Liz Moore, LONG BRIGHT RIVER
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zivi Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast,
[0:11]Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Thanks so much for listening to my podcast.
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[1:22]I had the privilege of interviewing Liz Moore a couple times already.
[1:25]The first time we had a horrible technology, snafu, and she was very cool about letting me
[1:30]move platforms at the last minute and doing our podcast via Zoom, basically.
[1:36]Anyway, so that was fun, and that's what you're going to listen to now.
[1:38]So at the beginning, I think we might have both been a little bit flustered since I had so many
[1:43]tech problems on my end, but I think I calmed down towards the end.
[1:46]I also got a chance to interview her on Instagram Live, so if you want to see visuals of us,
[1:51]you can watch us on IG Live, and she'll be at my book club. We'll be discussing Longbright River,
[1:56]which is Liz Moore's best-selling novel, and was a GMA book club pick at my June 9th.
[2:02]I think I'm getting that right at my June 9th virtual book club.
[2:05]And if you haven't joined my virtual book club yet, you should.
[2:07]I do it through book clubs, B-O-O-K-C-L-U-B-Z dot com, book clubs with a Z,
[2:13]and it's just a coincidence that it's a Z, even though it's in my name.
[2:17]Anyway, bookclubs dot com, and we will be reading her book and talking about that
[2:21]from 2 p.m. to 2.30 p.m. on June 9th, the Eastern time, and then she joins us from 2.30 to
[2:26]the 3. And I do my book clubs every Tuesday. So anyway, Liz Moore is not only the best-selling
[2:31]author of a Longbright River, but she's also the author of a claim novel's Heft and the Unseen
[2:36]World, a winner of the 2014 to 2015 Rome Prize in Literature. She lives in Philadelphia.
[2:42]So take a listen and get to know Liz like I did.
[2:44]Welcome, Liz. Thanks so much for coming on mom's. Don't have time to read books.
[2:48]Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here. Longbright River, oh my gosh, so good.
[2:54]I can't wait to talk to you about it. For anybody who hasn't read Longbright River,
[2:58]can you please tell listeners what it's about? Sure. Longbright River is the story of two sisters
[3:05]who grow up adjacent to the neighborhood of Kensington in Philadelphia, which is a neighborhood
[3:10]that's been particularly hard hit by the opioid crisis. And as adults, they have become
[3:16]estranged, although they were very closest children. The older one, Mickey is a police officer,
[3:21]and the younger one, Casey is suffering from opioid addiction. And at the start of the novel,
[3:26]Casey goes missing at the same time that a series of murders of women who fit her demographic
[3:32]profile is occurring and Mickey makes the decision to go looking for her. So that's the start.
[3:38]What inspired you to write this book? It seems like you couldn't have just imagined this.
[3:44]You must have been in this situation in some way or seen some of this close up. Tell me
[3:49]about that. Sure. I guess there were kind of two different sources of inspiration. And the first
[3:55]is that my own family has a history of addiction over the course of multiple generations,
[4:02]like many families. And the second is that I, in 2009, when I first moved to Philly,
[4:08]I'm not from here, although I live here now. I was invited by the photographer Jeffrey Stockbridge
[4:14]to come to Kensington, where he was making a series of portraits of the residents of the
[4:20]neighborhood and also some of the buildings in the neighborhood. And he wanted somebody who could
[4:25]interview his subjects while he made their portrait. So, you know, I was a writer. He invited me.
