. I kinda have to take each day as it comes. But I have components, like Julia Cameron would call it your grid as a writer, that I need to sort of hit my grid every day. So it doesn't have to be in the same order. It doesn't have to be in the same time, but I need an hour walk, which is just pure imagination time. I I I leave all devices that have any connection to the outside world. I listen to whatever weird music I want. I am not perceived. I'm in nature. No one can see me. And that's really important to take seriously. I think if you're a fiction writer, like, gotta make time for your imagination. I do morning pages, which I think of as sort of a safety deposit box for your worldly cares and woes. So they're prescribed to be first thing in the day. I don't do it first thing in the day every day, but it's three pages long hand stream of consciousness. And I think of that as sort of the warm up before doing the workout. And then my my it's not a treat, but I have earplugs. And I love them. And earplugs go in, and I like total silence silence when when I'm I'm writing. Writing. And that's just a me thing. Like, some people write to music. There's there's no right way to do it. But for me, I want to completely discorporate. I don't wanna be there. I don't wanna hear the sound of my own typing. It's annoying. So I go into a completely silent cone and do whatever I have to do that day.

[22:43]Zibby Owens: Wow. So how many like, how long does it take to write this length of a book with a full time job and everything else?

[22:53]Emma Brodie: So I wrote the first draft in five months. It was pretty long. So a typical novel is 90,000 words, and the first draft of Into the Blue was a 150,000. And then I by that point, I think it took me that long to sort of form the attachment I needed with the characters and really understand AJ. Noah was actually easier for me. And then I was like, okay. I know what to do. I'll rewrite it, and I'm gonna streamline this and make it shorter. And the second draft was a 180,000 words. By So this point, have this enormous book. And I think actually getting it into Fighting Shape, the final product's a 130,000 words. And the the constant argument with myself is like, we're we're putting out romanticies all the time now that are 700 words. Like, I know readers can do a long book, but this is heavier in in some ways. So I did want it to be within the bounds of what we would normally do on a commercial novel. And I think getting it down to fighting shape was actually the thing that took the longest. So between my agent and my editor and Jenna, we did multiple passes and I think that process took sixteen months.

[24:01]Zibby Owens: If if AJ and Noah were in the room, just describe them for someone else. What would they be doing? They would they even be in here? Like, where would they be sitting? Would they be sitting next to each other? Tell give us They'd be in the back. Think they would be sitting next to each other looking directly ahead,

[24:18]Emma Brodie: like like maybe three centimeters apart, not touching but almost touching. And I think, like, they would be, like, listening or pretending to listen but and listening, maybe, like, occasionally making jokes under their breath about us. But secretly, like, the whole inner monologue would just be thinking about each other. So that that kind of, like, maintaining the connection in public in whatever way they can. And, yeah, whoever would be in front of Noah would have, like, his legs under the chair. Like, he'd be he you'd be like, who is this person who's crowding me? Because he's really tall, as Zebi mentioned. And, yeah, I think AJ is a good girl, so you wouldn't notice her. She like, if you were sitting behind AJ who's also a little tall, she'd be like, oh, I'm sorry. Like, that's AJ.

[25:02]Zibby Owens: So yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, any advice to aspiring authors? Last question.

[25:07]Emma Brodie: Yes. Just start. And I know that's not original advice, but I think I think the way you learn to write a book is by writing a book. And there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't. I think I think writing is ultimately an act of service where ultimately the work that you're doing is to make it worthy of a readership. But I also think there's gotta be something in it for you because if you don't find joy and you don't like what you're doing initially, you're not gonna have the stomach to sit with it for two to three years if you need to. And I think that starting and just letting yourself play is the best advice that that you can possibly listen to because if you enjoy what you're doing, it's gonna translate and it's gonna make the work worth it. So get in there. So

[25:57]Zibby Owens: I know I said that was the last question. What did you get out of writing this book?

[26:01]Emma Brodie: Oh my gosh. I got so much out of writing this book. I mean, first of all, just going through it with them and witnessing it was absolutely a transformative and intense emotional experience. Like, it I was crying every day. Like, it it was an amazing catharsis just to just to witness this love and get to be so close to it and and carry it and shepherd it. And I was both bereft and relieved when it was over. And then having to see it through to publication transformed my life. Like, I switched editors. I switched agents. Like, following this story and staying true to it ultimately brought me to, like, the bravest team in the business. And it's it's been the honor of my life getting to work on this book. So, yeah, there's not been one one relationship in my life that hasn't been shifted in some way because I spent so much time with these characters.

