Emily Nemens, THE CACTUS LEAGUE
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[1:15]Emily Nimmons is the debut author of The Cactus League, a novel. She's the editor of the Paris
[1:19]Review and was previously the co-editor of the Southern Review. An alumnus of the Kerouac
[1:24]Project Writing Residency Program in Orlando, Florida. Her work has been published in Esquire
[1:28]and plus one, The Gettysburg Review, Hobart and Other Outlets. Originally from Seattle,
[1:33]Emily attended Brown University and received her MFA from Louisiana State University.
[1:37]She's also an illustrator. Her illustrations have been published in The New Yorker
[1:41]and on Tumblr where she has a following for her portraits of women in Congress. She currently lives
[1:45]in New York. Welcome, Emily. Thanks for coming out and moms. Don't have time to read books.
[1:49]Thanks for having me. Of course. We were just talking. We had coffee and Emily mentioned the
[1:53]book to me. It felt like a hundred years ago and now here it is. Finally coming out. So excited.
[1:57]Yeah. Next week. Next week. So The Cactus League. Can you please tell us,
[2:02]what this book is about? Yeah. It's a novel about spring training baseball, but it's sort of
[2:07]the least baseball, baseball book. It's really about the community that gathers in this small
[2:13]suburb of Phoenix every spring with all sorts of different hopes and aspirations for the season.
[2:19]And what made you write this story? Why these characters, why this book? Well, I'm a big baseball fan.
[2:24]I have been since I was a little girl and my dad and I grew up in Seattle and my dad and I
[2:29]would need to get out of Seattle and March. If you can imagine all the bad stereotypes with like
[2:34]a gray, cold place, that's true from March 1st to 31st or 30th. How many days are there in March?
[2:40]I think it's 31. Okay. Anyway, we would go not every year but often enough that this place sort
[2:48]of got logged. And my mind is a really interesting sort of counterpoint to what I knew in Seattle.
[2:54]That counterpoint still was really interesting and compelling when I moved to the east coast
[2:59]and kept going back to Arizona and seeing how this sort of boom town really boomed Phoenix,
[3:04]of course, grew so much. But there's also the history of the place, Scottsdale where the
[3:09]book is set is really interesting. Frank Lloyd Wright went out there to build his winter compound
[3:16]and when he built there, he picked the side of a mountain where there was absolutely,
[3:21]you couldn't see any power lines from his property and he was like perfect if I've arrived
[3:27]you go there. Now you just see the entire city sprawled up in front of you and sort of in the near
[3:32]distance from Frank Lloyd Wright and in the same community as this brand new stadium. So I thought,
[3:37]huh, that's an interesting thing to think about like what's happening in this place that has changed
[3:42]so much that there's this major league team coming in all of their fans and all of the
[3:48]the adventures and opportunities that come along with the team arriving in this place that
[3:52]was supposed to be so calm and quiet. Yeah, forget it. I want to talk about you and your dad. So
[4:01]Tammy, one of the characters in your book and you divide the book up into sections from different
[4:05]points of view and Tammy is one point of view. And in her section, she was saying her daddy would,
[4:11]and I'm quoting, take her and her brothers to the minor league stadium in Lubbock a few times a
[4:14]season, spoil them sick with soda and peanuts. Tammy learned how to keep score at age seven by
[4:19]age to get spot a strong arm. The way an architect senses a perfect say, the way a divorce
[4:24]say tastes the want on the tongue. That was such a great question. So was that like you were you
[4:30]that old when you started going to games with your dad? I started going to games even younger.
[4:34]I'm the younger of two girls and my sister just was not interested in baseball at all.
[4:39]My dad grew up walking distance from me in key stadium and I think he just had a real itch to get
[4:44]back into baseball when he moved out to Seattle. He moved there like a year or two before the
[4:49]mariner showed up. And so yeah, basically as soon as I was old enough to sit through a game,
[4:54]we started going and it was a great time to be a little kid excited about baseball because
[4:59]Ken Griffey Jr had just arrived in Seattle and you know, he was this teenage phenom. He went
[5:06]straight from high school. I just remember, I don't know how many years I had the sports illustrated
[5:11]for kids cover with Ken Griffey Jr blowing this great big bubble gum bubble. And he was just
[5:19]cast me out for me. And that plus just like it was a chance during our day and our week that
[5:26]I got to spend time with my dad alone was really nice. I didn't have the eye for pitches that
[5:32]Tammy had but otherwise pretty similar. I feel like baseball when I was growing up was more
[5:37]maybe I'm wrong. But I feel like it was a much bigger deal in the popular culture. Like my
[5:42]brother was a huge met fans of the 1986 Mets. They were like the heroes of our childhood.