[4:30]I went up and I only went with him a handful of times, but I became very moved by what I saw
[4:37]and the people I spoke to and ended up returning to the neighborhood many times on my own. First,
[4:43]to write sort of nonfiction sketches that became kind of the basis of some of the descriptions
[4:50]of the neighborhood itself in terms of its appearance in the book. And also, to do volunteer work,
[4:56]I ended up teaching free writing workshops at a women's day shelter there. So, all of those
[5:00]experiences combined were sort of the foundation of Flonberry River. And let's start back earlier
[5:07]in your career. How did you become a writer? And what part of it was most appealing to you about
[5:12]the writing life, the writing world? How did you get into it? I, let's see, I always really liked
[5:18]writing as a kid. I wrote, you know, in a diary, I wrote a mostly poetry, actually, when I was
[5:24]growing up. But in college, I was actually more interested in music. I played guitar and I wrote songs
[5:30]and I formed a band. I went to college in New York. And on the weekends, I was working at a guitar
[5:37]store in the village, sort of as my part time job. And there I met a lot of different people
[5:43]who were also involved in music in various ways. So, the first things that I wrote were actually
[5:48]related to music. I wrote a series of interconnected short stories about the music industry that formed
[5:54]my first novel, which was called The Words of Every Song. And at that point, I sort of had to decide
[5:59]whether that was a one-off, like if I just wrote a book because I was interested in music and
[6:04]and I was interested in writing about music. But what I found was that I was becoming more and
[6:09]more interested in the writing as opposed to the music. And so, I sort of, my music career really
[6:16]tapered off at that point and I became much more serious about writing and subsequently published
[6:22]a novel called Heft and a novel called The Unsinking World. And now a long-right river is my fourth book.
[6:28]None of my books have really had much to do with each other. I tend to write in a variety of different
[6:34]about a variety of different subjects. Probably the one thing that links them is that they're
[6:38]very character-heavy, character-driven. Whether I'm writing sort of a crime drama, like long-right
[6:44]river is or something that's more concerned with family and ancestry-like Heft or The Unsinking
[6:51]World. It had a little dose of speculative fiction or science fiction and it, although it too,
[6:56]was more concerned about its family, the family at the center of it.
[7:00]So what was it like after writing all these books to have this book be a GMA book club pick
[7:06]and just blow up? What was that like for you?
[7:10]It was moving in a weird way. My career has certainly been a slow build. I can't tell
[7:19]probably only a very few people ever read the words of every song when it came out.
[7:24]And more people read Heft, but certainly not as many as have read long-right river and responded
[7:30]to it. And so it feels like with every book, I've gotten a slightly bigger and bigger
[7:35]readership. And now what's cool is people are, I think, going back to read my backlist a bit if
[7:41]long-right river is the first book they read by me, which is great and meaningful. I mean,
[7:47]those are books that I spend years working on. I'm a kind of a slow writer. I tend to publish
[7:51]once every four or five years. So it's nice. I put a lot of time into each book and it's nice
[7:57]to know that they're kind of being read again or for the first time. I also am aware, it feels
[8:03]weird. I was long-right river when I got good news about it. When I got the news that it would be
[8:10]a GMA book club pick or that it was on the bestseller list, which was also a big first for me.
[8:16]I am happy and proud and also very aware. I think that it doesn't feel exactly correct to have
[8:25]a big celebration about it because the book is about some pretty serious topics that
[8:30]bring family impact a lot of families in the US, including my own. So it's like, it's a strange mix
[8:38]of emotions, I would say. And let's talk, if you don't mind, if we could talk more about your own
[8:43]family's history with addiction, how has that affected you? When were you first aware of it and
[8:48]how close did it get? How has it played into your life, if you don't mind my asking?
[8:54]I sort of thought a lot about how much I would talk about it prior to the book's publication
[8:59]because I think it's a fair question and what I've settled on is like, I'm willing to say that my
[9:04]family has a history of addiction, but not much more than that because most of the stories
[9:09]aren't really my own to tell. And I respect, you know, I have some, I have a complex relationship
[9:16]with organizations like AA and NA, but one thing I do very much respect is the idea that people
[9:23]who use organizations to help them in their recovery require anonymity as part of their recovery.
[9:30]So, you know, I tend to say that the line my family has an history of addiction and not
[9:37]much more than that, although it's certainly true that I think for every writer, I know there's
[9:42]a certain amount of, it's difficult to write fiction without having a sort of autobiographical spark
[9:47]someplace in it. As some writers, I think wouldn't even say that, but I do. I think every book
[9:52]I've written, you can trace elements of it back to my own personal history for my family history.
[9:57]And what do you think the effect on you-
[10:00]who as someone who has watched this develop around you has been.
[10:03]Like, what is your point of view now on the opioid crisis?