[26:53]Zibby Owens: Amazing. And congratulations. Thank you are so so excited for you. Thank you.

[26:58]Emma Brodie: Thank you for having me. Of course.

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[29:46]Morgan Radford: one could give a very nervous debut author whose book has not yet hit the shelves. So thank you. The book is about a black Cuban girl from the mountains of North Carolina who goes to Harvard. Shocker, her name is not Schmorgan Schmadford. And she falls in love with this British Indian postdoctoral student, and there they begin this on and off again romance that explores a lot of themes. Right? Intercultural relationships, what it means to belong, what it means to feel out of place and out of water when you go to college in a system that wasn't necessarily built for your inclusion. And then the other half of the book is told through her mother's perspective, Marisol, who fled during just before the height of the Cuban revolution, and what it was like for her to come to America and to try to belong in sometimes the binary cultures of America as she was finding her way as a Cuban immigrant. And their stories intertwine through letters and conversations that the letters spark, and we follow their stories together. And I hope I hope you read it, and I hope you fall in love with them as much as I did.

[30:56]Zibby Owens: It's it's like two books in one Yeah. Because we're getting multiple stories, and a love story, and a mother daughter story, and history. I mean, it's it's a lot all packed in. I just wanted to read one line from chapter 17 from Marisol's perspectives, and it starts, do you know what it's like to have your body ripped apart from the inside out, to feel your soul leave your frame rise above you and stare back down at you, mocking you with its freedom? Powerful. Do you know what this is like? Tell us about the point of view here and why, in one part of the story, you want to take us into what is a quite traumatic

[31:36]Morgan Radford: experience for Marisol. Yeah, I mean, and without giving too much away, and also sensitivities for people who have had those experiences, one that I have not personally had, but I think had read enough and learned enough to be able to empathize with what I imagined an experience with sexual assault like that would feel like. And I wanted to explain what that divorce looked like between body and mind in a moment like that. I've interviewed many, many survivors of sexual assault, and one of the most chilling things is the way that they say they have to disassociate to get through that moment. And I thought having this moment, where this woman is an immigrant and she is already dissociated from her home country, she has already dissociated from everything she knew, And then to have the additional trauma of having to dissociate for her own survival in that moment, I thought was a powerful way to express what many women, unfortunately, have gone to many people, and a lot of people who are in political experiences or prisons and things like that. With the context of the book, I think it becomes more clear, but I think that sense of dissociation

[32:56]Zibby Owens: was something that was important to explore. Tell me a little more about the fish out of water feeling. In your bio, you went to Harvard. There is a whole storyline at Harvard, adjusting,

[33:08]Morgan Radford: finding your way, finding the right relationship for you, all of that. Talk a little bit about that feeling and how it felt to write about it. It felt natural to write about it because it's a feeling I feel and have felt often through my life. I think there is an otherness that comes with many of these experiences. My mother is a mixed race black woman, part Jewish, part black. My father is an Afro Caribbean Jamaican and Cuban roots. And they grew up in West Virginia, I grew up in North Carolina. West Virginia is a pretty white state. You imagine growing up as a black person with an accent in a place like West Virginia, there's an othering that I think happens. And out of that othering, for me, it really bred a sense of compassion and it really allowed me to see multiplicity in people and in spaces and environments. But it meant that it was my parents always taught me that your job and your duty is to love the world, but the world may not always love you back in the same way that you love it. And that was a hard thing to reckon with as I got older. And so when I went to Harvard, I mean, I never met anyone who went to Harvard. Like, my dad's a first generation college student. I went to a public high school in North Carolina. I remember being on campus. I remember where I was when I found out that you could pay to study for the SAT to get into Harvard. I was someone was like, yeah. My, like, you know, Kaplan tutor or whatever. And I was like, there are services that you could have like, I was in a dusty church basement where I took this test. Right? I just didn't know. And you learn that there's so much that you don't know. And I'm still asking the question myself, what do I not know as I'm trying to raise my daughter? Right? What spaces should I be opening for her? What tools should I be giving her that I'm yet unaware of? Right? And so that fish out of water experience, I think many of us feel it. Whether we feel it privately, whether it's racially based, whether it's gender based or sexual identity, whatever it is, like, we've all had that experience of otherness. And I think there is profound connection that can be found when we are vulnerable enough to express it, to explore it. And ultimately, my dream for the world, my dream for the readers of this book, my dream for my daughter, is that when she approaches difference, she approaches it with compassion and with curiosity. Not with defiance, not with disdain, certainly not with exclusion, but embraces the person who is bearing the weight of that otherness with inclusivity. And so that is what I hope the readers take. These Wikipedia pages, these bios, they're so deceiving. You would read my bio and see all these peaks, but no one would ever see the valleys. They would never see the moments of crippling self doubt when I'm crying at night, not only asking now then, now what? Right? And so I think it's really important that we are brave enough and courageous enough to humble ourselves in front of this experience of life and say, I don't have all the answers. I've actually never had all the answers. I might not get all the answers.