[5:48]Oh, of course. Let's go miss go videos. And I know like all players from then and I couldn't tell
[5:52]you probably a single Mets player right now. Well, I mean, I think it's interesting and that was
[5:58]one of the things I was excited about writing about baseball in 2020. I started the book in 2011.
[6:03]But like for the last decade is baseball has been sort of an on a decline in a popular culture.
[6:09]And what does that mean? What are we still hanging on to in terms of why is baseball important?
[6:14]What happens when it's sort of the fades into the limelight? You know, like what are new opportunities
[6:19]there? And you started it in 2011. Yeah, it's 2020. So what happened between then and now? Tell me
[6:25]about the process. Well, so I had been living in New York and working and writing and editing and
[6:33]mostly working though. And I just really wanted to write a book and commit to literature.
[6:38]So I went back to grad school after spending my 20 years working in the city. And I went to
[6:44]to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. And SEC football is a really big deal. I mean,
[6:50]they're national champions now. So that's of course exciting. Thank you. But I showed up and I
[6:54]thought, whoa, this is a really fascinating and sort of beguiling cultural phenomenon. Just 200,000
[7:02]people on campus. I mean, this is a campus of 30,000 kids. And you know, just this huge influx of
[7:09]people coming and I wanted to unpack that to understand it to enjoy it. I mean, I tell gated too. But
[7:15]understand what was going on while these different people had sort of hooked into professional sport
[7:21]or non, in this case, you know, amateur, but very top level amateur sport and think about
[7:28]what that means to the whole community. So I spent a while reading about football and
[7:33]tailgating. I got into the press corps and sort of thinking about what was specific to Louisiana
[7:40]and the SEC and what about this was just American sports culture and sort of where it started.
[7:46]I was working on it pretty seriously through my MFA, but I stopped my MFA to become the editor
[7:53]of the Southern Review. And then I finished up my grad credits sort of
[7:58]and fits and starts, but finally graduated in 2015 with a version, an early version of this book
[8:03]was my senior or my graduating thesis. But at that point, it was stories. It was standalone stories
[8:11]that sort of all jumbled together in in Scottsdale. They all were happening at the same time
[8:17]with the same team. But I just hadn't figured out how to have them speak to one another and work
[8:23]together and really acknowledge that they're all happening during a season. Like, I think that's
[8:29]one of the exciting things about sports literature is that there is a clock, there is a timeline,
[8:34]there is a ticking time bomb of whether it's, you know, bottom of the ninth or the end of the season
[8:39]or there is sort of an implicit fire there and I wanted to make the most of that. So I sort of,
[8:47]I took a lot of time to figure out how to do it, but took those characters and those stories,
[8:52]you know, I wanted to maintain the reading experience of this really satisfying arc, but, you know,
[8:59]the lead up and the conflict and resolution or not resolution, but the sort of the cadence of the
[9:05]story while also assembling them in a way that there's forward motion and narrative across all
[9:11]mine. Where did you like to write? Were you a coffee shop type of person? Oh no. I write at home or
[9:18]at residencies. You know, I would, when I was in Louisiana, I figured out a 410 so I could
[9:24]edit the magazine in four long days and then have three days to write. So I had a home office and
[9:31]what is a 410? Like, I would go to the Southern Review at 730 in the morning and work for like
[9:38]a 10 to 11 hour day so that when I'd wake up on Friday morning, I'd done, you know, whole weeks
[9:44]work on four, well, in four days and then I had a date of writing. Oh, I think 410. So 40 hours
[9:50]in four days. Got it. Okay. That was Friday's after right. Got it. Okay. That's such a cool way to say that.
[9:56]Now I know. And so that worked for a long time when I was in Louisiana.
[10:00]and then I would go to sort of,
[10:03]I'm kind of a snake with my rating where I either
[10:05]don't have an idea or don't have the time to write,
[10:09]you know, for some spell and then I'll
[10:12]whether it's Friday and Saturday or, you know,
[10:14]after a month, I'll sit down and have a huge session.
[10:17]I did a lot of writing at this residency in Florida
[10:20]called the Hermitage Artistry Tree,
[10:22]which was really great.