[10:06]And all of it, like, do you feel it's a failing of the government?
[10:10]Do you feel like this is more of a political thing?
[10:12]Do you feel like this is a hereditary thing
[10:15]that's just predetermined, like how have you come out
[10:18]after analyzing this for years?
[10:21]I think it's a huge mix of genetic predisposition
[10:25]in some cases, but one of the central themes
[10:28]of the book is the idea of nature versus nurture
[10:30]and how it can be that two siblings in the same family
[10:33]come out so different as adults.
[10:36]And I think the answer to that is that there's certainly,
[10:41]you know, some people have a genetic predisposition to it.
[10:45]And also, even within the same family,
[10:47]two people can have very different experiences of nurture,
[10:50]you know, whether it's we're talking about birth order
[10:54]or whether we're talking about the circumstances
[10:56]at once family when one was growing up.
[10:59]I think you see this a lot in families
[11:01]where there's a big, a large age gap between siblings,
[11:04]especially like the parents themselves can have a completely
[11:08]different, for example, a completely different
[11:09]economic circumstances between when, you know,
[11:13]one child was born and the other child was born.
[11:15]And I think all of those things contribute
[11:18]to why one person might suffer from addiction
[11:21]and one might not.
[11:22]I do believe that there have been huge systemic failures
[11:27]that have contributed to this particular wave
[11:29]of opioid addiction in the United States.
[11:32]And I'm glad to see some legislation is starting
[11:35]to be imposed that protects the individual
[11:37]from kind of like the profitearing of pharmaceutical companies.
[11:41]But it's in a lot of ways the damage has already been done
[11:45]and this very insidious addiction has already made its way
[11:48]into family units.
[11:51]And we will feel the effects of that for generations, I think.
[11:54]One of the things that you just said that I find
[11:56]particularly interesting is how people in the same family
[11:59]can have such different experiences of their childhoods
[12:02]and of being even in that family.
[12:04]In fact, one quote in your book you said,
[12:06]in fact it is possible to argue I believe
[12:08]if we were to evaluate who had the more difficult childhood,
[12:11]whatever that may mean,
[12:12]one might find the balance tip toward me.
[12:14]I say this because of the two of us,
[12:15]I am the only one with memories of our mother
[12:17]and very fond ones of that.
[12:19]So somebody experiences the loss of a parent,
[12:21]the other sibling doesn't, who has the harder childhood?
[12:24]I mean, I have four kids with a huge age difference
[12:27]between them and I mean, this is not the same situation.
[12:30]But I mean, I've even just in like the parenting
[12:33]of those kids, I am a completely different person.
[12:35]So a couple of years, a couple of circumstances,
[12:38]all of it makes your own childhood
[12:41]and the whole trajectory of your life completely different,
[12:44]which I love that you included in this book
[12:46]in so many ways.
[12:47]Like it's another sort of river of plot
[12:50]that sort of courses through the story,
[12:52]which I just thought was amazing.
[12:54]I have said sadly that I think my younger child at this age
[13:00]I had read like a thousand more books to my older child.
[13:04]I hope they never listened to this as adults.
[13:06]But like I think the younger child, you know,
[13:10]I hope he will get other benefits
[13:13]that my older daughter didn't have.
[13:17]But certainly there's like a big gap
[13:19]in the number of books he's been read versus her.
[13:22]Yeah, I actually feel like I've gotten better
[13:25]in that I can't obsess about everything as much.
[13:28]I don't know about you, but like with my older kids,
[13:31]every movement, I had like a running dialogue
[13:33]in my head if I was doing it right or if I wasn't
[13:35]and could I be maximizing this music class by clapping
[13:39]instead of just having this kid on my lap?
[13:41]And by the fourth kid,
[13:42]I was lucky to even get to music class
[13:43]and I would just like kind of throw in there
[13:45]and like pat myself on the back for making it.
[13:48]So he's much more laid back than my older kids.
[13:51]I'll say that.
[13:53]That's what you have to believe to survive.
[13:56]I was a parent is that like, you know,
[13:59]being hands off also has benefits to a person,
[14:02]to a child in certain ways or else yeah,
[14:05]it's too easy to obsess.