[36:35]Zibby Owens: And that too is okay. Your voice is so soothing. Don't you feel like I'm like, Wait, am I doing something here? I feel like I'm just gonna drift off in a land of self acceptance and pleasure. Let's go back to some of the peaks in addition to the valleys. How did you go from Harvard to being on NBC? What happened in between?

[37:04]Morgan Radford: Well, girl, don't know if I can answer your question without a valley because Okay. You can no. You don't have to. You can go. Just take us through that journey No. Ups and The devastating truth is that I graduated, and I had applied for a full white fellowship to South Africa where I was teaching in university. But the South African school year is January to December. And so I had these dead months after I graduated. And I was honestly quite depressed. My family had just moved from Greensboro, North Carolina to Atlanta. And I didn't have a job, and all my friends like, you graduate college, hell, you graduate from Harvard, and the promise is that you're going to hit the job market, everyone's going want you, you're going make all this money. No. I was living in my parents' home, all my friends were coming to New York, making all this incredible money at at investment banks. And I was just looking for something to do before I left for South Africa. And when my parents moved to Atlanta, I went to CNN as an intern. Again, I had never, like, met a journalist. I had not written for my school paper. And when I walked in, it was like a scene out of a movie where you hear angels in the sky, oh. It was just and remember, this is when internships weren't paid. So I'm coming in at 2AM for a 2AM shift, essentially taking out the trash, and loved it. And so my new metric for, like, success or even just guiding how I determined what I wanted to do was not looking at the person with the most power in the building. It wasn't looking at the main anchor and being like, I want that job. It was, I have the lowest job, and I still want to be here, and I'm still excited, I'm still waking up before my alarm. And so I just started asking, like, how does a, like, regular degular person, you know, go from here to in that little TV screen? And I started finding out, like, you need what's called a resume reel, which is a string of stories that may or may not have actually aired to kind of show what you can do. And so I I gathered that data. I went to South Africa. And when I was in South Africa, knowing that I didn't have all these skills because I, you know, had only had this one internship, I applied to Columbia Journalism School from South Africa, and I got rejected. And I was like, oh, shit. What do you what do you do now? Like, I just If you won't even allow me to pay you to teach me the skills, this must be a wrap for me. Right? So I came back to America. I applied to every local news station from here to Juneau, Alaska, Biloxi, Mississippi, you name it, and I got rejected from every single one. It wasn't like, in the end, one said yes, and my career's like literally no. The answer was no. And I remember driving back from the last interview in Augusta, Georgia where I had been told no, and I'm like crying in the car, and I'm like calling my dad, and I'm like, dude, do I need to go work at Starbucks so I can get like health insurance? Like, what do I do? And my dad was like, You are never too proud to take care of yourself. So whatever you need to do, you are never too proud. Never be too proud to take care of yourself. And so I applied for other jobs and things like that, but I remember my mom saying, you know, you have had all this experience because you went to South Africa. I had started a program with the first generation of Born Free's who were 16 years old at the time, and they were born the year that Mandela was freed. So they're the first generation of South Africans who had really experienced freedom. And I had taught them how to make little documentaries and videos, and I had taught myself how to edit while I was there thinking, look, if I can't pay someone to teach me how to do it, at least I'll teach them how to do it. And so I had come back with all this footage. And she was like, you know, why don't you reapply to Columbia and and try again? And I'm like, they said no. They don't want me. You know, I'm so proud. And I I went home that night and I said, alright. Let me just look it up. And I looked up the admissions deadline. It was the next day. And I'm like, yo, God, do you hate me? Like, do you actually profoundly hate me? And I remember I was like, I just relinquished control. I went to bed that night, I said I need my sleep to function well. I woke up and I just crammed the application the next day. And I'll never forget the last line. It essentially said, I've learned that I'm a journalist whether or not you officially stamp me as one. So I invite you to come enjoy this ride. And I got in with a full ride scholarship. Wow. But because of that experience, I always stayed strapped with my resume reel. So even when I went to Columbia, they would say, oh, you can you can network and you don't need to have a resume reel. I'm like, no, no, no, no. I had been rejected from so many jobs. I always had my resume reel, at this time it was CD ROMs, in my purse like I was selling hotcakes in Harlem, out of my discs out of the boot of my car. And so then I met the woman who was a head of talent at ABC, got hired, and then Al Jazeera America was starting when my contract was up so they could kind of poach me, and then NBC found me when I was there, and the rest has been history. Oh, my gosh. That's let's applaud that. I