[10:23]It's like these tiny cabins on the West Coast,
[10:27]not too far from Sarasota,
[10:28]and it's just, you look out the window,
[10:30]there's this hand doing, and then there's the water.
[10:33]But I need quiet, I need music without lyrics.
[10:37]I listened to a lot of full of glass
[10:39]and then I realized, like, as the music is swelling,
[10:41]I'm writing faster and leaning forward.
[10:44]Yeah.
[10:45]That's awesome.
[10:46]So it must be like the best feeling
[10:48]to have this off your plate now after so many years.
[10:51]Or are you sad that you're not tinkering with it anymore?
[10:53]Not sad, the last edit.
[10:55]So I figured out sort of how to build
[10:58]the nine stories into this continuous narrative.
[11:01]And it felt so good.
[11:02]I mean, at that point, I was like, this is the book.
[11:04]I can't believe I thought it was done
[11:05]when it was a story collection.
[11:06]This is the book.
[11:08]But the last edit was acknowledging
[11:11]that I figured out how they all slot together,
[11:13]but there was still a lot of sort of spare bits
[11:17]from when each was a standalone thing.
[11:20]So I cut 25,000 words line by line.
[11:24]Oh, like, I mean, one or two scenes came out entirely,
[11:27]but otherwise I was just thinking about like,
[11:30]what had been told about this character in chapter one
[11:33]that no longer needs to happen in chapter three.
[11:36]What like details of backstory feel really pressing
[11:39]and burning and what can be left on the coming room floor.
[11:43]And so that just felt like training for a marathon or something.
[11:48]I mean, it was really that edit was hard
[11:52]and really satisfying.
[11:53]And when it was done, I was just so delighted.
[11:56]I bet that's a lot of work.
[11:57]Yeah.
[11:58]Yeah, and I mean, it's still, it's not a short book.
[12:01]It's almost 300 pages.
[12:02]But like, this is the link that was supposed to be.
[12:04]This is the shape it was meant to be all along.
[12:06]So in that way, I'm just delighted.
[12:10]I mean, I miss it.
[12:11]I've been tinkering on it for so long.
[12:15]There was a passage that you wrote
[12:17]that I just wanted to read.
[12:18]I thought was great.
[12:19]You said, in a lot of ways, baseball players are like other men,
[12:22]but the difference separating ball players from everyone else
[12:25]is that they care about something tremendously.
[12:27]It's thrilling and Tammy feeds off it.
[12:29]Most people will never touch that kind of drive.
[12:31]Most people, whether they're living in small towns
[12:34]or big cities or sprawl, spend their lives dealing
[12:37]with crying babies and stupid jobs, whatever life throws
[12:39]at them.
[12:40]Baseball players, they do the throwing.
[12:43]Yeah, that was so cool.
[12:44]Oh, thank you.
[12:45]Yeah, I mean, it's a little cynical of me.
[12:47]But I think for me, that was really thinking
[12:50]about realizing and recognizing ambition
[12:54]and when we all sort of let it go at different stages
[12:57]in our life, some of the people have when they're a little girl,
[13:01]I want to be a writer, I want to be a baseball player,
[13:03]I want to be a lawyer, and then life gets complicated.
[13:06]And you still have a good life, but you're not hanging
[13:08]onto that real dream from childhood
[13:11]and to be a professional athlete.
[13:14]You do have to hang on to that and just be so singularly
[13:17]focused on that opportunity.
[13:21]And there's just, you know, I think there's a lot of ways
[13:24]to have a satisfying life, but with professional athletes,
[13:28]there's a drive there and a willingness
[13:31]to see one's vision through that.
[13:34]I just, I feel like it sort of falls away
[13:36]as we get through college, you know,
[13:38]a whole cast of athletes that are collegiate athletes,
[13:42]go find new careers when, you know, you hit your 30s,
[13:45]like running less than 30s.
[13:47]Yeah, it's like a marathon of life.
[13:50]Yeah.
[13:51]I feel like it's like Goldie Hunt and Wildcast.
[13:53]Did you ever see that movie?
[13:53]No.
[13:54]I'm like embarrassed it was one of my favorite movies,
[13:56]but she's a female football coach.
[13:59]Oh my God, how did I miss this?
[14:00]It's so good.
[14:01]I go watch it.
[14:02]I made that watch it, because you miss like all the 80s
[14:05]movies because he's too young.