[14:08]My mother always used to tell me with my older kids
[14:10]because I constantly hovered over them.
[14:12]She would say, but nine neglects just don't even pay attention.
[14:16]I'm like, what?
[14:18]And now as I've been like, you know,
[14:20]zooming in my office with like four kids
[14:22]behind the door all through this pandemic.
[14:24]I'm like, all right, mom, I finally did
[14:26]but I've been nine neglecting and doing that.
[14:29]Doing it now.
[14:30]How do you find being a parent has affected your writing
[14:33]if at all has it or it certainly has.
[14:37]This is, I'm typically pretty good at like finding ways
[14:42]to like find time to write no matter what.
[14:46]This is the first time I've really been stopped.
[14:48]This quarantine and this, you know,
[14:51]without childcare and I have a one year old and a three year old.
[14:55]And my husband has a very busy full time job,
[14:57]which he can do remotely, but it's, you know,
[14:59]the kind of job where he is like constantly
[15:02]virtually face to face with lots of different people
[15:04]all day long from from from from Don told us.
[15:07]So that means that I am able to
[15:12]finagle like like this, for example,
[15:15]I was like, I'm going to do this book event
[15:19]and I require this amount of time to do it.
[15:21]And he's like, okay, I got it, I got the kids.
[15:23]But what tends to get pushed off completely is writing
[15:26]because it's not there's, there's nobody
[15:29]to answer to with writing.
[15:30]I don't, I don't like to have,
[15:32]I don't like to sell my books in advance.
[15:34]I like to write a complete manuscript
[15:36]before selling them.
[15:37]Some authors prefer to have a deadline.
[15:39]I don't really like deadlines.
[15:41]But in this case, it's sort of backfired on me
[15:43]because nobody's waiting.
[15:46]You know, like, no, I don't have any editors
[15:48]saying where's the draft.
[15:49]I don't.
[15:50]So for that reason, it's very easy to say,
[15:52]well, that's the one thing that nobody's, you know,
[15:55]expecting of us.
[15:56]And so unfortunately right now it's,
[15:58]it's almost no writing is being done
[16:01]until we are allowed to reintroduce childcare.
[16:04]I don't think there will be any writing, sadly,
[16:06]which makes me not the nicest person to be around right now.
[16:11]There's so many things making me not the nicest person
[16:13]to be around right now.
[16:14]And I'm like you, I love to write.
[16:16]It's like how I maintain my sanity.
[16:19]And that's like aside from writing up other people's books,
[16:22]which I also love to do,
[16:23]I haven't been able to do any of the writing
[16:25]that actually helps me because I'm like,
[16:27]that's an indulgence that I don't have the luxury
[16:29]of doing right now.
[16:30]So, I mean yours is not so much an indulgence
[16:33]is like creating amazing literary fiction,
[16:36]but it's hard because it feels like it's something,
[16:39]it's like a bonus thing,
[16:40]because writing is like so, I don't know.
[16:42]But I think there's a moment to it
[16:45]that is that I, it sounds like we're both really missing
[16:49]right now, yes.
[16:50]Yeah, it's very sad.
[16:52]But you know, I have interviewed other authors
[16:53]during this time who say that they aren't writing,
[16:57]but they're collecting so much information
[16:59]that will eventually be used in books.
[17:01]So they're different parts of the writing process,
[17:03]and this is like the input in flux moment.
[17:06]So not to think of it as wasted time,
[17:08]but almost like research or, you know,
[17:11]things that they will be able to use
[17:13]in different ways later,
[17:13]they're just not actually focusing on the words
[17:16]getting on the page right now.
[17:17]So I don't know, I felt like that was somehow reassuring.
[17:20]I don't know if that feels reassuring to you.
[17:22]But yeah, I hope it's just getting like compressed
[17:26]and compressed and compressed.
[17:27]And then it will just like spring out of me
[17:29]fully formed at some point.
[17:30]That's a nice thought.
[17:31]I don't know if it's true,
[17:32]but I'm gonna hang on to it.