[42:09]Zibby Owens: find so often in people's stories, there's one person. One person saying the right thing at the right time is the difference between giving up and keeping going towards a goal. Totally. So I'm glad your parents were supportive, that you didn't give up. Have a good village. You have a good village. That's amazing. So you're at the height of success in your journalism job. Why tackle writing a novel? Don't you have enough going on?

[42:35]Morgan Radford: I have a lot going on. I did just have a baby. You know, I it spoke to me. The the the truth is I never thought I would write a novel. I'm an avid reader. Like, what you do is my dream work. Like, I would love to just, like, read and curate and recommend. Right? Like, I never I love music, but I'm not gonna, like, pick up a drumstick. I can't even I'm illiterate. Like, I can't read music. Know? But I shortly after I was married, this guy who I had had this sort of romantic, amorous relationship with in college, circled back after twelve years, like in the never heard from, we're not on I don't think he's on any social media, like there was no following, just out of the blue. And I remember where I was, and I got a LinkedIn message. And he always used to start every conversation with, Now then. And the subject said, Now then, would you fancy a cup of coffee? And I look at my husband, we were walking in Miami, and I was like, hey, this guy, college, would you feel okay if I just get popped over on the Upper West Side? And again, my husband and went to college together, so it's like I've seen every iteration of his girlfriends. We were just friends during uni. And he's like, yeah, dude. No problem. And I met with him for what I thought would be just like a normal coffee. And in this conversation, I mean, he kinda went right in. It it it was sort of like no time had passed, but it was clear that he was, like, processing, I guess if you wanted to call it, like, a breakup or what had and and and I had not thought this was the conversation. I had not thought this was where we were headed, but, like, there's actually a beauty, I think, in someone else holding your reality with you. There's actually a beauty in saying because otherwise, I would have just gone the rest of my life and I would have had some recollection of this experience and what it meant to me. But to know that someone else actually had the same experience, and here we are twelve years later, and you shared that little that little piece of reality, is actually quite powerful. And I say this to say, this is also someone who is a very good person. And what was also powerful about that experience for me was that we talk about belonging. Here was a guy, a British Indian guy from Yorkshire, the son of a shopkeeper, and this black Cuban chick from a public school in North Carolina, who had met on the grassy knoll of a university that by all odds, neither of them would have gotten into, right? And completely saw each other. He completely saw who my parents had raised. He completely saw who I was, but who I was trying to become. And that is a gift for any human to see you in that way. And so, you know, we have this conversation and it was just this kind of like wild reckoning for me. I'd gotten married three months prior. And it was this moment. I remember walking away from that coffee turned dinner or whatever the heck. And I remember thinking, gosh, if there were ever like a rom com drama, in me, this would be it. Because I was struck by the multiplicity of lives that we live as women. How even though I was now this freshly minted married woman, the idea that all of your life before didn't exist, somehow now this man has chosen you and you're supposed to go forward into the distance and never look back, no, that life still resides within me. That experience, I still carry with me in every other experience, and I will continue to carry this experience into my future life. And I think as women, I was like, it feels taboo, but I think a necessary conversation to open the door to say, we're allowed to engage in, to find a light in, to explore all the multiplicity of lives that currently reside within us. That's what I was trying to capture in the book. Wow.