[14:06]Anyway, so she's still a female football coach.
[14:08]I mean, she gets with this team in the inner city,
[14:10]whatever they like, have no respect for her.
[14:12]And she's like, yeah, watch me.
[14:14]I'm gonna run and I'm gonna beat all of you.
[14:16]And so they have this scene on the pouring rain
[14:17]where they're all like going around and around the track
[14:20]and then it starts raining minutes and night time.
[14:21]Anyways, she wins the scene.
[14:23]But she's like the last Wilton standing in this like
[14:25]Victoria summit.
[14:26]I feel like that's what you're saying about these athletes, right?
[14:29]It's like all through, everybody starts out on the track
[14:31]together and then one by one.
[14:32]Everybody might give up.
[14:34]Yes, that's exactly like Goldie Hunt.
[14:37]Yeah.
[14:38]Just to take your, you know, literary novel
[14:42]and pair it with, you know, mass market.
[14:46]Well, I mean, a lot of the book is about sort of pop culture
[14:49]and celebrity culture.
[14:50]You know, it's about face of athleticism
[14:52]but there's only a few innings of baseball in the book.
[14:54]I think it's really how these men
[14:58]and not just, you know, the athletes on the field
[15:00]but all the people sort of wear the mantle of expectation
[15:05]and what happens, you know, when you go out to a restaurant
[15:10]and everyone knows you and has this vision
[15:13]of what you're supposed to be like
[15:15]and what does it mean when you're, you know,
[15:17]not going to be able to perform in that level anymore
[15:20]and just sort of this ecology
[15:22]and the fallout beyond the performance.
[15:26]Did you have the pleasure of interviewing
[15:28]a lot of professional athletes for research or imagining?
[15:33]I was a lot of imagining.
[15:35]I read a lot of autobiographies and oral histories,
[15:39]you know, particularly in the contemporary moment
[15:42]with just the culture around sports.
[15:45]Athletes are really good at sort of protecting
[15:48]their public personas and for all the reasons
[15:51]that, you know, I look at in the book
[15:52]but there's, you know, like with outlets like The Athletic
[15:55]where it's so, you know, it's their voice
[15:58]but it's also like a pretty controlled voice
[16:00]that, you know, one, I was shy about going to athletes
[16:04]and two, I just thought that there would be more opportunities
[16:08]to imagine and explore if I had a little bit of distance.
[16:12]And tell me a little,
[16:13]you have a lot of architecture references in here.
[16:16]Sure.
[16:16]Are you just interested in it?
[16:18]There was a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright and Telly Essen
[16:20]and her faces to other architects.
[16:23]There's this great book that came out last year.
[16:25]Too late to help me with writing the book
[16:27]but like reading it, I was so affirmed.
[16:29]Paul Goldberg are the architecture critic
[16:31]wrote a book on baseball stadiums
[16:32]and he talked about in the intro like,
[16:35]oh, baseball is not the American metaphor
[16:37]but baseball stadiums are.
[16:39]I think there's just something so interesting
[16:41]about monumental architecture as this gathering place.
[16:45]You know, it's an oasis in the city.
[16:48]It's a place where more people can gather
[16:51]and look at one another than anywhere else in the world,
[16:53]you know, or in the cityscape.
[16:56]There's so many possibilities for this physical man
[16:59]made creation.
[17:00]And yeah, so I was really interested in the stadium
[17:03]but, you know, if I have a stadium,
[17:04]how does that interact with other pieces
[17:07]of architecture in the community?
[17:08]And of course, I thought it was like
[17:11]a really interesting counterpoint to have, you know,
[17:14]sort of the 2011 idea of monumental architecture
[17:17]as juxtaposed to Frank Lloyd Wright's idea
[17:20]of a monument, you know, two generations earlier
[17:25]and there's such different buildings
[17:26]or such different values and what does it say
[17:29]sort of about contemporary culture
[17:31]that we've gone to these, you know, casinos with strobe lights
[17:34]and our spotlights, you know, pointing up into the sky
[17:38]in these big stadiums rather than this monument
[17:42]almost disappears into the mountains.
[17:44]So pretty.
[17:45]Yeah, and then because this is a transient community
[17:48]of athletes coming in, seasonal workers, arriving,
[17:51]retirees, people having sort of restarting their lives
[17:54]after divorces, it felt necessary to talk
[17:57]about domestic architecture too.
[18:00]So lots of houses.