[17:34]Sometimes even just the thought of it
[17:36]makes the moment feel better.
[17:39]When you mentioned that you are a slow writer,
[17:41]is it that you take time to do a ton of research?
[17:44]Is it that you take time to outline?
[17:46]And then, or is it that each sentence is slow
[17:49]like deliberation and crafting of the words,
[17:52]what part of it takes you the longest?
[17:53]Where's it all of it?
[17:54]I think it's mostly that I never work
[17:56]from an outline.
[17:57]And so I don't really know what the story will be
[18:00]until I'm writing it.
[18:01]And often that results in feeling like I have said
[18:06]the characters off in the wrong direction,
[18:08]like many, many, many times.
[18:10]And bringing them back to the initial,
[18:13]the only thing I really know
[18:14]is the initial premise of the book,
[18:16]like who the characters are,
[18:17]where they are in time and place,
[18:20]and what their first problem is.
[18:23]So with the long break river,
[18:25]I knew that there were two sisters.
[18:27]I knew what they did for work,
[18:29]or what their circumstances were.
[18:32]And I knew that Casey would disappear.
[18:35]But I didn't know anything else.
[18:36]I didn't know if Casey would be alive or dead.
[18:38]I didn't know if Mickey,
[18:41]what would happen with Mickey's job.
[18:43]I didn't know who the culprit was.
[18:45]I didn't know anything else.
[18:47]And therefore, it's just kind of a lot of like stumbling
[18:50]through until you figure it out.
[18:52]And every time there's a twist or some revelation that comes,
[18:57]it's also a surprise to me.
[18:59]And therefore, usually I have to like go back
[19:02]and substantially rewrite everything I've written so far
[19:05]to accommodate that change.
[19:07]So that's why it takes me a long time.
[19:10]Maybe you should start like a choose your own adventure
[19:12]type, addendum to your books.
[19:14]All the paths they went on,
[19:16]and like should they,
[19:17]this way or should they not?
[19:18]Why waste all the pages?
[19:20]I actually live in fear of anyone ever discovering my drafts
[19:24]or like all the documents leading up to the final document
[19:27]because they look like mad, raving.
[19:30]You know, it's like just in all the paths.
[19:34]And then make sure to not to forget to do this
[19:37]and like in red, you know, my word font
[19:41]just reminders to myself.
[19:43]Yeah, it works.
[19:44]All right, well, we won't break into your computer
[19:47]and dig up your drafts.
[19:48]Do you have any advice to aspiring authors?
[19:53]I guess, just, I mean,
[19:58]I hate the word discipline, but it's.
[20:00]like it took me a long time to learn it. I guess instead of discipline, I'll just say like make
[20:07]appointments with yourself and honor them and don't let yourself be distracted by technology during
[20:14]those times. The best advice I've ever heard is like, you know, there's not really such a thing
[20:20]as writers block. It's if you make if you show up to a blank screen whether it's computer or paper
[20:28]for a designated amount of time every day or however many days a week you want. You will produce
[20:34]something. If you don't allow yourself to look to go online or go on social media or text or do
[20:39]anything, you will produce something. And if you do that enough times, you will accumulate words.
[20:44]And that's a very important step is just learning how to produce words on a schedule
[20:53]and in an organized way. And then the next step, of course, is like trying to make those words
[20:59]good. But just the act of like producing words, accumulating words is something that I think most
[21:05]writers never actually do. You know, it's not fun to write, but it is certainly cathartic and
[21:13]therapeutic for me. And that's why I do it. Awesome. Well, it's also therapeutic to read it. So thank
[21:19]you for writing it. And thank you so much for coming on. Most don't have time to read books
[21:25]and IGTV and we will make that happen. And thanks for your patience with the technology. And by the way,
[21:31]with the one and three year olds, I mean, it's amazing you get anything done ever because those are
[21:36]really hard years. So hang in there and the words will come later. It gets easier. I appreciate
[21:43]your voice. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, call me when there are 13 and I'll give you
[21:51]some tips. All right, take care. Instead of issues. Thanks, Debbie. Bye bye. Thanks.
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