[46:50]Zibby Owens: Well, knowing that this stemmed from you and a personal experience, it's so powerful in the book. And I told I told you an email, like, you're just kind of not not even sure. You're, like, rooting for everyone so much. I literally took a moment reading this book and, like, put it on my chest, I was like, Wait, who do I want? How do I want this to end? I'm actually not sure. It could go again. I'm glad you felt that way. Oh my gosh. I feel like that makes it excellent for book club because I feel like people will want to dissect this and the choices that she makes and all It does make. Yeah. So where is the guy now?

[47:29]Morgan Radford: TBD. I'm afraid of I'm afraid of doing one of these talks, and I'm gonna, like, look in the back, and there he's gonna be. Like, that's how I feel this story ends. I full disc I've never said this. Full disc full disclosure, when press about the book started to come out, because it meant we're not on any connected thing, and I I was sitting in my office a few months ago, and when the book was announced, and I get one number, one text from a 44 number, which, you know, is England. And nothing attached, nothing saved, and it just said, now then, smiley face. Wish I had gotten my acting chops up for the Netflix adaptation. Oh.

[48:22]Zibby Owens: And that was that. How's your how's your husband feeling about the coffee now? My husband is is God's favorite son. He is a soldier. He

[48:31]Morgan Radford: He is really a soldier. And you know what's cool, man? My husband is such a mensch. He is so the person for me. And my best friend, Eric, who is also a character in the book, you know, I remember telling him about David, my husband, when I knew David was the one, which I knew pretty early on. He said, well, how do you know? I said, he's a fact of my life. And he said, That doesn't sound romantic. I said, I don't know that there's any more romantic I could say. I said, He is a fact of my life. It's like he was always meant to be there. And when everything else feels uncertain, he is the only thing that feels immutable. Like, I can't tell you where I'll be living in ten years. I can't tell you where I'll be working. I can't tell you what you know? But I can tell you who I'll be with. I can tell you who I'll be beside. And that certainty, I carry with me, and he carries with him. So I I don't, you know, I don't I I think that's what being loved in freedom looks like. It's to be able to write a book about, you know, a dude you had a thing with in college. It's being able to, you know, live your life and go on book tour and talk about it. It's it's loving you exactly as you are and as you were meant to be, and that feeling is my helium.

[49:51]Zibby Owens: Wow. Beautiful. So why include the whole mother You could have just written that book, but it's so much deeper because you include the mother story and her transcendence and then you have it all coalesce at the end. Why? Yeah.

[50:08]Morgan Radford: It's funny. Someone said, I know this is a love story, but it really feels like at its core it's actually a mother daughter story. And I don't disagree with that. I think part of it is where I was in my life writing it. I had just given birth, and I wrote this in the first year of my daughter's life. And I think our relationship to the people who bore us is so essential. And having a daughter and thinking about my relation with my mother and the things that go unsaid and the things that you wanna say and the things that you press at the membranes of saying but don't quite get there and how we choose to get there, I think is really important. And so so what I did is I actually sort of inverted my father's story and my mother's story, because it's my father's that father's story that came here from Cuba. And it was his grandmother, actually, who, at the time, I think about a woman in the eighteen hundreds, who was this black woman of mixed race, who dared to ask the question, where can I go to become whole? Where can my family go to become whole? And that question haunts me to this day, and it inspires me. It propels me. It's also chilling. I think it's it's timely. And so when I think about what it took for a woman to carry her children, to bore her children in another land where she thought there could be opportunities, and this is before there were resources for a black mean, you would we're talking like, slavery had just ended. Right? To have that courage is so profound to me that I think exploring what would drive a woman to do such a thing and how do you pass that on, especially when you probably don't have the language to communicate all those reasons to your daughter. And I just thought that was a really worthy portion of this, because I think even our amorous loves are often colored by and shaped by our familial loves and our experience of the world and what the world tells us about ourselves and what we're told who we are and who we can't be. Where do we get those messages? It usually starts at home. It's our parents who say, No, reapply. Try again and you're worthy. And so I thought that as a core was really important. Wow. Morgan, I am so delighted to have had this time with you. Thank you so much. Are so

[52:41]Zibby Owens: authentic and brilliant and articulate and soulful. It's been like I feel like I just had a massage. You so much. Thank you, Zibby. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much. Thank Thank you so so much. Thank you so Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.