[18:02]So can I skip over now to your other life
[18:06]as editor of the Paris Review?
[18:08]Sure.
[18:08]You were handpicked from, I'm sure Azilian candidates
[18:11]to come to New York and be the editor.
[18:14]What did that feel like?
[18:15]I know you'd already been the editor of the Southern Review
[18:16]and everything, but where you really, I mean,
[18:19]tell me about that moment in your life
[18:21]and sort of the decision to leave behind
[18:23]what you were doing and come up here and.
[18:25]Yeah.
[18:26]I mean, you can say handpicked.
[18:28]I raised my hand.
[18:29]I mean, I have a whole lot of love.
[18:31]You know, I love the literary quarterly as a format.
[18:34]It's just such an opportunity as an editor
[18:37]to support writers you admire sort of, you know,
[18:40]people pick up the Paris Review because they know
[18:43]the magazine, not because they know the writers inside
[18:46]necessarily and that's such a great way
[18:49]to share exciting and ready without having, you know,
[18:53]the writer to have need and name recognition or anything else.
[18:56]And just also like the reading experience
[18:59]of putting together essentially what, you know,
[19:01]it's 200 pages or 250 pages.
[19:04]So it feels like an anthology.
[19:06]This is the most exciting literature right now.
[19:08]I think that experience of moving between authors
[19:11]and thinking about what they do to one another
[19:13]and how they play together is such an exciting reading experience
[19:17]and unlike anything else.
[19:19]So I knew I wanted to keep working in literary magazines
[19:23]but I sort of hit the ceiling in Louisiana
[19:26]in terms of opportunities for growth.
[19:28]So I was looking around.
[19:30]There's only a few.
[19:31]I mean, there's probably like a dozen big,
[19:34]letter and big little literary magazines left
[19:37]in terms of places that could support a woman
[19:39]who wants to be a full-time editor.
[19:40]And so I had a sense of the landscape
[19:43]and I just, I wasn't expecting the job
[19:45]but the Paris Review to come up so quickly
[19:47]but when I did, I thought I want that.
[19:50]So it was great.
[19:51]I mean, it was hard to get it.
[19:52]You know, but it was great.
[19:54]And I had lived in New York in my 20s
[19:57]but like in a very scrappy,
[20:00]hipster girl would mean in Brooklyn way. So to come back, you know, a decade later to this big
[20:06]job was like a very sort of weird and wonderful time warp almost. You know, to come back to a city
[20:13]you know and be like I knew where things were and my favorite restaurants and some of the things
[20:18]were wonderful and the same as ever some some places you turn a corner and there's a whole new
[20:22]skyscraper there or you know a new cultural institution or so that was really it's been fun
[20:30]to sort of get to know the city again that way. So Nate, yeah. Since you've been there what are you
[20:35]like most proud of having accomplished? I know you've made so many changes and the podcast and all
[20:42]these other events and launch part I mean you've done a lot of stuff. Yeah, I mean the awards
[20:47]once it's won since you've been there. Yeah, thank you. I mean putting together the quarterly
[20:51]is still central and the most exciting part for me. I think just finding fiction that is amazing
[20:59]stories or pieces you know forthcoming novels that I feel like we can X or but particularly
[21:05]stories that knock it out of the park. That part's really exciting. You know a thing that I'd
[21:09]never worked on but was a real joy to take over where they interviews. The writers that work
[21:14]interviews these are sort of the interviews of record for most writers and it's not not to sound
[21:20]too self-important about it but you know these are retrospective career-spanning interviews that
[21:24]the author gets very involved in writing and sort of perfecting the voice so you know George Saunders
[21:30]Ben Nugent and I worked on George's interview for nine months at one point it was 40,000 words.
[21:38]We got it down to 9,000 words George added back another 6,000 so you know but those conversations
[21:46]and trying to make this document that once is a once a conversation but it's also really
[21:52]a taste statement and an explanation of how the writers mind works is just a really exciting
[21:57]thing. So the quarterly is great. We have a podcast and that was so much fun to put together.
[22:02]I really love that we have this digital presence when we're going to be able to figure out how to
[22:07]be a legacy print magazine with growing readership or a print search is higher than ever but
[22:14]you know be relevant and nimble enough to also exist online so that's been fun and you know the
[22:20]parties the events we're trying to do more out in the world more public events in New York
[22:25]and in around the country really just so there's more access points to the magazine because I
[22:30]think you know people are reading people are looking at their phones people are online so much
[22:36]you know we're not an events organization where a magazine works but but there's a lot of community
[22:42]building that happens when you get together. Can I ask a really stupid question? So the Paris review,
[22:46]the Southern Review, like what does a review magazine mean? Yeah yeah no that's a great question.
[22:51]It's not written in stone anywhere but these reviews like it started sort of early in the 20th
[22:57]century as a way of assembling a lot of content so the editors are more about picking and selecting
[23:05]anthologizing contemporary writing from that moment and it's a review of a survey of what's happening
[23:11]and you know in our case American letters at the time as opposed to a magazine editor who's
[23:17]really assigning things and you know there's a lot more sort of regular features in terms of
[23:23]you know front of the book pieces so yeah it's it's a look I mean if you were to look at
[23:29]a magazine or versus a review sometimes that they might look the same but reviews typically are
[23:35]the bigger you know ours have both the Southern Review and the Paris Review have fiction, poetry,
[23:41]visual arts like I said the Paris Review has this interview series that's been going on for 66 years,
[23:47]67 years now. Yeah and I think also reviews this is the thing that I'm really proud of because they're
[23:54]assembled you know they're bigger publications and they're assembled you know quarterly people keep
[24:00]them you know they're not they're not quite books but you know I love walking into a friend's house
[24:06]or a stranger's house is even better in seeing that they have you know a couple feet of
[24:11]Paris reviews on their bookshelf because this is something that isn't so timely it's not I mean
[24:16]it's relevant of course it has some it's saying something about the contemporary moment but it's
[24:22]also a document that is full of literature that I want to keep loving so what's coming next for
[24:29]you now you know you're already so busy and you have this lunch and everything yeah well I'm going
[24:33]around quite a bit with the book which will be really fun and going around with the magazine as
[24:37]well there's this big conference I don't know if you've heard of AWP I think yeah I don't know
[24:43]much about it I'm writing programs and that's in San Antonio Texas so I'm going to buy
[24:50]you know I really am eager to start writing the next thing which will probably be some stories
[24:56]my favorite and yeah I think you know I was always a slow writer if you couldn't tell this one
[25:02]took nine years so I'm not rushing anywhere but I'm really excited to I have the book out in the
[25:08]world and sort of also put it away and think about what can come next I feel like in the spring
[25:13]you need to have like when the Mariners play this is oh I'm just my lack of knowledge
[25:19]Mariners must play the Mets or the Yankees at some point no they do you have to have like a big
[25:23]even fight everyone you know like get a whole session you should get a whole section and make it like
[25:28]your day and like give out cactus league t-shirts or I don't know something sell the book like make
[25:33]it a whole oh I love that yeah I'm going to Arizona in March as part of the tour there's a big
[25:38]book festival to sauna and I'm excited for the book festival but like I'm even more excited to go
[25:44]sit in a couple of stadiums and just be like oh the cactus league is like cactus league here
[25:48]we are well if you do the New York thing let me know I will absolutely yeah I whenever the Mariners
[25:55]come to Yankee Stadium I go to one sometimes three games um I mean it's a bit of a schlept to get up
[26:01]there but it's always worth it do you have any advice for aspiring authors oh just keep going
[26:08]I mean like I said I thought this book was done in 2015 and I look back at those drafts and
[26:14]I'm really proud of that work but I also think that it really had to go back into the
[26:20]tumblr and you know be worked over several more times before it was the book that I wanted it to be
[26:26]in a I think that it's okay to get to the end and say I need to do it again or try some more and
[26:33]just be more rigorous with yourself it's hard and that patience didn't come naturally to me
[26:38]but I'm really glad that I had to go around and around with the book because I want to finally
[26:44]did stop it's in the right spot it's okay we're congratulations on it so exciting and can we
[26:50]to see what could come next of your career so be thanks for having me you've been listening to
[26:56]mom's and have time to read books with zibi Owens please make sure to sign up for my newsletter
[27:00]at zibiowans.com to get more updates about episodes like these and also lots of live events thanks
[27:07]so much today's episode has been sponsored by the Iceland readers retreat don't forget to check
[27:11]it out April 29th to May 3rd 2020 Iceland readers retreat.com you can follow me on instagram at
[27:19]moms don't have time to read books thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound for the
[27:24]sound editing and thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[27:29]now trim music thanks for listening you could always email me at zibi at zibiowans.com